TRAdition

Happy Birthday to my boy Keegan!!

 It is hard to believe he is 14 years old already, it really is true that the time goes by too fast.

We have now celebrated all four of our birthdays living in Singapore, it is hard during our birthdays and holidays as we especially miss our family and friends in the U.S.  Skype and our Vonnage phone have been a great way for us to connect to those we love back home.

One thing that has helped us is our family traditions, things that our family, The Miles Family, has done every year in our celebrating.  These traditions do make our days feel special as we miss those we love to celebrate with.

Our birthday family traditions have proven to be really fun.  As a home schooling family we declare that all birthdays are holidays therefor no school happens on birthdays.  Scott takes a half day off work for all birthdays allowing us to spend the day together celebrating as a family.

The person we are celebrating gets to choose what they want to do on their day.  Keegan chose to go to a park during the day.  AFTER he opened his gifts :)

So we went to West Coast Park for Keegan's birthday activity.

West Coast Park is a really fun adventure park, there is a lack of lawyer influence on the parks here in Singapore so they have some awesome climbing facilities at the parks, really it is fun for all ages.

And as with anywhere you go in Singapore there is amazing and interesting botanical life in West Coast Park]

I am not sure what this tree is called but it is really cool, it gets beautiful pink flowers on it and it has all of these spiky branches with some big nuts that fall to the ground, very interesting.

After the park was a perfect time to have some cake, as we were all hot from being out in the sun.

 If it is your birthday you get to choose your dessert.  We have all kinds of interest in our family, some like pie, some like cobbler some like cake and sometimes the request has even been a store bought cake, like triple chocolate cake from Sam's Club.  Keegan requested Red Velvet Cake with a lot of cream cheese frosting, so that is what we made.

Keegan felt that this was the perfect time to try out his new kitchen torch we got him.

and if it is your birthday we give you a BIG piece of cake.

One other birthday tradition is that you get to choose what you want for dinner.  Keegan choose to have a nacho bar complete with meat, beans, guacamole, cheese, salsa, olives, jalapeno peppers and scoop chips along with an X-Men movie marathon.

We spent time praying and thanking God for the blessing he has given our family in giving us Keegan.  I look forward to seeing what this next year will bring in his life.

The Joys of Shopping

Living in Singapore has been a very interesting experience for us as far as shopping goes.  We are finding that one can find almost anything they want or something similar to what they are looking for if they know where to look and if they are willing to pay.  For example a jar of pickles might cost $7.00 for a small jar, how bad do you want pickles? 

There really are some American brands over here that are surprising to find, Tide laundry detergent, Earthbound Organics, Nestle is big over here but the ingredients list is different than that of the U.S. brand, no corn syrup, and fewer preservatives are present across the board, even Coke and Pepsi do not have corn syrup in them however the Hinze ketchup does.

Ok so today I wanted to find a spice called "Bengali Five Spice" or "panch phoron" so that we could make this Red Lentil Dal recipe for next weeks dinner.  It calls for this particular spice.

  Since this is an Indian recipe I thought no problem I will just go to the wet market in Little India and get it.

 Tekka Market is a very large and old wet market in Singapore and is located in Little India, there is a lot of activity and a lot of noise and you truly feel as though you are in another country, like India.  I have taken all of guests there and they will tell you it is an overwhelming experience.

I found this store selling traditional Indian ware as I was walking, you can get a whole out fit for $25.00 and they are gorgeous so I diverted my spice search to talk to the shop owner and try on a few things.  She did not have anything I liked but I was able to ask her about the spice.  She had no idea what I was talking about but said that if it is a spice then I should go to Selvi because he has "everything Indian" in there.

 And so I found the store.

Upon walking in I was met with a blank stare from the store owner, this is common as I was in an area where the locals shop in fact a lot of restaurants come here for supplies, we frequently get stared at as we are a bit out of place.  I asked him about the spice mix, showed him the proper name on my I phone and he had no idea what I was talking about.

At this point sweat is running down my face and really..... I could have just given up but the dress shop lady told me that "everything Indian" was in this store and I was standing right there  so I again said "spice" to him.

 Ah ha!  A light bulb went on and he understood what I was asking so he pointed to a corner of the store and..... stared.

I went to the corner, here it is

to find a bunch of boxes stacked up and yes, they had bags of spices in them

and so the search began, the problem I had was that these bags did not have any names on them! I am not really sure what I am looking for, only that it has five kinds of spices in it so I searched for a bag of mixed spices and came up with this

it looks like there is about five different kinds of things in there so this must be it right?? I sure hope so as it is a big bag.

   I did see a man in the store who was from India but spoke some English so I asked him what this is used for, he said to make curry so I figure I have the right thing, we will see when I try to make our Dal. 

I also was able to find our red lentils a big bag for $2.00 and I found some coriander powder that I had been looking for and have not been able to find for a few months now. 

I know it is coriander because is says so on the bag.

  My bill was just over $3.00 so yes I will go to this shop again but I will make sure to leave plenty of time in my schedule to search for what I need and I may need to look up some pictures on line before going so I know what I am looking for.

Milford Sound~ New Zealand Day 8

Milford Sound is a fjord at the southern point of the South Island in NZ.  Scott has family that came over on a boat from Norway where fjords are present, he has always wanted to see fjords and Milford Sound did not disappoint.

We took an overnight cruise into the sound and stayed in a little 4 bunk cabin.

 It actually should be called Milford Fjords as these mountains were carved out from a glacier and then the valley filled from the sea.  A sound has mountains carved out by a river and then the valley fills with water from the sea.  Milford was carved by glaciers.

The peaks of the mountains surrounding can be as high as 3,900 ft.  There are two full time waterfalls with many little ones depending on how much rain there has been.

We were told that over 1,000 people a day visit the harbor to view the sound during the "busy" season and that there can be up to one million visitors to the sound a year. 

Again we are here at the end of the "off season" so there were only 25 people on our cruise, during the busy time the boat holds 140 passengers, the night before we left they only had 6 people on board, just the way we like it, quiet, not crowded and the crew had time to talk to you about the area.  One of our waiters has been to over 55 different countries.

Dinner was great!  We have really enjoyed the food in New Zealand, lots of vegetables and meat and potatoes, and the apples, so crisp and juicy.

Breakfast was bright and early, 7:00 am.  in order for there to be time to have some water activity.  You could choose to take the speed boat out with 15 other people and the naturalist on the boat.

OR you could choose to take out individual kayaks which is what we chose.

We were so thrilled to see some rock hopper penguins on the shore!  They were so fun to watch in their natural environment.

It was sad to have the call to come back to the ship as we really could have spent all day out there,

 we saw a lot of starfish, the water is so clear you can see a very long way down.  We did have the underwater camera with us but if we would have put it under water we would have gone into the drink, and it was COLD so just imagine some starfish clusters.

This is really our last day to do things as tomorrow we have an 8 hour drive back into Christchurch so we can catch our flight back to Singapore.  There are two more activities today but...... those will have to be in a separate blog.

Fangorn Frorest~ New Zealand Day 7

We headed down to Milford Sound today one of the most scenic places in NZ. 

As we passes this field of sheep I just had to have one more picture of sheep.

There are more sheep than people in NZ, I was hoping to find some great raw wool to spin up however, I have stopped in a few shops and discovered that the wool is largely exported and commercialized, the yarn from New Zealand is cheaper in Singapore and the U.S. than it is in New Zealand.

The two hour drive from Te Anu to Milford Sound is again lovely, the mountains are everywhere here we talked about how it would not matter where you put a house really as there are views 360 degrees 365 days of the year.  Here are a few of our favorites from today, we did take over 240 but will just include the highlights.

Also on the way to Milford Sound is...... Fangorn Forest, of course we stopped and tramped about, that is what the Kiwis call hiking, tramping about.  The forest is stunning, there is moss on the trees as the area is normally very very wet.

We have been blessed with amazing weather while we have been here, just a slight mist one day.

I think this tree was ready to walk and talk!  See the face and the arms

In the parking lot we met this bird, it is a Kia bird

he followed us in the parking lot for a while and a little ways down the trail before stopping, and heading back to the lot to greet the next visitors.