1st Grade Philippine Fiesta

 Our next door neighbor, Lisa, and a friend of hers made these Philippine flag cookies for all of the 1st graders to take home after the fiesta.  Ryan was all excited about his but told me he had eaten it on the bus-I was disappointed not to even get a little taste!

 Volunteers getting ready for the fiesta

 The children came in and sat down-they sang a song for us about planting and picking rice in Filipino and sang the national anthem-Ryan had told me about this and how they had learned in class to put their hand over their heart, stand up straight, look at the flag, and NO fidgeting was allowed!

 These guys are Brent school janitors from around Baguio who did a native Ifuagao dance for us while playing drum pans-it was really neat to watch

 The children used grass to make a bracelet

 This is a model of a nepa hut behind Ryan-made from nepa grass.  Ryan is playing sipa-bouncing a ball off his knee into the tub

 All the first graders were divided into groups to rotate around the 4 game stations.  They were jeepney, Rizal (a Philippine national hero), mango, and eagle-the Philippine national bird also.

 This is a game called tinikling-you are supposed to jump between the bamboo poles in rythym but with many 1st graders all jumping at once, everyone just had a good time jumping back and forth over poles.

 There was quite a delicious spread of foods for the children and parents to taste.

Ryan enjoying his part of the spread!

Flood Part 2

On Wednesday night late, the kids were all asleep and our helper had gone home that night-it started to rain hard again.  I kept getting up and going to check on the bathrooms to make sure there was no flooding.  Everything was fine for a while, but then when I was ready to go to bed about 10:30 I realized that in the hour since I had last checked on things, water had risen quickly.  So I moved both boys to Grammy's bed in the office, started bailing water, and calling the maintenance guy from Greg's office.  He came at 11 to check on things.  I spent about an hour that night bailing water and using a dust pan with a long handle to "sweep" water into the bathrooms-onto the tile floor and off of the wood floor.

The boys did fine for a while but then when they both woke up, it was hard to get them quiet and back to sleep.  I ended up sleeping with Ryan in the bed, Scott one one den sofa and me on another.  I was debating about going to BSF the next morning and decided that with our helper here to let in the workmen to clean up there was no reason for us not to go.  I laughed as I sang the hymn during our opening time "Though troubles assail us . . .the Lord will provide." 

I sent brownies to work with Greg this morning for Jimmy, the maintenance guy and the janitorial staff who helped us clean up water twice last week!  Thursday, the owner of the house sent his contractor to look into it but unfortunately they didn't find anything that they could say was causing the flooding problems.  So we're not sure this is over yet-however we have had 2 full days of sunshine now-Sunday and Monday-what a treat!

Random things I have been meaning to post about

-Not long after we got here, we all colored in the states on a US map that each of us had traveled to.  It was really fun with the boys and they were curious about our travels to other states.  Now I just need to print maps of this part of the world for them to color in countries that we get to travel to while we live here.

-I went to pick Ashley up at school one day and was talking to someone in the hall.  The classroom walls are just about 6 feet high and the ceilings are really tall.  Ashley's teacher told me that Yanna had said "I hear an American voice-it's Ashley's mommy!" 

-Ryan told me that his class had been outside to check on their rain gauge one day and the water had "vibrated."  I was trying to figure out what he meant and he said "you know, Mommy, when the sun makes the water go away"  I laughed and said "do you mean evaporated?"  He said Yes that's it!

-I obviously have not entirely gotten used to how things are done here yet-Ashley's teacher who is leaving the preschool texted us that she would be treating the children to a Jollibee lunch today to celebrate her birthday.  I wondered why no details were included like: which Jollibee and what time?  Of course, I should have realized that the teacher was having Jollibee deliver lunch to the school for the children at their regular lunchtime-silly me!

-TV here is interesting-we have several channels in English (more which are not) and some interesting things to choose from-a sports channel named Balls, an entire channel devoted to all talk shows-Letterman, Ellen, Oprah, and Rachael Ray to name a few, Cartoon Nework, National Geographic, Animal Planet, Disney channel, Japanese anime channel, the Asian Food Channel, and even home shopping channels.  Some of the American shows we get here are NCIS, Law and Order of several varieties, Criminal Minds, Mythbusters, Pawn Stars, How I met your Mother, Bones, CSI, and others.  Our neighborhood even has it's own channel for posting information.  Probably the most odd thing about watching anything on tv here is that rarely do shows begin or end on the hour.  There are fewer commercials so the shows don't take as long so you never know when something new will be coming on. 

My Children's Teachers

I don't know how I manage it-I really try to be nice to their teachers (having done their job before).

Scott has not had the same teacher for a complete school year since K-3-they change jobs, have a family emergency, or have a baby.  This is his current teacher's last year at Brent School.  She and her husband are planning a move to another international school, hopefully not until after this school year.

Ryan had 4 different teachers last year-due to one having a baby, moving, issues with a substitute and finally hiring an additional teacher due to numbers increasing.  He did have the same teacher all year through K-3 and K-4.

Now it is Ashley's turn,  Ms. Rheena is going to leave her preschool at the break they have in October.  We will miss her greatly.  However her replacement is a teacher returning to the school after having a baby.  She seems very nice and they have been teaching the class together for the last couple of weeks.  Her name is Teacher Boom-not meaning to make fun, I'm sure our names sound funny to them but I can't help but think it is a little funny.  The story got funnier when I met her little boy-he is 18 mos. old and came with her to the Sumo Sam's field trip.  Ashley and I met him and we were told that his name is Uno but we could call him One like the number.  Will her next baby be named two??????

Thank goodness for pretty flexible kids who have benefitted from all the many different teachers they have had.  I really don't try to run them off!

Sushi Update

I have been meaning to post that sometime over the weekend, I got Ashley's sushi leftovers out of the fridge and made all 3 children taste just 1 bite.  NO ONE liked it.  The boys were really grossed out when I told them the orange sprinkle looking things on the outside were fish eggs.  We may live here 3 years and still bring home kids whose favorite food is a peanut butter sandwich!

Recent funny things

 I was buying jump ropes recently and knew that Ashley would be upset if she didn't have one too-the tag of this surprised me and made me laugh because I knew that I would never see that in the US. . .

I don't know why the picture is not rotated correctly but you can still read that the price of this jump rope was 0

 Ashley loves to play with play-doh and this was one of her lovely creations one day-but she has told me literally millions of things since then so I have forgotten what she said it was!

 This was a plate of birthday party food that was Ashley's at school and it was handed to me to bring home just like this!  This was her little friend Yanna's birthday and had a Hello Kitty theme-right up Ashley's alley.  I laughed as I tried to carry it to the car and get it home without making a mess.  At least it was better than the loose cupcake not even on a plate Ashley was given last party, dropped on the floor, was replaced by the teacher and I still managed to get icing on my clothes and some part of the car on the way home.

 Ashley eating her share of cookie sticks and pudding dip from the treat bag of the party-I wasn't watching carefully enough and didn't realize that when she finished her cookie sticks, she just started eating the icing straight from the cup with her tongue!

 Another way we spend many mornings before school!  She loves to color-totally different from her brothers at this age.

 You have to look carefully to see them, but there are two cats curled up in our lounge chair-if you know Greg you can only imagine his comments about these cats who sneak into our yard and sleep on our lounges but we see at least one of them nearly every morning and no we don't feed them.

 This is our homemade rain gauge that Ryan and I put together and boy does it get a workout-it is pouring outside now as I type.

 The boys made a tent on Scott's bed on Saturday morning-his umbrella was opened and holding the sheet up.  They told me they were going on a safari-Ryan was dressed perfectly for it in Batman pajamas.

Here is something else that Ashley and I spend a lot of our mornings doing-blowing bubbles.  She likes to catch and stomp on them as much as she enjoys blowing them.  I also took pictures this particular morning to show the double braids done for Ashley by Ms. Dali, our helper.

A fun day with no school for the Boys & the day's disaster

Yesterday was Parent Teacher Conference Day at Brent.  We all went to school and I met with both boys teachers and it was good.  Then I had scheduled a tour of the Gardenia Bread Factory-they produce the bread that we buy and eat here and I had seen a sign that there was a factory on the same exit as the boys' school. 

Walking into the building alone smelled delicious!  First we watched a movie about their process of making bread.  We learned all kinds of interesting things-Greg would insert here what a nerd I was being-

-they can make 600 loaves per HOUR

-they are the leading brand of bread in the country

-the are based in Singapore

-flour is delivered to the factory in tanker trucks

-the bread pans have metal lids that are removed with magnets

-suction removes the bread itself from the pans

-automatically bagged so that no hands EVER touch the bread

-each loaf goes through a metal checker as a safety precaution before it leaves the factory

-from the factory we visited 150 trucks deliver bread daily

Sadly we weren't allowed to take pictures as we walked through this really neat glassed in catwalk where we overlooked the factory itself.  It was really neat.  I think my favorite part was watching the bags being blown open by a machine and the bread being slid into the bags.

We were able to purchase some of their specialty bread at the factory store and take a few pictures before we left.

 Ashley thought the giant piece of bread was cool-this was before we even went in to see the movie.

 This is a fake assembly line where they pose people to take their picture after the tour-of course they didn't really let us go down where the machines are running and they don't let people touch the bread!

 The kids posing with our tour guide-they allow school groups to come but no one else was there today so we got our own private tour.

 Here are the kids with a giant loaf of bread

 The factory gate

 This is a piece of the bread we bought.  It is a double delight loaf of ube (a purple yam grown in the Philippines) and cheesy twirl.  This slice is from the middle of the loaf where a single slice has both flavors.  The first slice was all purple and the last is all cheesy twirl.  They make many things out of this ube here-cakes, breads, jellys etc.  The bread really just tasted like bread to me-we'll have to conduct a blind taste test and see if we can tell the difference between purple bread and white.  They also make chocolate chip bread, which we bought a loaf of, black forest with chocolate and cherries, raisin bread, whole wheat, rolls, muffins, and little cakes-kind of like twinkies with no cream inside.

We got home about 10:30 and when I asked Ashley said that she wanted to go on to school.  So I took her to school, the boys and I had fun playing outside and went for a swim just the 3 of us and had a leftover pizza and pretzel picnic by the pool.  We left at 2:00 to pick Ashley up. 

The boys were excited because they had never been to her school before so they enjoyed their visit to The Little Apprentice Preschool.  Afterwards we went to Frutti Froyo to get frozen yogurt.  Then we went home and the day went rapidly downhill from there.

When we came in the house I smelled a strange smell and wondered if our house helper had cooked something funny???  One of the boys went to their room and came back to tell me there was water in the bathroom floor.  Sadly there was water in my bathroom floor too.  We have floor drains in all the bathrooms and the kitchen that Greg and I assumed were there to aid in cleaning.  Well apparently when 2 inches of rain falls in about 2 hours, water can come back up through those drains-the water continued to rise and overflowed the bathrooms (which are all slightly sunken) and went into the boys bedrooms, the master bedroom, the lobby off the bedrooms and the closet in that lobby.  It was a horrible mess!  Thank goodness for the maintenance and janitorial guys from Greg's office-they came, about 6 of them, and worked for hours getting rid of the water and cleaning and putting heavy things back.  My room smelled strongly of Clorox when I went to bed last night but that was certainly better than its earlier smell.  Don't you wish you lived somewhere where there was a rainy season:?  That will teach me to tell anyone that nothing bad had happened to the house while Greg was gone on his business trip!

GG's birthday

I meant to post this yesterday but didn't get around to it-see the next post to find out why!   10-10 was my mother's birthday.  About this time 2 years ago, we found out that she had lung cancer.  She came to stay with us in Greenville for chemo and radiation and I would not trade that time with her for myself and my children for anything in the world!

She decided that her grandmother name would be GG (short for Grandmommy Gayle) and she was a terrific grandmother!  I loved watching her with my children because she enjoyed them so much-see pictures below!

Some things that have particularly made me miss/think of her since we have been in Manila are that she would love all the tropical climate things that can grow in my yard here that wouldn't survive even the cold of Atlanta's winters-like hibiscus and plumbago.  She loved to grow things and was teased about reviving any nearly dead plant or that because she cared for them so lovingly, talked to them, and counted them each summer as she picked them-she could grow more tomatoes than the rest of her neighbors. 

She fried the best okra-I have been trying for years and mine doesn't taste quite as good as hers.  I was excited to find that I can buy okra here and thought of my mom (and pictured her in the kitchen of the house where I spent my entire childhood frying okra for me and my dad to fight over who would get to eat the last biteful) as I spent a long time frying okra this past Sunday afternoon.  It turned out the best I have ever made-but still not quite as good as my Mom's.

One of the biggest ways my mother's life spoke to me is in the story I heard her tell often of a day that I came home from school in 4 year old Kindergarten-all the way across the street at our church.  She was planning to go back to work the following year when I went to school all day but changed her mind when she saw how excited I was to show her a workbook that I was bringing home.  I don't share this to knock working moms today AT ALL but to say how much I appreciate that my mother valued spending time with me.  She was a professional at being a grade mother/room mom and rarely missed any activity at school.  She supported me in all that I did-except once. 

I wanted to enter a drawing at school to win a mouse that had been in a school play.   I had to have her sign a permission slip saying that I could be entered.  After pestering, begging, and pleading, she signed and I got my name entered into the drawing.  Later though she admitted to praying that I would NOT win. 

Well here are some pictures to make you smile of my mom enjoying our three little ones-Happy Birthday Mom-I miss you! 

Just a warning-I lied about the "some" pictures part and got seriously carried away!

 Holding Scott for the first time!

 Holding Ryan for the first time-only parents were allowed to hold in the NICU

 Holding Ashley for the first time

 "See Scott these are hydrangeas!, day lilies, Mommy's rosebush, and my special tomatoes"

 Showing Scott off to cousins Betty Jean and Becki-I'm sure she was saying "isn't my grandson adorable?"

 Scott's first Christmas-the red rocker he is sitting in was a first Christmas present that my dad got as a baby.

 Playing on the bulldozer at the church construction site

 Scott's first birthday party at GG's house

 With Ryan at a few months old

 Riding the carriages at the Forum at Christmas-Ryan did decide he liked it in just a minute

 My mother gave the boys this Little People Nativity set and we will bring it out for Christmas in Manila!  This was something that she really wanted to get for them and I am so glad she did.

 Mom usually came up to our house sometime soon after our family Christmas at home to see what the boys had gotten for Christmas.  Here is Ryan looking at the Hess truck GG got the boys that year-she continued that gift with them that she and Daddy had given me for years growing up-the boys now have a fleet of them to play with.

 At the park

 My mother always wanted a Radio Flyer wagon to pull her grandchildren around in-she had the wagon long before the children arrived but they put many miles on this in her yard

 Next to the Chattahoochee River at Jones Bridge Park-a fun part of her and Daddy's growing up in Norcross as well as where we had family Thanksgivings for years, and where Greg and I got engaged.

 She liked getting the boys to help her set up her nativity scene at Christmas

 GG and Ryan at the beach-She LOVED the beach!  This was the one time she ever got to go with the kids and she had a ball picking up seashells and playing in the sand with them.

 Reading with Scott in the beach house

 The traditional picture upstairs on the porch before you leave the house

 All 3 at GG's house-summer 2008

 Playing in the firetruck with Ryan-she would do anything with a grandchild!

 sliding at the park!

 swinging Ashley

 These are the fountains in Duluth and she loved to watch the boys run around in them and get soaking wet

 She bought Ashley these beautiful Christmas pjs for her 1st Christmas and the hat too-not necessarily to be worn together-but Mom never let me out of the house without something on my head so I thought it was hilarious that she got Ashley a hat.

 Playing trains-as I said earlier-anything with a grandchild.

 with Ryan

 with Ashley-winter 2010

 Spring 2010-on the way to Ryan's K-4 graduation-this was a HUGE effort for her but she was determined not to miss it!

 These 2 pictures (above and below) are at her dear friend Theta's house-the children had to come briefly to see her friends and then she spent the night with several of her Navy wife friends that she had kept up with for years-they call themselves the "She Crab Sisters" and Mom thoroughly enjoyed getting to see all of them again.  I'm impressed if any of you are still reading/looking to honor my mom on her birthday-The kids and I also went to Fruitti Froyo this afternoon to have frozen yogurt to celebrate GG on her birthday!