The hotel we stayed at in Vietnam offered a basketball hoop to the side of the tennis courts, so one cloudy afternoon, Daddy and Nyan grabbed a ball and shot around for a little while. Let’s just say that what they lacked in skill, they made up for in effort. (This sadly applies to both Daddy and Nyan). Check it out…
Tag Archives: outdoors
Photo of the Day: Water Park
The shopping mall down the road from our place has a small water park up on the roof. Pretty standard amenity for Singapore, frankly. Here’s the boy a few weeks ago, splashing away without a care in the world.
Nyan Thomas Feeds a Giraffe
Nyan took Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa to the Singapore Zoo last week. We happened to get to the giraffe enclosure right at feeding time – and for a few dollars, they handed us some carrots and let us feed the critter. Nyan was… well, he was less than impressed. And who can blame him, really – I mean, take a look at that long, black, snake-like tongue. Kinda creepy to a three-year-old.
Bonus: later, we came across a strange hairy monkey – seriously, dude was like a giant mustache that was swinging thru the trees – who jumped onto a fence post and checked us out. Nyan was still a little leery, but less so, and even managed to give a wave to the little fella.
Rainy Day
For a tropical place, it doesn’t actually seem to rain all that much here in Singapore. Or maybe it’s just that there’s a really long dry season. In any case, a few weeks back it was actually raining at pick-up-from-school time, so Daddy packed an umbrella. It had mostly stopped by the time we got outside, but that didn’t stop our hero from insisting that he use the umbrella.
Although,he didn’t exactly use it in conventional fashion…
Photo of the Day: In the Pool
Here’s our boy, hanging out in one of the many swimming pools at our apartment complex.
(click to enlarge)
Nyan Thomas, Beach Bum
We live on a tropical island. In fact we live a 10-minute stroll from the shore, and a long stretch of sand. Unfortunately that sand looks out onto one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and those ships don’t much care if they dump their trash overboard and if that trash then washes ashore. Jerks. But no problem: when we need a fix of sand and sea, we just hop a ferry or a plane and in no time we’re on another tropical island, one with clean beaches.
Nyan had never spent time on a beach before we moved here, but he’s taking to it like a fish to, uh, sand. Here he is, showing off the latest swimwear for this season:
Here’s our boy on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia, this past weekend:
This is Nyan on Bintan, Indonesia – digging in the sand (while staring at the group of girls who would later chase him around) and splashing in a small tidal pool.
Some video of Nyan, kicking and splashing in that same tidal pool:
And finally, what’s a day on a breezy beach without a kite?
Photo of the Day: At the Beach
Here’s Nyan, playing with his bulldozer behind a small breakwater at East Coast Park, a great big green space about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. Love it.
Slice of Life: The Beach
Nothing much going on in this video. We just wanted to share a bit about Nyan’s overall environment and his day to day. This is from East Coast Park, the seaside park about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. They have this metal observation tower that we climbed the other day, and it gives great views of the trees, the beach and the Strait of Malacca, which is always jam-packed with cargo ships and oil tankers waiting to offload their cargo at the port of Singapore. (They also apparently dump lots of trash into the water – which washes ashore at East Coast Park – and likely spew a fair amount of oil and sewage into the water as well. Upshot: we’ve not actually gone into the water at East Coast Park, and frankly we’re extremely unlikely to ever do so. Bummer.)
Anyway, we just feel this is a nice little video that illustrates a bit of what Nyan’s life is like here in Singapore.
Nyan Thomas, Gardener
Maybe it’s his Iowa farming roots, or maybe it’s his West Country of England farming roots. Or maybe it’s just that he always wants to help. Whatever the reason, Nyan loves helping out when Grandma is out in the garden. (Same here in Singapore: we have but one solitary houseplant so far, out on the balcony, awaiting transplanting into a bigger pot. Daddy can’t go out there to give it some water without a little helper tagging along and ‘helping.’)
Here are some shots from some cool early spring days in Iowa, Nyan doing his best to make sure Grandma’s garden looks great.
A Day at the Park
We know, we know, we’ve been quite remiss in posting new pics and videos as of late, we realize. Apologies. Still living out of suitcases, which is causing all sorts of havoc with trying to do things like make blog posts on a regular basis. All good, don’t get us wrong – we’re just a little off kilter. Expect fresh stories, photos and videos to resume in the very near future.
Meantime, let’s go back in time a couple months – early spring, Daddy’s hometown. It was a cool but sunny afternoon, and Nyan and Daddy headed to the neighborhood park, a place called Willow Creek Park, for some fresh air and general fun.
He really wanted to commandeer this soccer ball, but instead he decided to just go for a jog.
And here he is riding a plastic seahorse. I’m not sure what sound a seahorse makes, but I betcha it sounds a lot like whatever it is Nyan is saying in this video:
Similarly, riding a plastic fish.
And of course it’s not a trip to the park without playing on a slide:
Come back soon for photos and videos from the Singapore Zoo, from a dance-off between Nyan and a 19-month-old boy at an Orchard Road mall food court, from Nyan running down the hall of our hotel, and much more.
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