End of year celebration

We took a break in the birthday celebrations yesterday, to celebrate that we've closed the book on another year and reached the summer holidays.
We usually go for a nice lunch or an ice cream treat after picking the kids up on the last day of school, and yesterday was no different - we took everybody to the lovely Deli at the Empire:





We had their famous roast beef sandwiches for lunch, and coffee and chocolate eclairs, strawberry tartes and macaroons for dessert. M-m-mmm!





Also, our kids got to open some presents, to celebrate their nice school reports, and the end of the year. They got some books with jokes, to prepare for the Kids Hash:





Lucas got a Hexbug habitat...



... and Linnea got a pencil case from Smiggle (that she apparently "had waited for for a long, long time!").



After our little lunch celebration, we resumed celebrating Caitlin's birthday with an afternoon with cake and pizza with the Saaps at home. But more about that in another post!

Another year done and dusted

Luckily in a way, I didn't really have time yesterday to get into the sentimental mood that I usually suffer from every last day of each school year. It was just such a busy day!
It was a little bit sad to say goodbye to a big bunch of lovely people at school who are leaving for good, and I did get a bit teary eyed, I don't do farewells very well. But on the other hand, I didn't have time to reminisce to much over the fact that another year had now already gone by in a flash, and the kids are ready for Year 4 and Year 2 next term! Big kids!

Here's Linnea with her classroom assistant, Ms Ameerah:



And with her lovely teacher in Year 1, Mrs Harris:



Unfortunately I didn't get Lucas and his Year 3 teacher Mr Williamson together this morning, so I give you an old photo of them, from the International Day back in term 1:



Both kids have had a great year this year. Both have had very inspiring teachers that they've liked a lot, and especially Lucas was lucky and had all his best mates in his class this past year.
Let's hope next year will turn out just as great for them!

ZUMBA® injury

I must have clapped my hands a little bit too vigorously in the last ZUMBA® class... I came home with this big bruise in my right palm:



Ha ha, the music and the energy must have been really good!
I think I bashed it with the rings on my left hand. I iced it a bit when I got home, but it's still sore actually... :/ Will be a bit more careful in the future.

A "Watson" birthday morning

Since Caitlin has been one of the first ones up every morning so far, the rest of us had to have an early wake-up call this morning to get to actually wake her up with some beautiful singing and presents in bed. The normal birthday morning tradition in our house.
Happy Biiiiiirthdayyyyyyy!







She had lots of lovely gifts to open:



An eager audience!



We had got her, amongst other things, some accessories for her new phone:



And two snow globes for her collection, one from Thailand, and one here from Brunei:



After having opened and admired all her presents, she came out to a party decorated kitchen, ready for a super special birthday breakfast among the banners, balloons, streamers and confetti!

Girl's treat

As a treat for Caitlin, all the girls went to the nail salon yesterday before dinner to get manicures and pedicures.
Apparently I'm not the only one who finds those big chairs really, really comfy and relaxing...:



Caitlin had a foot scrub that she really enjoyed but she actually didn't want any nail polish at all. She was happy with just nice, soft feet!





Linnea on the other hand... she had the girls running circles around her and different coloured finger and toe nails, stickers and glitter and the whole shebang, of course! A perfect afternoon for her!

Early birthday celebration

Since Grandma and Granddad were scheduled to leave early this morning and hence not really able to celebrate Caitlin's birthday with the rest of us today, we went out for an early birthday dinner last night.

Caitlin had wished for sushi, so we went to the nice Kaizen Sushi down at the waterfront, and got a VIP room with beautiful views:













We ordered in a huge sushi platter to share, plus a few different special wishes, it was all very yummy:







We had also brought an icecream cake that the staff brought in to Caitlin after our meal, she got a little bit shy when they sang to her:







It was hard to cut!



A great last night all of us together!

Grumpy smurf

Bless her, she is oh so very cute when she is grumpy! :)

On the Monkey Boat

Last night while I was chauffeuring around Lucas to a birthday party, picking Nathan up from work and then picking Lucas up again - the others took a trip on the Monkey Boat and around Kampung Ayer (the Water Village).
Even though they got a bit wet thanks to the first rain we've had in nearly two weeks (!), they had a really good afternoon and saw lots of Proboscis Monkeys and other animals; visited a house in the Water Village and learned a lot of things thanks to the good drivers of the boat. Always a good excursion to do.









Linnea had brought her own camera and apparently took more photos than all the rest of them together! I'll get some of them and post them later.

Boil and Bean?

Beenal and I went for coffee the other day at a new coffee shop that has just recently opened in Brunei, the Gloria Jean's. If I'm not mistaken it's an Australian chain, at least I remember having coffees in GJs branches both in Perth and Adelaide.

Apparently it's one of their 'things' to ask for your name when you order, to separate your order from other orders. A good idea I guess, if you are a busy coffee shop somewhere in Australia with a steady flow of customers - but when Beenal and I went we were their only customers, and they still asked for our names...

I had to repeat myself three times, and ok, he got close enough in the end:



Beenal thought she'd make it easy so she told him: "I'm B".
We were expecting the receipt to say just that "B", or maybe "Bee" or even "Bea", but we didn't expect this:



Ha ha, it made us giggle though! :)
Next time, we're just going to order for Boil & Bean straight away!

An Urban Hash

The hash tonight became another emergency hash since there was a big forest fire raging right in the jungle we were supposed to go. So instead of getting to take Nikki into the jungle, she was eased into hashing with a rather "urban" hash - all flat and along normal roads and through industrial areas. Not short though, it was a good 5k walk, so still a good workout.

Before we set off, tonight's hash site in the background:









Also, we weren't out in the jungle under our tent for the on-on, but in the comfort of a fellow hashers front garden..! Too easy! :)
Quite a big group of hens tonight, and five first-time guests! Nikki did her little speech just fine, drank her beer when prompted and didn't get me in any trouble. Good girl!







Grandma got to get up as well, and got welcomed back as a "Returning Visitor"!



Then it was MY turn to hit the "stage"! Together with two fellow hens, we all celebrated special runs this evening. The lady furthest to the left of me had done 100, the lady in the middle 50 and me - 150 runs as of today! Yay!
(And this is what I'm getting myself this time for my award money!)



1st hash and 150th hash:

Rain rain go away!

It has been the rainiest month of June in Sweden since 1786, which was when they started measuring the downpour! Several regions of the country have had more than three times the normal amount of rain, and the temperature have only once been measured to climb over +25 degrees...
Booooo!

The sun better snap out of it and show it's face once we get there!
I don't do rain on my holiday.

Behind the scenes

This morning I had booked us all in for something that I had been wanting to do for quite a while: a photo session with a very good photographer here (who also happens to have been Linnea's teacher this year).

I have seen quite a bit of her work, and I like her style, plus it's been forever since we had a decent family photo taken.
Finally, it's been four years since we were together with all of Nathan's family at the same time, and then we didn't even take a family photo - so that one was well overdue for sure. (A shame Uncle Kieran wasn't here too of course, but this was as close as we'll get for now.)

We won't see the finished result until Mrs H has edited all the photos, but here's a little "behind the scenes" from earlier this morning: