First comes love, then comes marriage....

We have ourselves a little ladies man! Brayden has now had his very first kiss, and we've been told they are now married ;) Meadow is a 3 year old girl that lives down the street from us. Her dad, Sam, works with Focus and they have been here from Utah for the past 2ish months and Brayden has become so fond of Meadow. He will actually grab her cheeks and pull her face towards him so he can kiss her! Apparently she doesn't mind too much because the other day she informed us that they are now married! A little shocker since we've been told she has a little boyfriend back in Utah....

Paradise

Last week we decided to take a semi-spontaneous trip to Boracay Island here in the Philippines. The beach has made it into the worlds top 10 beaches multiple times and although we couldn't figure it out the first time we came for New Years we defiantly changed our minds this second time around! It was such an action packed trip that we hardly had time to rest but then I've heard that you should need a vacation to recover from your vacation which is exactly what we need!
Close your eyes and imagine the sitting on a motorbike with the warm breeze cooling you from the hot sun with the white sand beach and the different shades of tourquise water to look at... sigh. It was so beautiful. We decided to get it all in; snorkeling, motorbiking, beaches, shopping, food and parasailing. We were able to cover the entire by land, water and air! It was incredible. We started with snorkeling and had a pumpboat take us around the Island stopping at one beach with these little warriors and these great white beaches spotting the entire coastline;

Of course after enjoying a day in the water you have to fill up on food! Boracay is lined with buffets and foods from all over the world. We were able to eat Greek, Steak, Mexican, Mongolian and more...

One of the things that I've always wanted to do is to go Parasailing so when we were able to get the perfect price we couldn't pass it up!! Ryan and I were able to go up together with Brayden and Sydney watching with wide eyes.

After parasailing in the morning we spent a couple of hours in the afternoon on a motorcycle having a look at the island from the interior. It seemed that no matter which direction we drove we ended up at a white beach lined with pump boats and kids playing in the sand. And of course you can't have a trip to Boracay without a picture of one of the sandcastles that line the White Beach:

The weather was perfect, the food was great and we had the wonderful company. It was defiantly one of the tops of our trips so far and how could you not want to go back when you get to end your days like this:

Kuala Lumpur Days 3&4

The last two days in Kuala were really busy. We spent the majority of the time going from place to place on the monorail and window shopping. We saw huge malls with 10 floors and cluttered malls that were like mazes but no mall too big for me.
In the city there is a lake with a huge wheel called "The Eye on Malaysia." You can go around in it and see the city from the top. It was really nice and relaxing to sit down and take in the view.

We ended up getting tickets to go up to the skywalk on the Petronas Towers so off we went to downtown. There on the 41st floor is this huge skywalk that connects the two towers together. The walkway can sway a couple of inches on each side allowing it to withstand 180km winds! I guess once it blows stronger then that they evacuate the building. I'm thinking that if it's that windy, I'd be home long before that. It was really beautiful to up and see the city with the mountains in the background! So great.

We also headed to China town which again was amazing. Such great deals and I just love the buzzing, crowded, energy of a market. I don't know what it is but it just energizes me. We saw so many great purses, movies, watches, shirts, fruit. Just your typical China town but it was a gem.

Kuala Lumpur: Days 1&2

Ryan's folks are here for a visit right now and so we decided that we would use our Visa renewal trip out of the country while they were here so that we could experience something new together. We took off for four days to Malaysia to see the big city of Kuala Lumpur.
Our hotel was situated right by the monorail and pretty much in the center of the city activities so it was incrediably easy to get around and find things to do. The first thing I noticed was the great speeds on the highway! It felt so amazing to go 120km/hour again on an open road. Then we were upgraded for free from our hotel room to suites because of an overbooking... I just knew it was going to be a great little holiday!

We spent the first days looking around at a couple of the malls, shops and some of the city sites. Everyone was very friendly and offering us help and smiles, especially to Brayden and Sydney ;) We walked downtown around the Kuala Lumpur City Center and met a Buddhist who gave us what we thought were free gifts but ended up coming at the price of a generous donation to something. We had no idea, since it was in symbols and he seemed to know very little english.
We stopped to check out a temple and got caught in this great rain storm. We had to run about 2 minutes in the rain to make it to the closest monorail stop and we were all completely soaking wet but it was such a great time running for our lives through this massive down pour! The kids didn't seem to mind it either which made it even more enjoyable! It was a beautiful Hindhu Temple with these impressive statues and engravings throughout:

While we were downtown in the City Center we decided to check out the Aquarium which is located behind the Petronas Towers (the 2nd tallest twin towers in the world). It was really great, I think the best feature was this underwater tunnel you went through with all these fish, sharks and stingrays swimming around you. There was one stingray that would go over your head and the entire tunnel would get dark, it was so huge.

Kuala Lumpur is home to the 2nd largest twin tower buildings in the world so of course we had to make our way downtown to check out them out in person. Unfortunately it was Monday and so we couldn't go inside the buildings but we decided that we would be back later in the week to check it out further. We ate a great lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe which was so familiar and wonderful. The kids got the enormous hotdogs which to my disbelief they both finished!

Mambukal

Last week my sisters great friends Benessa and Chris made it to Bacolod for a couple of days. They have been teaching english in China for the last 10 months and are slowly making their way home to Lethbridge. Benessa's family is from the Philippines and she decided it was time to bring her boyfriend here to visit so they could explore the Philippines beauty together. It was just so wonderful to have them here, to have someone who knew exactly what it is like to live in a different culture and be on your own. It was only a short stay with us since they were making their way to Bohol Island but we were able to take them up into the interior of the Island to a Mountain Resort in the jungle. It was the perfect day for it! The name of the place is Mambukal and it's famous for it's huge bats and annual Mudpack festival where people wear beautiful tribal outfits and they play in huge mud pools!

Benessa and Chris went on a hike to see 3 of the 7 waterfalls while we took the kids for a dip in the natural hot springs. Such a dream! When you don't have a bathtub it's such a treat to sit in a hot pool and relax, ahhhh. The pools are so hot that they have two hoses pumping in cold water to moderate it a bit. The kids just love playing with the hoses, all the times we've been to the pools they hardly spend anytime in the water. The majority of the time they are outside the water playing with the cold water spraying themselves and to my dissaproval, ME. It was such a great day and we had a really fun time relaxing in the middle of the jungle.

Sipalay

So this the end of June Focus has sent over a young family from Utah for 8 weeks. The husband, Sam, is to help train Ryan a little further and teach him some tricks. It's just been so wonderful to have them here, they are renting a house just down the street from us which is perfect. They have 2 kids, Alex who is 6 and Meadow who is 3 and they play so well with my kids. Josie enrolled them in school with Brayden and so now Brayden has friends to ride to school with! Sometimes Josie will pick him up and drop him off for me and then it just hits me how fast they grow up. I'll ask for a kiss before he jumps into the car and he'll just give me his forehead and then off he goes.

The other weekend we thought that we would show off some of the beautiful white beaches of the Philippines so we packed up the car and headed to Punta Bulata Resort just out of Sipalay. It's such a beautiful drive along the coastline with the green mountains, sugar cane and rice fields on the other side. It's rainy season now so everything is growing and so green. Unfortunately with it being rainy season we got hit hard. There was a huge storm while we were there and even massages couldn't get us to stay any longer. We decided to head back home only after one night.

On the way home we found that with the storm the previous night there had been some damages made to the road. There were little mudslides all along the side of the roads, some pretty big boulders and huge puddles. Finally we had to turn around and go back to the resort because one part of the road had been taken out by a huge mudslide. It uprooted a tree or two that were covering the road, there was a boy walking across that sunk almost to his waist in the mud! It was quite the adventure. Fortunately we were able to make it home safe and sound even passing a cock fight on the way!

Finally, up and running

Well after a long black out I finally think I might have sorted out some of the problems my website was having. Hopefully this will be just the same but it's going to take some time. What happened was I was working on the website and went outside to do some laundry, I came back and somehow Sydney and Brayden had started deleting all the files for the webpage including my backup.... so here I am trying to fix it little by little.
I hope that everyone will enjoy it just as much as before, please be patient while I'm trying to figure everything out.
I have a tonne of stories to share that everyone missed out on while the page was down so as soon as I get a good chunk of time I will start to get everyone back up to pace with everything!