Welcome to the Newbie

After nine months of holding the fort, making things happen and trying to keep our little company together and powering through a very tricky time in the market, we finally have our new MD chosen, approved, announced and installed. Finally!

Welcome lunch for the new hire

            It will take through until next year for him to be fully up and running, but with the responsibility of the office now firmly over on his shoulders (or as much as possible at least), I can finally breath a big sigh of relief and hopefully have plain sailing straight through to the end of the year. Hooray! 

The Final Countdown

I know that I have been counting down to our wedding all year, but we really are on the final countdown now. Not just to our wedding, but to home time, to Christmas, to family time, to the end of the year, and of course, to the wedding.

            When we woke up this morning the first thing I thought was that we are flying home next weekend. Just two more working weeks to go and then it will be home time! After a couple of incredibly stressful weeks at work all of a sudden none of it matters, because I can almost smell home time already! 

Final Instalment on the Americans

Cheat instalment two is going to focus on our amazing long weekend in Bali. We ran away from work early on Thursday afternoon and spent the rest of the weekend in the glorious Bali sun.  Even on the cusp of rainy season we lucked out with glorious weather each and every day, with only the odd thunderstorm thrown in for good measure. 

Drinks in front of the ocean at Ku De Ta

Visiting the Monkey Forest

Fabulous local Indonesian lunch with the perfect view of the rainforest

The boys enjoyed cut-throat razor shaves (once Jeff decided he was brave enough)

Pina coladas, Poppies' style

We took them to our favourite restaurant, Sardine 

Setset at Ku De Ta

Getting some culture at the Elephant Temple

Beach days are different in Bali 

Visiting the rice terraces really makes you realise how far away from home you are!

American Buddies

After my first few posts about the American’s visit everything in my world got a little bit busy and I missed out a couple of instalments. I blame the fact that I had to prep the office for a new boss and get an awful lot of work done on a short week when I kept leaving the office at 4pm to ensure that we had ample time for play dates in the evenings. 

            To make up for it there are going to be two very brief photo heavy updates to share all the fun and adventures in one fell swoop. Instalment number one is filled with the last day in Singapore. While Nick had to head off for a work event after work we set ourselves up for a bit of a geeky evening. We started by eating all the dim sum we could physically fit into our bodies, then we went to 28 Hong Kong Street, one of the top ten bars in the world (apparently), and we rounded off the day with a trip to the Night Safari, where we of course forced Catherine to wear giraffe ears all the way around, and she loved it! 

Geeking it up at the Night Safari 

Banana, peanut butter, bacon and flowers - Catherine cocktail of choice

Sunday brunch day

Catherine's sweet potato latte - it was as gross as it sounds!

When Catherine and Jeff told us that they were going to be coming to stay, we earmarked their visit as the only time in these six months that we would be attending a proper champagne brunch. I am not sure that they were entirely ready for what this would entail, but we were, and we’ve been dieting for the past 5 months in preparation!

Brunching! 

Along with Kev and Jules, we had booked ourselves in for brunch at Raffles Hotel, not only because the food is amazing, but because one must-drink item on every visitors list is the classic Singapore Sling, which was first served in Raffles, and is this year celebrating it’s 100^th anniversary, so with brunch at Raffles, where the cocktails are free flow we were really killing two birds with one stone. It would have been foolish not to!

            After taking Catherine to try out the local favourite “sweet potato latte” (which yes, is as disgusting as it sounds) while Jeff had a quick dip, we were then at Raffles and ready to brunch as soon as the clock stuck midday.

Brunch recovery 

Four hours of free-flow all you can eat and drink then passed in a blur of stomach aches for everyone other than Jeff who somehow managed to clear an impressive five plates stacked high with food, and a ridiculous amount of cocktails to accompany them.

Pool time 

By the end of the session, we found ourselves reclining outside, trying to digest as much as possible before taking a little tour around the rest of Raffles and then heading home to recover in the swimming pool for a few hours.

3D viewing and minimal moving around for the rest of the day 

We had mentioned to Nicks uncle, who is passing through town, that we might have been able to meet up with him for dinner if he wanted, but when he called us at 7pm to see what we were up to we were already all lying on and around the sofa in the recovery position, drinking tea and watching Jurassic World in 3D on Nick’s fancy projector. There were no more adventures for us that day, just PJs and tea for the rest of the day!