Ryan's goings on

 His class did their chapel presentation recently.  Here is Ryan with a classmate singing at the beginning of chapel.  The theme for this school year is "We are all part of something greater than ourselves"  Ryan's teacher is a really cool man from New Zealand with a great accent and he really seems to get Ryan!  He asked Ryan if he wanted a main role of the tv reporter/anchorman of their skit and told him he could think about it and that he could get someone else if Ryan decided he didn't want the part.

Greg and I are amazed at how much Ryan has grown up, gotten braver, come out of his shell in the 2 1/2 years we have been here.  Even I was a little surprised when Ryan told me that he would be doing this part for the skit and how excited he was about it!  He had lines to memorize but wouldn't let me help because he wanted it to be a surprise when I saw it in chapel!

 Below is Ryan in action asking all of his classmates to tell their name and how they are part of something greater than themselves.

 In the green shirt and black jeans is Ryan's friend Tyrell who was his camerman.  Another reason Ryan loves his teacher is that he plays the guitar and is always teaching them new songs.  A family favorite is "3 blind jellyfish"  Weird but makes as much sense as 3 blind mice. 

 The class wrote a poem and my favorite part was the line about the PE coach making them run!

 Class picture after the presentation.  They all did a terrific job! especially the 4 students new to the class since Christmas who got thrown into this very quickly!

 The kids dentist office is in Makati, a 30-45 minute drive from where we live.  Ryan got his braces on in the afternoon after the chapel presentation.  We had been up there the previous Friday for them to put in spacers between his back teeth to make room for the bands that the wires would attach to.  Since it is about an hour from the dentist office to school, I told him that he could either go back to school or skip the rest of the day and we could go out to lunch.  He voted for skipping, we had a great lunch together at Fridays just the two of us.  It was a very sweet time of conversation both in the car traveling and at lunch.  We got all planned out what he wants to do for his birthday in March-cannot believe that he will be 9!!!!!  and just had fun talking about lots of silly things without the interruptions of siblings!  We had fun talking about snow and water skiis which were on the wall in the restaurant!  I told him that I had thought about just taking all 3 out of school early on the Friday for braces but he said that he had really enjoyed it just being the two of us!  So we did that again.  Ashley and Scott went home with 2 friends of theirs who are brothers and had so much fun that we could hardly get them out of their house when we went to pick them up!

After the braces, it was a little later in the afternoon so we needed to start home before the traffic became horrible but we stopped somewhere that he has always wanted to see up close.  The mini Cooper car dealership store!!!!  I have to admit that it is a really cool store!  It looks like this car is driving out of the front of the store with a duck sitting on top of it!

 The stores outside sign and you can just see the corner of the really cool thing on their roof!

 inspecting the car carefully to see if he thinks it is real or cut in half?????

 There is a pane of glass between the halves of the car

 Here is a real mini mini cooper riding toy for extremely small children!

 This car was Ryan's favorite!

 He asked the lady at the desk if the car on the roof and the one "driving through the front window" were real or not.  She told us they were made of fiberglass and then Ryan wanted to know how they got the one on the roof up there.  Apparently the store has stairs up to the roof and the car was not very heavy, being made of fiberglass and having no engine so a bunch of men just carried it up there!

 One of Ryan's favorite parts of the car was the pop up spoilers on the back-he is such a little engineer!

 Here is the shot I got from across the street that shows the car on the roof!  His curiosity is now satisfied and he came home and told Ashley and Scott all about it!

 Here are a few more shots of the new braces too!  So glad they have not given him any problems so far!  He has really enjoyed his bright green rubber bands!

 Just as a side note-from 18 inches and 3 1/2 pounds, now he is 4 feet 6 1/2 inches tall (taller than Scott was at his age) and weighs 55 pounds-he eats like crazy most of the time but has a super fast metabolism!  Love his kind generous heart SO much!