The ION on Orchard

We put our Christmas tree up this morning so that it would be ready for the first Sunday of Advent tomorrow, we had fun as a family, some sad emotions came but we know that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ and we can celebrate that any where in the world, we are missing our family and friends but have agreed to keep it positive and make the most of every day.

Orchard Road is THEE shopping strip in Singapore, it is amazing how many malls and stores and stories there are on Orchard Road.

 We had to go to the ION mall on Orchard today in order to get the docking stations for the boys phones, we have coupons for free docking stations that we want to redeem and we found out last week when we went to redeem them that you have to go to one of two locations only to get the free docking station.  So off we went after putting up the tree.

We talked about taking the car vs. the subway, it is the weekend so parking may be an issue but the subway would for sure take awhile so we opted for the car. 

You know it is really better to know a city well before driving but how do you get to know the city if you are not driving?  We made a few wrong turns, went around the block more than a few times but finally found the "car park" what we would call the parking structure.

According to the sign there were 3 spots open on level 7 and 3 on level 8.  Well the sign was not correct so we drove and we drove and we drove and finally we did what you do in Singapore when there really is not a marked spot and we pulled against the wall in a line with other cars and just parked it right there.

As you can imagine we entered the mall a bit flustered but were off to get the docking stations.  OK, we found the store, which is an accomplishment in a mall with 7 yes, 7 levels.  Our store was on the second basement level, two stories below ground. 

We handed the coupon to the guy only to be told that we needed the receipt and no they can not look up our purchase in the computer.  I had a few choice words..... and was not at all happy but... what could we do.

We decided to go outside and just take a breath and accomplish some other shopping that we had on our to do list.  We were pleased to find some nice Christmas decorations and decided to take some photos and just hang out for a bit.

I have been trying to take a flower picture every day and I have no idea what this is but it sure did cheer me up to see it.  Isn't it pretty.

It was very helpful to all of us to just simply regroup.  One can really allow these things to ruin the whole day or one can choose to move on and enjoy the moment anyway and although it took us a little time, we enjoyed the moment anyway. 

We did find some of the other things on our list, learned a bit more of the city and as we were driving home remembered that we had no food for dinner, so we stopped at this cute Italian place we had seen a few nights ago.  We were greeted by Christian music playing and a happy staff and great food which made for happy boys.

Every day we learn more about Singapore and ourselves in the process.  Every day we are thankful that God is the one in control of our lives and every day we are grateful for this wonderful technology that is allowing us to keep in contact with our family and friends.