HAPPY BIRTHDAY! To my Wonderful Husband!

You are such a wonderful husband and I am so grateful for you and all you do! Thank you for taking such good care of your little family and supporting us in all the crazy things we do. We would never be having so many wonderful experiences if you weren't such a hard worker. You really try your hardest to make life great and it is! Thank you for being such a fun Daddy. Grace loves playing with you. And thank you for loving me! I am so lucky I found such a great guy! I hope you have a wonderful day and I love you so much!

(ps I know this is cheesy.... This picture was taken at Halloween, but I really hope you feel like you're King for the day!)

A Visit From my Dad

We were lucky enough to have a visit from my Dad for the last two days. He was in the region on a Recruiting Trip and arranged to spend to days with us on his way home. We had such a fun time. Sunday afternoon we took him the Botanic Gardens. We saw the fishies, which Grace loves.

They also have a Bonsai Tree collection. These are Ben's favorites. (We've had 2 but killed them both) Here's Ben in front of his favorite at the Gardens.
We also saw a few really huge Spiders. Gross!!!! Ben's finger is pointing up to the spider in the corner of the picture. I know it's hard to see, but look in the empty space with lots of sky around it. That's a big spider hanging between the leaves. I was a little creeped out after that.
Here's the four of us behind this pretty waterfall. We had a great time walking around. We saw a Ginger Garden and learned that the Banana Tree is part of the Ginger family. And we saw an outdoor stage with a Youth Symphony performing. At about that point we got rained on and ran to the visitors center and headed home.On Monday Ben went off to work and Dad, Grace and I went to Sentosa. This was so fun! We decided to go to the Aquarium first. Grace just loves fishies and she has been especially obsessed with Nemo lately. So as we're walking through the aquarium we come up tons of different fish tanks. Grace looks through each of them and says, "No Nemo, No Nemo". After about 5 or 6 tanks she was getting pretty upset. "Nemo, Nemo, Nemo" she kept saying. We were getting worried that we wouldn't find a Nemo. Here she is, I can't decide if she's excited about seeing the fish, or mad that they're not Nemo.
Well, we FINALLY found Nemo! Grace was so excited. Grace is pointing to Nemo in this picture, but you can't really see him. We also saw Dori. She loved them so much we spent 5 minutes at this tank and when we tried to move on she got mad.After we found Nemo we went through and Aquarium Tunnel. This was my favorite part. You were surrounded by fish and could watch the sharks and sting rays swim over you. Here's one of the sharks I saw above my head.

After the tunnel we made another visit to Nemo and then headed out through the gift shop. Well, what does Grace find? A stuffed Nemo. So my Dad, being the great Grandpa he is had to buy it for her. She loves that thing and give it kisses! (she's clutching it in her little hands here)
After the Aquarium we went to the Beach. Unfortunately it wasn't very sunny so we just changed Grace into her swimsuit and my Dad and I just waded in the water. Grace mostly enjoyed playing in the sand and squishing any tower my Dad built with the bucket or other sand toy.
After we got rained on at the beach we decided to have some lunch and then went to the Dolphin show. This was really fun for me as I have never been to Sea World. They have "pink Dolphins" here you can see it in the water. I loved watching them do their tricks and Grace was so fun to watch and got surprised everytime they jumped out of the water.
About this time Grace was ready to have a break down so we headed home for naptime. After she woke up we went to China Town to see the Temples they have and do a little souvenier shopping. Both the Indian Temple and the Bhuddist Temple had ceremonies in process while we were there and is was really neat to see. Here' Dad inside the Bhuddist Temple
After Chinatown Ben came home from work and we went to dinner at Clark Quay. Dad chose a mexican restaurant, Cafe Iguana which was yummy! We had a wonderful time talking that night and then he left bright and early at 3:00 this morning.

Though his visit was short I am glad he came! It has been a long time since we've had a chance to talk this much and spend so much time together. Thanks for the wonderful visit Dad!

Another Trip to the Doctor

This time for an Ultrasound! That's right I know you've all been expecting it to happen so here's the official announcement. We're having a baby! I'm due Sept. 22. We are really excited and can't wait to welcome a new little one to our family. My trip to the Dr yesterday has been my third one for the pregnancy. The Doctors here are very interesting, quite different from the US. They have done an ultrasound each time and it has been so comforting to see the baby grow each time. The heart beat was strong and the baby looked good. Since I'm to that 12 week "safe" point I wanted to share the news. I still get a little paranoid until I can actually feel the baby moving, but I'm trusting that it will be okay. I've felt great, no sicknesses at all until this morning when my track record of two pregnancies and no throw up went down the drain. Hopefully it was just a fluke though. We're excited to be home in May and I'm relieved I don't actually have to deliver a baby here! I know this picture's not the best, but it's fun to post anyway. The actual ultrasound was really clear and I could see it's little arms flailing about. So cute!

TV Detox

So after all the sickness last week, and all the TV watching I decided that we needed a major break from TV. Mostly because by Sunday afternoon I wanted to throw Grace out the window because she was being so naughty. And I was sick of her begging for Nemo (one of her new favorite words). So we turned the TV off, closed the doors and put away the remote and we haven't watched a single show since. (Well, actually Grace hasn't, Ben and I have still watched American Idol and Myth Busters).

So here are a few of the fun things we've done this week instead of Television. We painted our toenails. Grace loves doing this and doesn't even touch them until they're dry now. I found these little nail stickers at the store and thought we'd make our nails fancy. Grace loves showing off her pretty toes to Daddy.

I finally got Grace to understand the concept of "Cheese". Well, kind of. She usually tries to play with the camera instead of posing for it, but on Monday she finally got it. She kept saying "again, again" (which is another of her favorite words especially when we're reading books). So I have about 20 pictures with this same looks. "Cheese" We're not quite there yet with the smile.
We went to the Botanic Gardens with our friend Sylvia. Her kids here are Bailey and Gavin. We had so much fun just walking around and exploring the little Gazebos and statues and even saw a Frog. I poked it with a stick, but it was frozen in fear. Not even a blink!
Grace is sitting on a root of a really huge tree at the Botanic Gardens. It was a beautiful tree and I thougth it was amazing the web of roots it put out to support itself. Plus it makes a very nice bench.
My adorable husband brought me some beautiful flowers this week, just because. They are starting to open a little bit and I just love them! (I didn't take a picture with the vase becuase we don't have one. They're soaking in a little plastic pitcher I found. Don't worry they've tipped over twice already but I'm not about to spend a fortune on a glass vase)

We also went to the Chinses Gardens (see post below), went out to lunch, did a little shopping and played in indoor playground they have here. It's especially hard to stay busy when it's rainy all the time. But I think I see some sun out today and we may make it swimming. Hooray! 7 days of rain straight is not good for me (but at least I don't have snow!)

I got Bit!

By a Turtle! These little guys were aggresive! We went to the Chinese Gardens today (my camera died before I could get a picture of any of the chinese buildings so at a later date..) But we made a stop at the Turtle preserve. They had about 100 aquariums full of different types of turtles, and then this little pond where you could fee the turtles. I thought this would be fun. Grace LOVES turtles, but apparantly not this close. She kept running away from them. Anyway, so here I am trying to feed them a cucumber. They latched on so hard I almost pulled one completely out of the water and the one jumped up at me and got me on my knuckle! Boy it hurt and I had to shake him off. The lady at the counter came to check on us when she heard me scream and kept saying with her little chinese accent, "I give you medicine" which is fine, but she never warned me they would bite! So I washed my hands and she poured this yellow chinese anitbacterial liquid on my finger, and two hours later it's still a bit numb. Hopefully no further harm will come from this.

These ones stole the cucumber away from me. They were crawling all over each other fighting for the goods.
We saw these cute little buddah statues. Grace loved them and tried to give all of them hugs.
And the fishies! Grace loved throwing the food at them!
Oh, a little story about Grace this morning. While I was getting her dressed I gave her two outfit options (they were cute little jeans skirts with very cute matching shirts). She took one look at me and pulled this blue outfit out of the drawer. She was very insistent in wanting to wear it, I think because it has a very cute matching hat. Well, I wanted her to wear something else, so as I was changing her diaper I snuck on one of her skirts. She refused to put on the shirt and walked around topless for about an hour. As we were getting ready to leave I asked her to go get her shirt. (i had put the other clothes away and set out the shirt I wanted her to wear) Well, what does she come back with? This little blue outfit. So moral of the story: Grace cares about what she wears!

Whoops!

Notice the red bump on the left side of her forehead there? Well let me share her funny story. We met Ben for dinner on Saturday night after he had worked all day. We went to a Thai restaurant (YUMMY!) in the mall. After dinner we were walking back to get a taxi and we walked past a children's clothing store. Grace was walking pretty close to the glass. Actually she was doing her hop/skip/run walk when all of a sudden she did a right hand turn and WHAM, hit the glass window. She stumbled backwards shocked, and then started crying. But I couldn't stop laughing! She had seen a little wooden trike in the window of the store and thought she would try to play with it. That must have been some pretty clean glass! Ben and I laughed our way out of the store while I carried a crying Grace. Poor thing, she had the red mark for at least an hour.

Braids

This is my second attempt at braiding Grace's hair. I think it turned out pretty cute. Of course her hair was flying all over within a few hours, but it's fun to try something new. It took about ten minutes to do and she tore apart the sink and out toothbrushes and ate some tooth paste in the process, but we all sacrifice a little for beauty, right?