Our 2-month holiday is but a distant memory - school started for all 4 of us this past week and life is once again full of classes, planning, study, students, friends, music lessons, karate lessons, homework, and early mornings! Caleb has just started grade 1 and has a lovely teacher by the name of Ms. Goldhammer. Lachlan has started grade 5 and has another lovely lady by the name of Ms. Lopez - who also happens to be an Aussie :-) Darrell has a busy schedule of strings classes for grades 6 - 8 and I have an interesting group of ESOL students in grades K-2 who come from all over the world. We love our jobs and the boys love school - Singapore is a great place for us to be!
The months of June and July were happy ones for all of us. The boys and I attended Summer School for 3 weeks before heading off to Australia for a 3-week holiday. That was a wonderful time - I had lots of time to catch up with my family and the boys had lots of fun with their cousins, enjoying - amongst other things - their first trip to the snow and a Wiggles birthday party to help cousin Jasper celebrate his 3rd birthday.
Darrell studied hard and enjoyed his bachelor time while we were gone but seemed quite pleased to have us back in town after 3 weeks apart! On August 1, Caleb reached a milestone with the loss of his first tooth. We happened to be on a short 2-day trip across the border in Malaysia at the time, but the tooth fairy managed to find him and left a small monetary gift in exchange for the lost tooth!!
Unfortunately, August also brought with it the sudden death of our dear Aunty Val Brinsmead at the age of 68. Although we have not seen her much over recent years, she was a warm and special lady of whom we have many fond memories. Much as we love our life here in Singapore, it's hard being away from family at such times and our thoughts are with Uncle Bob, Judy, Sally, Paul, Daniel and their extended families as they deal with the loss of their much-loved wife/mum/grandmother.
That's the past couple of months in a nutshell. Here's us out the front of our house...
Sharon
