Asleep

Grace and I went swimming with our friend Tania this morning and then out to lunch for some yummy Thai food! (I seriously almost burnt my mouth off it was so hot, but so good!) Well, we must have worn Grace right out becaue she almost fell asleep in the taxi on the way home and then I laid her down in her bed and my Visiting Teacher came. Well I thought I had heard her up so I checked on her 15 minuted later and this is what I found.

Asleep behind the rocking chair.

Grace has been struggling with the big girl bed lately. At first she loved it and always wanted to sleep in it. Then she started getting up and playing instead of sleeping, so we would put her back in her crib if she did this. So she was 50% bed, 50% crib. Well, the past few times she's actually slept in the bed she has woken up crying and when we go in there she won't let us leave. She just wants us to lay there with her. Well, that's not a habit we want to make so I've been trying not to do that. So last night I was putting her to bed and gave her the choice big bed or crib, and she chose the crib! I was a little shocked because she always chooses the big bed even if she doesn't always end up sleeping there. So I don't know if she's become scared of the big bed or what but she slept safe and soundly in the crib. I was hoping to have her moved over to the big bed exclusively by the time we got home. Any suggestions?

Easter

I didn't take a ton of pictures this Easter but I thougth I'd share a few. Our Easter Bunny came Friday night so we woke up first thing Saturday morning to find our baskets. The Easter Bunny was really nice to Grace and made and Egg Hunt for her. She was pretty excited about the first egg and all the Candy it contained. (All our Easter Candy was courtesy of my Dad. Thanks Dad!) So after a little persuasion, and a piece of candy, we got Grace to put the egg in the basket and continue looking. That's how it went for all 7 eggs she found. I taped in on the camcorder, but since she took so long I decided not to post it. Her reactions to each egg was cute. The Easter Bunny hid Ben's and mine baskets. It was surprisingly difficult to find our baskets in such a small apartment. We both needed a clue, but I found mine first!

Here we are enjoying some chocolate M&M's for breakfast. Don't we look lovely first thing in the morning? (this is Grace's Surprise face)
Saturday night I decided to attempt dying some eggs. I wasn't sure how they would turn out since the eggs here are brown. But I bought a kit anyway and here they are. The colors are actually quite vibrant, except for the orange color-it didn't really take. So I was happy with how they turn out, they're just really hard to peel.
I made a nice Roast for dinner today. Ben's family back home was telling us about their nice Easter dinner they were going to have and I just couldn't sit here on Easter and eat stir-fry or something. So I bought a Roast (not a cheap thing here) and rolls (I would usually homemake these but I don't have yeast and there's no way I'm kneading the bread by hand) and even tried to buy Jello to make a Jello salad, but they only had cherry and orange. Yuck. So I gave up on the Jello and made a fruit salad. All in all it turned out to be a pretty lovely Easter dinner.

On this note I just would like to say how grateful I am for Easter and the meaning of it. What a glorious thing it is to know that yes, our Savior died for us, but he also rose again! He lives and wants us to be with him forever. I'm so grateful for this life and that I can try with all my might to live up to his blessing and have my family for eternity. What wonderful knowledge I am blessed with. Today in our RS lesson we talked about Elder Eyering's talk, "O Remember, Remeber". It was a good call to me that I need to think/write down/talk about all the ways the Lord blesses me everyday. Because he does in small ways show his love for me and blesses me incredibly everyday. Ben and I are going to try to share the ways we've felt the Lord in our lives that day each night as we go to bed. I think this will help us to Remember the Lord better in all things and acknowledge him and better thank him for these blessings. Anyway, today I truly do feel blessed to have the gospel and my beautiful little family, and a very supportive family back home.

What would you like to drink?

"Oh, Anything".... is this a common response? Well apparantly it is here in Singapore and some brilliant soft drink company decided to make it an actual drink. You can buy an Anything or a Whatever. The Whatever is more of a Cola drink, and the Anything is fruity, but you never know what fruity flavor you're going to get. The first time Ben got one he loved the flavor and hasn't gotten the same one in the last 3 or 4 tries. So be careful the next time you say "Whatever" because that's just what you may get.

Cars

There are cars of all shapes and sizes here, well not all sizes. I've yet to see a large truck or a Semi. Almost all cars here are new and really nice and it is REALLY expensive to own one. A bunch of our friends have "minivans". This here is a Honda Odyssey. I know it looks more like a station wagon wannabe, but that's about as good as it gets for a large family around here.

Ben is constantly pointing out all the nice cars. There is one street by the Outback Steakhouse that consistently has 4-5 Ferrari parked there.
There are also Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborgini, Mercedes and a few other high end car dealerships close to our flat. Ben's favorite thing to spot on his way to work is this orange Lamborgini just down the street from us. Since it's so safe out side here, the owner just parks it right on the side of the street!

I've never seen so many nice cars in one city, especially not Utah. But all this car talk sure makes me miss my car! I can't wait to walk out to the garage and drive wherever I want to go, and have all my stuff already in it, and be able to load up Grace and my bags and not need to rely on strangers to help me on and off the bus.

Our Indonesian Weekend

Since it was Ben's birthday last week and our Anniversary we decided we needed a weekend away to celebrate! We went to a little resort island that is part of Indonesia called Bintan Island. So we headed off Friday afternoon and took the Ferry to Bintan, about 55 minutes away. It was a LONG 55 minutes! About halfway through the trip I saw Ben get up and run down the aisle to the back, apparantly he was feeling queasy and was about to lose it. It's not as quite of a bumpy ride in the back. I would have joined him if I hadn't been holding a sleeping Grace. I just kept praying over and over that I would make it and I did. Once we got there a bus from the hotel picked us up at took us to the Bintan Lagoon Resort. It was a beautiful place. They greet every new arrival with a song and dance. Literally...here they are, the drummers are hiding against the wall. They also gave us a refreshing drink while we checked in.

After we made it to our room and fully recovered from the ferry ride we explored the resort. Here is a view from the beach. It really was a beautiful place. It had two golf courses and 11 restaurant/bars on the property. We even saw monkeys playing golf! (there really were a bunch of monkeys hanging out on the green as we drove by one time)
We ate at two of the yummy restaurants. They were so good! Saturday we were walking to the restuarant when a huge storm came in. We ran, but here we are soaked.
Saturday we went on a Mangrove Tour. Here is Ben in his manly life jacket ready to board the little boat.
We took a boat ride down the river. This is a fishing hut that the local fisherman still use. They only use it as shelter during the day because it doesn't have electricity. We even passed a tiny (only 3 families live there) fishing village and saw one of the men rowing a boat down the river with his little son to check on some traps. Such simple lives these people lead! I was amazed.
We saw a few snakes and lizard above our heads in the trees. Here's a Mangrove snake. They sleep during the day and swim and hunt at night.
Here is my cute husband with a good example of some Mangrove trees beside him. They grow in the water and protect the land from erosion by the river. It was pretty interesting to learn about the river and the trees and how they work together. Another cool thing we saw was an apple tree with real poisonous apples on it. Snow White wasn't making things up. These apples can cause blindness and even death if eaten. I feel bad for the poor soul who figured that out.
Grace enjoyed the boatride for the most part. She kept looking for fishies, but the river was to dark to see any. She stole this hat from the tour director. She thought she was pretty funny.
Peekaboo!
Wouldn't it be great to have a real body like this? Ben and I couldn't help ourselves and just had to take this picture.
Then of course Grace had to join in the fun.
I'm just relaxing a bit here.
We played at the beach on Saturday morning, but Grace was scared of the water this trip, so the beach play didn't last long. We did go exploring on Sunday before the ferry left though. It was so beautiful, they had these white sandy beaches and then this rock outcropping. We hiked to the end of it.
I love this picture of Ben.
What a cheeser!
Our favorite part of the resort, besides the yummy food was the kids pool! It was perfect for Grace, she could walk around at least 1/4 of it without any floaties. They also had two fun little water slides. Grace loved these and we did them again and again. She got brave enough that she didn't want any help going down at the end, but we did have to catch her.
I mostly love to sit in the sun and watch Ben and Grace play. Grace loves to swim with her Daddy and is fearless with him.
And one of the most excited parts of our swimming trip.....
On Sunday we were about ready to leave the pool so I was sunbathing on the edge of the pool while Grace and Ben played for a few more minutes. I was trying to sunburn the white lines on my back left from my swimsuit the day before. So there I am minding my own business when I look in the water and see a baby alligator swimming toward me! It climbed out of the water about two feet away from my feet and walked into the vegetation next to the pool. Well, by that time I realized it wasn't really an alligator, but a huge lizard. Another lady that saw it said it was a Goanna Lizard. It was big, about 2&1/2 feet long. I called for Ben and Grace to come over. This is what it looked like...
It didn't even care that we were around so it walked through the bushes onto the sidewalk and up the pathway. Ben and Grace followed it for a little while and I just sat in shock at this huge reptile that swam in the pool right next to me. I'm glad I didn't have my toes in the water, they might have got eaten!
So we had a wonderful weekend. We survived the ferry ride home and I am happy to say that I have three countries stamped in my passport now! Next up... Malaysia.

5 Years of Bliss

I can't believe it's been 5 years since we got married! Time sure goes fast and I am amazed at what we have done in five years. We have moved 7 times, bought 2 houses, attended 3 different colleges, graduated, got a great job, had a baby and learned to love each other more through it all! I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful husband and it has been an amazing five years. We have had happy times and sad times. I'm grateful that I've had Ben there to support me through it all, and I am grateful to know he will always be there. From Here to Eternity, Babe!

I love you!

Ben's Birthday

Since Ben's birthday was in the middle of the week we couldn't do an awesome trip for him like we did for me. So he decided he wanted to go on the Singapore Flyer, a brand new HUGE Ferris Wheel that opened 2 weeks ago. It is currently the tallest in the world. Here is a picture of it from far away. (don't mind me, I know I look awful...wind and my hair don't go well together)

So after a long day of work, Ben got off a smidge early and we went for our ride. It was raining the whole time which was a bummer, but Ben thought it made it more romantic. Here's the view from the top going down.
This is our family at the top.
This is halfway down. It was a pretty amazing view. We could see our apartment from the top and on a clear day we hear you can even see into Malaysia.
How romantic can you get when you've got this to deal with.... This is Grace mad about something. She was having a blast which meant a lot of running around and screaming. It just about ruined everyone's ears in the ride so this is probably her mad about us telling her to be quiet.
After the ride we went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. It was a nice dinner and we had a fun time relaxing and eating yummy food after a long day. When we got home we had birthday cake given to us by our apartment building. They even provided the candle. I'm glad they did because I forgot about making a cake, and we had to use the gas stove to light the candle.
So overall I think he had a great birthday. Happy 27th Ben!