What in the world???

I am not one who really cares much at all who reads my/our blog. I’ve made it pretty clear over the years that I blog mostly to keep a journal of our adventures and if anyone reads and gains any nuggets of hope, encouragement or even knowledge, then that’s a bonus and I’m grateful.

I don’t care about how numbers. I don’t care about publicity. I don’t care about media recognition. But I recently found a place on my site stats that shows what countries people are reading from. It’s bizarro!

Malta?
Portugal??
Saudi Arabia???
Austria????

I don’t even know anyone in these places and many of the others that people are reading from. Did I say bizarro??? Yep, I think I did.

The country stats are different from day to day and I suppose it’s due to random searches that take someone to a blog post about a random topic that they happened to be interested in. They may never come back but then again they might. It’s just clearer than ever to me that I could quite possibly be having a global impact from spending a few minutes here and there sharing my heart, thoughts, feelings, photos, adventures and most importantly, my faith in God, just by posting a few words and photos on a computer screen.

THAT. Is. Awesome!!!

And bizarro!!

Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16

Standard Souvenir

I know I’m still due for a few more informative posts but my brain hurts these days so I’m just doing some quick and easy posts until the fog clears.

So…..

One of my standard souvenirs that I like to get when we travel are the city mugs from Starbucks. My rule is, though, that I have to actually have been to the place before I can buy one so all of the ones you see in the photos below are places we’ve/I’ve been. Pretty cool! I have a few of the insulated travel mugs as well but they aren’t pretty enough for display. Vietnam and Italy don’t have Starbucks (or at least we couldn’t find one) so there are a few places we’ve been that we didn’t get a mug from. They are way too huge to drink coffee from so we use them for soups. It’s always fun to ask, “Which country do you want to eat in?”.

When we moved to this condo last July I didn’t have a good place to display them so they’ve been stuck inside a cabinet. Now is the time when many people move in and out of Singapore and we were able to get a great bookshelf for cheap cheap. The shelves are shallow so it works great for displaying my Starbucks mugs that were starved for some attention.

I also have a few of the holiday mugs and Chinese New Year mugs that they sell each year in Singapore. Year of the Tiger (2010), Year of the Rabbit (2011) Year of the Dragon (2012). The red/gold Tiger mug in the back right corner is the actual CNY mug for that year. The black/gold Tiger mug in the front just happens to have a tiger on it.

What is your standard souvenir?

Before and After

This is the story of Anna’s closet.

Before – So much about this picture makes me grin. They say ones closet resembles ones brain. Ok, maybe “they” is “me” but it probably holds some truth. Notice I’m not showing you my closet…. You can’t see the labels well but they are for color coding.

After – She just cleaned out to prepare for some Texas shopping I think. Notice the color coding labels have vanished.

Wouldn’t it be great if our real life was as easy to clean up and organize as a closet? Taking off old labels that are meaningless now, getting rid of the junk in our hearts and minds that only clutter and starting fresh with a nice, clean, organized “shelf”.

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due totheir hardness of heart.  They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.  But that is not the way you learned Christ!—  assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,  and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:17-24

The Tale of the Take Away Cup

Warning: The next several blog posts are going to be seriously out of order but such is my life these days – seriously out of order. So just read along and enjoy the ride.

My sister, Edie, is here visiting from Dallas, Texas. Last night we wanted to take her to our favorite cheap Indian food restaurant, CURRY GARDENn (yes, it’s spelled that way), for dinner. The restaurant manager, Ravi, knows us and gives us the royal treatment, although I’m sure he does the same for all of his regulars.

We ordered. We ate. We were happy.

Then I ordered a ginger tea and didn’t think about needing to finish it quickly so they brought it to me in a regular mug.

We were ready to leave and my tea was still too hot to drink so I asked for a take away cup and they said they didn’t have one. Then Ravi figured out what was going on and he said they did have take away cups. Then they all started looking up. Then tall man comes to the rescue. I’ll let the pictures tell the story from here.

By this time everyone was watching what was going on. Dinner entertainment. I got my take away cup and one more great story for the Stunz Family Adventures.

Easter in Singapore

Easter in Singapore is for us, much like it is in Texas. Same same but different. It comes with a bit more heat and humidity and costs a bit more for the goodies and Easter dinner, well quite a bit more, but that’s not the point of this post.

Our kids are now older and we don’t do too much in the way of the Easter bunny, eggs and such, especially since two of them don’t live with us anymore, but I’m guessing that we’re just taking a break and all of that fun and fanfare will be resurrected (pun intended) when grandkids come along.

So here are a few same same’s and different’s.

Same – We celebrate what Christ did for us on the cross. He died. He could have saved Himself but He saved us from an eternity of separation from Him, our Creator. He rose again bringing us hope of eternity with Him. That this world, with it’s hardships and challenges, is not our final destination. That the joys we experience are but a fraction of the joy we will experience with Him.

Same – It’s about family. It’s about friends. It’s about sharing. Maybe with a large family, maybe with a few friends.

Same - We’ll have candy and good food.

Different – Two of our kids are in Texas spending time with other people’s families. I’m very grateful that they will have a family to share Easter with.

Different – We had a taxi driver ask us yesterday what is Good Friday anyway? That’s an Easter first for us. Have you ever tried to explain why we call Good Friday Good Friday? It’s an interesting conversation with anyone but even more so with an Asian guy who considers his religion to be “free thinking”.

Different – We have no yard to hide eggs in so that will be done inside our condo.

We miss our Texas family. We definitely miss our two oldest kids. We miss our silly string and egg hunting fun with the little kids. We miss cheap candy and the variety we once had. We miss easy trips to the grocery store to find everything we need in one place. But tomorrow we will spend our morning at church, celebrating the real reason for Easter, and then we will have a few friends over along with my sister who is visiting (YAY for family!) and enjoy a big Easter meal of lamb shanks slow cooked with sweet potatoes and chic peas, cous cous, salad, deviled eggs (funny name for an Easter tradition, eh?), a white cake with divinity icing and coconut that my Granny used to make and Honey Bars for dessert. Yum!!

It will be a good day with family, friends, food and fellowship.

I posted these pictures last year but couldn’t resist posting them again.  I love my big kids and the life we now have but Easter fun is best with little kids.

Random Family Update

We’ve had some noteworthy changes in our family recently and since this blog sort of doubles as a journal I thought I’d update. This will be one that only grandparents and a few aunts and uncles and handful of close friends will care about so feel free to skip this one if you’d like.

After Tori graduated university this past December, she began to look for a job. A big girl job as she called it. Her lack of experience was proving to be a drawback for the places she applied to and interviewed with. Seriously, how does one gain experience without first getting a job??? Anyway, we were all praying and so were friends and family members and she landed a great job. Her interviewer, aka boss, even told her that she had trouble interviewing after Tori because she knew she wanted Tori. This made Tori feel so great! The job is in her field with room for advancement and one that, after 3 weeks now, she is enjoying very much. After she got “the call”, Tori called us and I could hear her smile beaming from ear to ear when she said, “I got my big girl job!” We are all so very thankful for God’s provision for her.

Jakeb is going to spend his summer in Kenya this year. He is going to be doing mission work with Choose To Invest. They will visit and serve/work at several missions and villages. He’s very excited about going and we are so proud of him for being willing to go where God leads. Sacrificing comfort and potential fun he might typically have on a summer break for the joy of serving others. He’ll still have fun though cause that’s what he does where he is. He is currently raising funds to support him for the summer so if you’d like to contribute financially or more importantly with prayer, here is his blog post, Kenya… and what you can do to help, with more information. He and a friend, who is also going, spent their spring break power washing driveways and sidewalks, doing some gardening and other odd jobs for friends and family to earn money.

We found out recently that we will be in Singapore through June 2013. We’re hoping not any longer than that but we always say we’ll know we’re really leaving when we have our one way plane ticket home. When we originally came over we were contracted for 18 months. June 2013 will make 4 years. We expected longer than 18 months but we did not expect 4 years. The nature of Tommy’s job will keep us here until the project is finished. So, if you are one that would like to see us move home or even closer to home, pray hard that the job finishes quickly! Although we’re grateful for our experiences and adventures here, we’d like to not stay in Singapore forever.

Since we know we’ll be here for another full school year, we applied to Stamford American International School for Anna next year. She’ll be in 8th grade and we knew that this would be a pivotal year. The year we would either need to commit to homeschooling through graduation or go back to school. They happily accepted her, of course!, and it is official that she will be attending SAIS next year. After that, we’ll see. We will continue to take one year at a time and see where God leads. Anna is very excited and we’re excited for her. I’m not sure what I will do with all of my extra time but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. We’ve been very open with our education choices and decisions here on the blog so I’ll write another post soon to tell more of the school and how we came to our decision for this and why.

Patio Furniture, Words and Reptiles

The other night we bought some new furniture for our balcony. We’ve been in this condo for almost a year and being that our balcony is tiny, we have been on the hunt for the perfect balance of size and comfort and budget of course. We finally found it. Did a little dealing and got $4 dollars off the price. And then hauled them home on foot. Tommy carried the two chairs and me being the wonder woman that I am, I carried the table. Yes, all by myself! it was SO funny that as we were walking across the intersection of busy Queensway and Alexandra Rd. an Asian man made a point to tell us how odd it was to see Caucasians carrying furniture across the road. We laughed with him, because we thought it was funny too and told him that we were just not your traditional Caucasians. We probably could have used the term “white trash” (a Texas slang term for ghetto) and we would have been correct but he would not have understood so we kept that to ourselves.

Anyway, so we get home and go to put the chairs out on the balcony and little gecko wiggles his way into the house. Here’s where I didn’t think about choosing words carefully and a wordy dird slipped out. (another slang usage for “dirty word”). I’m pretty sure that anyone who knows me or has followed this blog while we’ve been here knows full well how much I detest lizards. This little guy is the first one I’ve seen in our condo since we moved here. We had a gazillion of them in our other place. If for no other reason, not dealing with lizards in our condo makes it seem like heaven.

So we never found the lizard. He was tiny though so I figure by the time he chows down on the ants and such in our house he’s going to be the size of a monitor when we find him. Which is fine with me because then I can move faster than him.

So that was Sunday. Fast forward to this morning and read Tommy’s account of his little word slippage.

I think it’s pretty funny that I speak profanity over a tiny gecko and Tommy slips over a massive snake. I also think it’s pretty clever how I can tie in patio furniture, cuss words and reptiles in one post.

Now, go read his post. It’s funny.

A Snake and an Accidental 17.5

And yes, we believe God has forgiven our sinful acts of speaking profanity. All is well.

 

 

What we buy in the US to bring to Singapore

Before we moved over here I found people to bug, nag, question as to what we should bring with us that we couldn’t get in Singapore. I remember nagging our real estate agent turned friend about shampoo. She finally told me that we would be living here and we would survive just fine. Lots of people do. She was right. We managed quite well and even found a few things we like better than our American items. After 3 years of living in Singapore and multiple trips back to Texas, here is our reference list that we now use so I thought I’d share in case anyone wanted to bug, nag or question me. I’m happy to pay it forward, btw. So feel free to ask if you run across this post.

Here are some of the things we always get when we go home. We normally don’t get stuff that we can get here unless it’s just so much cheaper to get there and we have room after getting the other stuff that we can’t get here.

Under garments. dry wicking undershirts and underwear for Tommy since he works in the outdoors quite often and undergarments the rest of us as well. Cotton is preferred. Keep in mind that almost never can you rewear anything here due to sweat so our clothes and undergarments are washed frequently therefore wear out very quickly.

Deoderant

Shave Secret (a shaving oil that we use and it’s easy to travel with)

Toothbrushes/toothpaste (I’m picky about the kind I use)

Mexican vanilla, Almond Extract

Mexican Chili powder and any other spices and seasonings we use and either can’t get or that are cheaper

Corn tortillas

Specific Medicines and Vitamins (travel meds and cold/flu meds mostly) We usually go through all our meds in Singapore before a trip home and toss the outdated meds and restock.

Specific Toiletries (favorite brands, hair color, feminine products (although you can get these here we just like what we like), etc.)

Sunscreen

Mosquito towelettes (for traveling or for the parks here in Singapore)

Makeup (mostly because it’s so much cheaper)

Bounce dryer sheets and Shout Color Catchers (make sure you package these up well or your food items will taste nice and fresh)

Any snacks we can fit, natural fruit sticks, fritos, Crystal Light drink powders, etc.

Clothes, shoes, swimwear (can’t find too much here for our non-Asian sized bodies)

Coffee

Coffee creamer (I usually get the powder packets for traveling)

pecans

Any electronics we need

Thinking ahead… gifts we’ll need for each other while in Singapore or even to leave in the US, gift wrap/bags (hard to find good wrap and bags that aren’t super expensive), greeting cards we’ll want to send for the next few months (often we’ll buy gifts and get them ready and leave them there rather than mailing)

Thinking ahead… decor or food ingredients for upcoming holidays or special occasions

Thinking ahead… clothes or travel items for any upcoming trips you are taking

Tommy usually gets running shoes if he finds the kind he likes on sale. Otherwise he can get them at Queensway.

We now order a lot on Amazon.com before we get home so we don’t have so much shopping to do although we still shop as much as possible at Target.

Then when we’re done and if we still have room we’ll make one last midnight Target run and fill in the gaps. We NEVER waste an inch or an ounce.

After 3 years here, we find ourselves getting things back home that we either absolutely cannot find or we know will save us tons of money. And even then, we prioritize. All if that being said, you could manage just fine if you didn’t bring anything but an adventurous spirit and an open mind.