Happy new year!  Boy, I didn't realize how long a break I had taken from blogging.  Some of it was forced, when due to the changes on the homeschoolblogger admin-side, I couldn't seem to log on for a short time.  The rest was due to the holiday season.

I hope your holidays were a blessed time of remembering the reason for the season, and enjoying extended time with family and friends.

Here in Singapore, our school year runs from January to December, with our long school holiday beginning mid-November and lasting about 6 weeks until the new year.  We don't really enjoy school holiday times at our house.  With an island the size of Chicago jam-packed with over 5 million people, when the kids get off school, parents tend to take off work, and every single place you could possibly think of going is crowded and noisy beyond bearing.  Add to that the fact that Asians have a very different understanding of personal space and social graces, and I usually find myself feeling rather battered and bruised from all the jostling, bumping, loud voices and music, etc. after an outing.

With my dear hubby having Mondays off, we have always enjoyed the comparative "quiet" of going to public places while most people are at work or school.  (Mind you, with a population of 5 million, it's almost never quiet anywhere!)  So we find the long November-December holiday period stressful.

With all that in mind, we decided to have a mini-vacation right when everyone else was going back to work and school.  So, for the last three days, we took off to a beach resort on the island of Sentosa, just off the south-central coast of Singapore.  We enjoyed playing in the sand on the beach, collecting tiny, tiny seashells, and swimming in the resort's pool.  it was just what the dr. ordered.  I found myself finally relaxing.  I could almost feel my muscles releasing their tension.  I could almost hear my stress unwinding. 

Here we are enjoying the sun and sand...

This is the beautiful pool at the resort.

And the weather cooperated beautifully.  We have had such an excessive rainy season that we changed our original plan to go to Malacca in Malaysia due to flooding, and stayed much closer to home.  But the weather was perfect!  It was overcast enough to be cooler than usual, but warm enough to still enjoy the beach and swimming.  There was not a drop of rain until we were safely bedded down in our hotel room on the last night, and then a massive thunder storm swooped in and wore itself out long before morning, where we awoke to a world with its face freshly washed, shining under a bright, hot tropical sun.

Aren't you thankful that God seems to know how to give us just what we need right when we need it?

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