A few loose ends

It's hard to believe that my son has completed 1st grade.

Thursday was the last day of the school year for Jack and the last few weeks have felt like we've been tying up the few loose ends of our first year in Singapore.

We had our last meeting at the school to see Jack's progress through the year. It was kind of neat the way they had set it up. The students were in charge of showing their parents all of the things they had learned. There were a few different stations in the room that the kids would take their parents to. They got to show off their improvement in areas like reading, math and writing, as well as what they learned in their special classes like music, art, and Mandarin. The teachers did a good job of hanging onto work from the start of the year so that you could compare it to the things they're doing now and see their progress. When Jack was showing us his favorite parts of the library, we took a quick picture.


The other thing that finished up recently was Cub Scouts. Jack has now officially completed his year of Tiger Cubs and has also received his Bobcat Badge. He worked very hard to complete all of the required activities as well as completing a bunch of electives and 8 different belt loop awards.

When the bobcat badge is awarded, the kids go through a short ceremony on stage where they get their face painted with different colors that represent things like honesty, courage, and respect. Don't ask me how face paint does this, but the kids all seem impressed and are all very proud of themselves.


You can't see it in the picture, but Jack's smile is starting to look like all of the other kids in the primary school. It's got holes in it. He now lost both of his bottom front two teeth and his top two are loose. Here's a picture from after he lost the first one on the bottom.


The last loose end to tie up is packing for summer vacation. Melissa and Jack are flying out of Singapore on Sunday leaving Daddy behind by himself to work for the next six weeks while they go the visit friends and swim at the beach. Melissa has been working on packing for about a week and a half trying to sort out what to bring and what she wants to buy in the US. Jack has outgrown more than half of his clothes. The kids clothes here aren't of the best quality, so Melissa plans on just buying most of Jacks new wardrobe when she arrives in Virginia. Even so, she and Jack will be checking-in two big suitcases each, as well as a carry-on. One of the suitcases is actually empty with another suitcase in it so we have extra room to bring more stuff back with us.

Melissa is not really looking forward to the flight. We just found out that the nice people at United Airlines changed the brand new Boeing 777 they were supposed to fly on for an old 747. What that means is, no in flight entertainment system in the back of the seat. Just a movie up on the wall. Not good times with a 7 year old when you'll be in the air for about 24 total hours. We've been preparing DVD players, computers, iPods and the Nintendo DS all week to make sure we have batteries fully charged.

Wish Melissa luck. She needs it.