The Beattie Gang

Today at Brayden and Sydneys school they had the Filipino equivalent to Halloween; Pretend Day. This year the theme at school was It’s a Small World After All and every class was a different continents. Sydney was Australia and so she was able to dress up like and Australian animal, and Brayden was African and was assigned to dress up as an African. Other places were Asia, North America and Europe. Each class set up a booth which included a stamp for their passport, a game and prize for their completion of the game.
I was a parent volunteer for the Gummi Class (Sydney) and helped out at the booth during their 2 hour class with a couple of the other parents from Syd’s class. We had to be their early this morning which meant that after I was done icing the cupcakes Ryan made the night before and the cookies I had cooked at 6:30am I was on my way to set up while Ryan was in charge of getting the kids ready and out the door to school. Sydney ended up being a great white shark which was an easy costume we bought a local department store and Brayden… well I have to say that Ryan really did quite the job with Brayden! When I say quite the job I mean Brayden really looked the part! It was perfect and of course I wouldn’t expect anything less from Ryan.

The bonus to being a parent volunteer meant that I could follow the kids around a bit when there wasn’t anyone at our booth and take some pictures of them playing their games! When the day was over they were able to accumulate quite the stash which defiantly makes up for the lack of trick or treating this year!!

This year we were in town for the big MassKara/Charter Day parade. Last year even though Focus had a float in the parade we were on our way home to Canada and missed the big event. This year we had to make up for it by all participating. We all got fancy MassKara Focus shirts which were black (thankfully it was cloudy so the sun didn’t roast us in the dark shirts). Brayden loved his and Sydney needed some convincing about how “cool” they were so we made hers into a dress and put a belt around her waist (which is a VERY Asian look) but somewhere along the way the belt came off and she like her usual orphan self.

The float and shirt designs were made into a competition at Focus so both were designed by Focus employees which to my understanding were rewarded with some type of incentive. Ryan mentioned how many talented people were working at Focus and was really impressed with the different designs that the Focus gang was coming up with. This was the finished project for the float:

Focus employees that owned motorcycles drove those along with the floats, including Ryan who took the kids with him. They seemed to be getting a lot of attention and people were somewhat attacking him on the bike so after Sydney started to fall asleep Ryan switched off the motorbike to someone else and walked with me while we pawned Sydney off to a friend on the float. The walk took almost 2 hours in total which was slow and uneventful until we got to the Plaza which is where most of the MassKara festivities (dance competions) took place. It was insanely busy and Ryan thought it would be fun to play a “Where’s Meghan” version of the famous Waldo books so here you go… find Meghan (click on the picture to get a larger version):

After the parade was finished everyone met back at Focus for some foods, relaxation and pictures. The families were invited to sit down, eat some pork BBQ, drink some Coca Cola and let their kids sit in an air conditioned room and watch some TV (which my kids were loving!).

One thing that I have promised to post are the drunk tanks I’ve previously mentioned in my blog. They are just big shipping crates from boats with holes cut out of them (Negros Navigation is the biggest shipping company in the Philippines). They had 2 of them set up at the Plaza this year and when you get a little too drunk and start making a scene the security will put you into one of these tanks to sober up. We’ve heard that if you drive by around 5am you will see hands poking out of the holes. The other thing we’ve heard about these tanks is that they are one big CR (Comfort Room = Bathroom)! Too gross. I just could not resist sharing this wonderful thing with all of you readers. The other picture is of the insanity of Masskara. This is one road that is filled with vendors selling cheap trinkets, clothes, chicken BBQ and blow up toys for kids (such as Power Rangers). It is so busy with so many people all squished together and you seriously can’t move. It’s 30*C+ outside increased by all the hot bodies you are mashed up against, you get so sweaty and disgusting, I just couldn’t understand the fun in it! Ryan on the other hand loved the business of it all!

So on Thursday Brayden felt he had decided he was a big boy now because he was 4 years old. In his birthday excitment we were all up at 5:30am which is 30 minutes earlier then normal, we usually sleep though the intial call from the roosters. Mom, not so excited to wake up so early! It was a good day and Brayden finally got a much needed haircut just in time for his party the next day!

Friday was party day. Again, so excited to have our friends come over we were up at 5:30am, again I was not so excited about this. We decided to invite a couple families from church who Brayden really enjoys playing with. The couple of days before were spent making fondant for the cake and the kids and I making a horrible mess on the floor in our attempt to make a pinata. Brayden decided that he wanted a Power Rangers birthday cake which was a shocker to me since I didn’t even have a clue he knew what a Power Ranger was and I had no idea what they were other then fighting characters on TV. I guess it’s the begininning of peer influence. So Brayden and I searched the internet for pictures of Power Ranger cakes until he found something that he was excited about. I did the best I could and I figure I’ve come along way since his first birthday cake of a smeared soccer ball.

The festivities included a treasure hunt, pinata beating, food and cake and the kids took care of the rest playing outside, running after eachother and burning off all the sugar they were eating. We were able to feed the 30ish guests with our assortment of goodies including 200 Lumpia (spring rolls) made a church member for her favorite customer, Ryan.

Unfortunately we don’t have too many pictures since most of the party was recorded on video instead of camera but i’ve rounded up a couple of the kids playing outside. It was kind of a nut house with the 13 primary aged kids and then some of the older kids Brayden really loves but Brayden had a great time and I think Sydney felt the party was just as much for her as it was for Brayden.

Sunday morning we got up and took the ferry to Suquijor which was about 1 hour long. We didn’t really do to much but spend the day relaxing at the swimming pool and playing around together. It had a great slide which the kids loved and I got stuck on. It was pretty warm and deep and so they loved jumping into the water and swimming around together. It also had a shallow section of the pool they could stand in and jump around splashing without worry. The place we stayed was designed and landscaped really nicely. It was situated on a white beach but unfortunately they weren’t maintaining it daily so there was a lot of reeds on the shore Finally on Monday before we left someone was out there raking up all the reeds and cleaning up the beach. We took a stroll along the water and played on a tire swing they had haning from a coconut tree but we had no desire to swim in the sea with no where really open to lay on the beach.

Monday was a cloudy day which brought beautiful clouds up in the mountains on the Islands in the distance. It was calm and peaceful to watch, a great way to start the day!

The way home seemed to go by pretty quickly. Ryan found some sound competition in a vehicle in front of weaving through the mountain as quickly as he was. It became a competition and helped us get home in 4 hours after our lunch stop in Dumaguete and taking a couple of pictures I’ve wanted to take since we arrived here in the Philippines.

This past weekend we decided to take what will probably be our last family excursion in the Philippines. Well the last one for a while at least. Now that Ryan has technically started his MBA I don’t think we’ll many free weekends where extra reading and catching up on assignments and work won’t take over.

On Saturday around noon we started our journey to the opposite end of the island that we’re on to the capital city of the only other Province which occupies Negros Island; Negros Oriental. The city is named Dumaguete and there a couple of different routes on the Island. One, all coastal, Ryan took when the kids and I were home last Halloween so we decided this time we would drive through the mountain. The map here is a little on the not so hot side but it was all I could really find that showed where we were going and how we got there. So I hope on the North you can find our starting point of Bacolod and on the Southeast part of the Island you can find Dumaguete. Well if you look a little bit more south and to the east you will see a smaller Island named Siquijor and was our final destination… more on that later.

The drive down to Dumaguete took about 5 hours since we had to make a couple of stops on the side of the road to use natures potty and to get a couple of pictures. The kids were surprisingly well behaved in the backseat being thrown around by Ryans speedy turns through the mountains. We arrived in Dumaguete at dinner time, walked down the boardwalk, ate and headed to bed. Unfortunately I have no pictures from Dumaguete itself since other then there being a million motor bikes and half of them being driven by girls, there was nothing special about it (sorry Dumaguetians). But I do have a couple pictures from the drive up that are pretty nice.