Paradise

Our Monday morning on Siquijor greeted us with rain. There was an impending typhoon that was playing with the weather and I was worried it might not clear up. Thankfully just like the day before the sun fought it's way through the clouds and we were able to spend the morning lounging around the pool. We ate our lunch poolside and prepared for our afternoon at the waterfalls. We splashed around in the shallow pools with the kids, did some jumps and took some pictures. For the entire time that we spent playing in and around the falls we were the only ones there. It wasn't until we were leaving when the craziest thing happened. We ran into some people from the States. One of them is originally from Siquijor Island and was showing off how amazing the island was to his buddies. After a little bit of small chat with my dad he learned that we were Canadian and he asks if our last name is Beattie! He recognized our situation from this blog! I got to meet an American fan in the Philippines. How cool is that!? I guess one day he was googling Siquijor, his home island, and was checking out the most recent google entries and my blog popped up and so he checked it out. He was a really nice guy, we met his American friends who also seemed really nice. It always amazes me how small the world can be at times!!

We didn't do the whole island tour like we did the last time we were in Siquijor but we did stop off and that oldest tree on the island and of course the coral church. It was a nice drive but no matter how pretty I can make the church look, the waterfalls were still the highlight.

Rest and Relaxation

Since there were these festivals in Dumaguete and on Siquijor we arrived at Coco Grove way past bed time and we all checked in and went straight to bed. It was such a long day, especially for Ryan having been up for almost 30 hours. The kids were so bushed they even slept in an extra hour and a half which NEVER happens, especially on vacation when the beach is calling their names. So we peeled ourselves out of bed and met my dad for breakfast. One thing that's great about Coco Grove is their free breakfast. You have a great selection. I opted for the fruit platter which is a huge plate with mango's, pineapple, banana, watermelon and papaya (which they didn't have this weekend). YUM. The kids had their pancakes and the men had their bacon, eggs, mango and juice. The only bummer was the rain. Thankfully by the time breakfast was finished the rain had lighted and it looked like the clouds were beginning to thin so we took the opportunity to explore the beach and see what treasures we could find. We started at the one of the beach as far as you can go and the kids climbed up some lava type rock with their dad and took a good look around. There were a couple of small boats laying in a cove with some kids splashing around with their mom. It was so peaceful and it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.

Our exploration got cut short because the rain started to come down pretty heavy. We just ran under the tree's while the kids played a Coco Grove version of bowling and we tried to stay dry. After a little while Ryan and Madison went in to make up for some of the lost sleep from our day of travel and the kids and I retreated to our cottage balcony for cover with the iPad. Thankfully the rain didn't last too long and before too long the sun was warming everything up and we got ourselves a couple of lounge chairs by the pool. We spent the rest of the day at the pool roasting in the sun. We also played on the beach and went for a swim in the ocean. It ended up being an amazing day and I really needed a day of just laying around reading a good book plus the lack of sun until 10am saved us all from getting too burned although I have to admit by the end of the day I could feel the burn starting.

Sky Rockets In Flight. Afternoon Delight.

Now get your minds out of the gutter! I'm talking about grub ... BUT I have to admit when Ryan and I saw this poster we shared a giggle and a knowing glance. Such a classic song!!!

Kabulakan Festival in Dumaguete

My dad made the trip out to see us one last time before we leave the Philippines. We didn't have a lot of time but we made sure to head out of town for a weekend and get some much needed relaxation in. We drove down the western coast line until Kabankalan and turned east into the island driving to the tops of the mountains headed to Dumaguete. We planned to take him to Siquijor. The drive went perfect. The kids didn't fight once, they sat really well and we had some yummy snacks to keep our mouths busy with. Once we hit Dumaguete we stopped for lunch and headed to the pier to get our boat tickets. We were stunned to find out that there were some festivals happening that weekend and so the next two boats out of Dumaguete were totally sold out and that we might have to wait until the next day to get out of there. Thankfully our resort tipped us off on a different boat leaving late in the evening so we got our tickets for that boat and went out to explore Dumaguete.
It was the weekend of the Kabulakan Festival which celebrates flowers. We found the parade with street dancers setting up near the town plaza and each of the different dance groups was decorated as a different type of flower. Of course, in Philippine style, there were bright colourful costumes, choreographers, loud music. We waited a while for the parade to start but as we got hotter, sweatier and the streets became more crowded we decided to walk back through the parade instead of wait for the parade to walk to us.

It was nice to start moving and walk around the city. We took a detour along the seawall before heading back to the car where Ryan and Madison were napping. We still had a few hours to burn until our boat so off we went to find a place to eat dinner. We found some Mexican place right by the ocean and decided to take a chance with it. It was good, nothing to rave about but good. As we were finishing our dinner the parade made it's way along right in front of the restaurant! We had front row seats. We watched as they threw fire, showed us their street dancing and posed for our camera's.

By the time the parade was over the sun had gone down, the city lights were all on and it was finally time for us to head to the pier and catch the boat. I guess the bonus of taking the boat so late in the evening is that the water is calm and the ride is smooth!

Jubilee Cultural Celebration

Well! 50 years ago the LDS missionaries were allowed into the Philippines to teach people about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To celebrate this special anniversary all over the Philippines different area's are having these amazing cultural celebrations filled with singing and dancing.
Our area held our Jubiliee celebration last Saturday. It was amazing and totally blew my expectations out of the water. There were colourful costumes, choirs and amazing dancing. The show started with a brief history of the church growth here on Negros Occidental and the first pioneers that helped make all that growth happen. At one point the first pioneer members here in our province got up on stage and performed their own musical number for us! It was humbling to hear of the dedication it took these people to get to church every Sunday and the time they must have put in to teach new church members and keep the church strong and functioning.

The show was held at a huge coliseum without air conditioning. Thankfully Ryan got to hang out in the lighting/sound booth because he was the dude in charge of the sounds and slide shows so when the kids were getting overheated they got to sneak into the booth for a while and cool off. We sat up at the very top row with a view directly to the stage so that we could be close to Ryan and his 'team' so although we were far making it hard to get pictures, we got an amazing view of everyone.

There was the stage and the floor where the choir and dancers performed while the audience surrounded them. Of course the primary (children 3-11 years old) got up and sang this amazing medley all dressed in white. It set the perfect tone for the evening. Along with the singing was a slide show with pictures of the pioneers and sharing their experiences. Then the dancing began. It was by far the best part of the evening. They were all so well practiced and captivating. I loved the show. They had traditional dances in the traditional dress. My kids recognized one of the outfits as what they wear to school during Filipino day and so they were immediately interested in that specific dance. I have to add the man in charge of the music did a perfect job!

Then they had the dances that had to do with the festivals in that area. These were vibrant costumes with loud upbeat music pumping the entire coliseum. They were the funnest to watch with all the high energy and jumping around. I couldn't imagine running around in their costumes in that heat! I was sweating buckets just sitting, it was gross.

The show ended with all the different dancers filing out together to fill the floor. The choirs were on the stage with the exception of the primary who came out onto the floor with the dancers and got to play with the balloons that fell from the sky.

The best part of seeing everyone in their fancy costumes together on stage was when the first 10 pioneer church members from our province came out in a line to the front of the crowd. It was amazing to think that these 10 people had helped build something strong enough to grow to the overflowing floor space and stage. It was the perfect finale!

Happy 50th Jubilee Cultural Celebration Philippines!!

Something Colourful For Dinner Tonight

This morning my doorbell rings. Automatically I know it's not a friend because our friends now know to come through the property gate and up to the door to knock, strangers stay outside on the road and ring the bell. Usually when that happens it's the water delivery guys dropping off my water jugs so I just asked Brayden to go outside to the gate and see who it was. A few seconds later Brayden comes to the door and tells me it's a brown guy in a truck which means it's someone Brayden doesn't recognize at all. I go outside to see who it is expecting maybe a person dropping off a bill or something like that but instead I see this man and his son carrying a styrofoam cooler telling me he has crabs and lobsters for sale. We used to get these people all the time to our house selling their crabs, fish, prawns, squid but I rarely buy and so they just stop coming so I was a little surprised to see him there. I tell him I'll take a look at what he's got because the kids always love a good petting zoo so he puts down his cooler and we see these amazing coloured lobster. I've seen these lobsters before in Boracay and have been told they are from Palawan, the very most western island in the Philippines so they are quite expensive having come so far. I ask how much and he names his price which was cheap cheap (or cheap for me) so I told the guy I'd take his two biggest. He gets out his scale and tries to place the lobsters in the dish while the lobsters are freaking out and trying to crawl out with their antena things flying all over the place. The kids start panicking a bit and we all take a step back while he finally gets the lobsters to stay long enough to weigh them. The strange thing was that the guy brings a scale with him but it isn't working so he asks to borrow mine. I tried to tell the guy that I didn't have a scale inside and he was genuinely shocked. I guess that is a necessity!? So away he goes to get his other one and returns, I pay the guy, off he goes and inside we head to find a pot big enough to keep the lobsters moist in until dinner.

The kids poke around for a bit until they get bored and into the fridge the lobsters go. Around dinner time I start to prepare them making a nice broth to steam them with (salt, dill, bay leaves, onion, water and pepper) and forcefully fit them into my small steamer tray for the rice cooker. While they steam away I make my lemon, garlic butter with a bit of dill to dip them in after they are done. They turn out pretty good but I have to say they aren't nearly as pretty cooked as they are raw.

You Stay at This Table Until You Finish What's On Your Plate!

So we are eating lunch and Madison won't finish her sandwich. I ask her if she needs to go upstairs to have a nap and she tells me no so I tell her she needs to finish her sandwich. She just looks at me and I say "just take a big bite Maddy" and so she goes and shoves the entire sandwich in her mouth ... and surprisingly finishes the entire thing.

Time Flies

Wow! I can't believe it's been a week since I sat down to write something. It really doesn't feel that long. I guess we've been busy hanging out. It's not like we haven't done anything note worthy ... because a lot of strange and random things have happened, I just haven't been motivated to write about them for some reason.

Well I thought I'd share some highlights of the week:

*We went to Thor last weekend. It rocked. I loved it. Go see it.
*Our wedding anniversary was on Tuesday! 8 years. Pretty good day. Got 2 dozen roses with some chocolate, went out for a fab dinner as a family. It was a nice day.
*A bat flew into me and knocked the wind out of me on one of my morning runs.
AND some moron this morning at 4AM starts driving around with a megaphone yelling "good morning, good morning" and going off on some rant about something. It woke up all the kids. It was a really long morning and I think I'm going to kill that guy. I've memorized his voice into my memory and when I hear it again .... he'd better watch out.

The nice thing about this week has been that it's been a little overcast the last 2 days so we've been able to play outside and go for nice walks without killing ourselves in the heat!

When Dreams Come True

For those of you who know Ryan know that he loves his Mac toys. I think it's mostly because of the convenience that they offer him. They allow him to be reachable for work 24/7 no matter where he is so he doesn't feel that he needs to sit around staring at the computer all day/night long. The other reason is because they are awesome. There is no denying that there isn't much that an iPhone or iPad can't do and they always seem to get better and better. Ryan has wanted an iPad since they released the first one last year. Even though he really really wanted one he told me that he would hold out until the second model was released. His reasoning was logical: they make the basic, get reviews and fix the bugs and then come out with something fab the second go around. This is exactly what happened! The iPad2 is pretty much everything that he dreamed it could be and I knew that there was no talking him out of it after waiting for so long so ....

Welcome to the Family Mr. Big Stuff

P.S. we LOVE you. I mean REALLY REALLY love you.

Easter Sunday

Holy Week is right up there with Christmas as THE holiday time here in the Philippines. Hotel and resort prices all shoot up for the week and Filipino's tend to come home for the holiday. Easter is a big deal here with the parade floats carrying Jesus and all the different Catholic Saints and huge Mary's. People will walk amongst the floats carrying candles and looking a little zombie like following the mobs to the big old Catholic church in the middle of town. There outside the church people are selling candles, leaves, flowers, snacks and balloons (?) to all the bystanders.
The Sunday before Easter (Palm Sunday) people are lined outside the old Catholic church selling palm leaves in remembrance of when "Jesus walked from Bethany to Jerusalem. He rode into the city on a donkey, as a verse in the Old Testament said He would. People recognized Him as their King, shouting, "Hosanna," and laying down palm leaves in front of the donkey to keep dust from getting on the Savior. Jesus visited the temple and then returned to Bethany. See Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11."*

Then starting Thursday everything is shut down for Holy Thursday, Black Friday and Easter Sunday (or as Elder Holland refers to it in An Apostle's Easter Thoughts on Christ: Passover Thursday, Atoning Friday and Resurrection Sunday). By shut down I mean nothing is open but the hotel restaurants and a few side stores independently owned. The roads are dead and people use the weekend to go to midnight mass, go to the beach or pool and spend time with their families.
We spent Sunday together as our little family unit. We went to church and spent those three hours with our ward family before coming home and reading about the week leading up to Jesus Christ's resurrection and sharing President Monson's testimony of the Savior. We read a couple of articles for kids about what that means for us and why it's so important and then we sat down and watched the movie 'Rio.'
After Ryan had to run out quickly for a meeting and the kids went and played outside in the rain while I got dinner ready. They ran splashing in all the puddles getting soaked and laughing like crazy.

It was such a nice Easter to spend together as a family and the kids got the message that Easter Sunday was important because Jesus lives. Actually they got really animated and excited because He lives, "see it's ok mom."
I know this is a little late but I hope you can enjoy this Easter message from our church:

*The Friend (Volume 41 Number 4 April 2011). Easter Week. The Friend: A Children's Magazine Published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pg. 24-25.

Easter Saturday

This year we broke Easter up into a two day affair. I really wanted my kids to understand the role that Jesus plays in Easter but not take away the fun that most people do to celebrate the weekend. I thought about it and decided to separate the two. SO, on Saturday we celebrated Easter in the sense of spring. We decorated eggs, went for a nice walk outside as a family, shrunk our chip bags and had a dance party. Before lunch I sat my kids down and taught them about Spring. They haven't really experienced season's before, all they know is snow and sweat so to talk to them about rain and why it's important, and baby animals was interesting. I pretty much got a lot of blank stares and loud animal noises from an excited Madison but that's about it. I also told them that tomorrow the Easter Bunny would not be visiting our house. Wow, this did cause a reaction... big sad shocked eyes. I explained that Sunday wasn't about a rabbit but about the importance of Jesus' resurrection and that because of this event we can all live together as an eternal family. I said tomorrow we were reserving for Jesus. Still big shocked eyes so I just said "look, tomorrow is about Jesus, not the Easter Bunny. You'll just have to wait until we get to Canada and Nana and Papa are going to hide your Easter candy then." Well, off they ran happy as could be and the crisis was adverted. I hope Nana is taking notes and I'm really happy she showed them some Easter candy the day before so I had something back up my story.

So as I mentioned we decorated our eggs Saturday. It was fun. Brayden and Sydney knew exactly what to do and Brayden brought up the really pretty eggs that Auntie Kait made that one year. Seriously, this kid and him memory! That was 3 years ago! Maddy just was obsessed with making her egg yellow screaming at us "lellow, lellow" not wanting to share the colour with anyone else until finally we just grabbed her yellow egg and dumped it into blue and watched it turn green.
So what do you do after you make your eggs?? Well if you're my kids you eat your eggs.

Recycling Beattie Style

For those of you who didn't know me when I was younger I used to be a Brownie and my mom was one of the leaders right through all those years of brown dresses, orange scarfs and yes, even brown underwear for both my sister and I. We did lots of fun crafts, camps and stuff like that but one of the crafts I remember the most is shrinking chip bags. I had attempted this once before with my kids but it didn't turn out. Something about fire blazing in the oven ... not too sure :S
Anyway, I decided to save chip bags to try again. The problem was that our chip intake has severely decreased and so it's taken quite a long time for me to find the perfect specimen. Finally ... we have it. What we did was wash out the chip bag so all the chip crumbs and oils are out of the bag and then we gently dried it with a paper towel. We then carefully placed the bag on a greased piece of tin foil covering the baking sheet and put it into an oven set around 350*F and sat there, watching and waiting:

Within a minute our chip bag started to shrink up. I think we kept it in the oven for 5 minutes before pulling it out to find this:

This works WAY better with those small bag of chips! You can make them into earrings, I know, I know! TOO COOL. So next grocery shopping trip I'm going to buy a couple of the small bags for the kids and we're going to have an oven party! I'll let you know how they turn out, the kids have already polished off some chips and we've safely put them into storage waiting.