El Nino

We have been hearing all about the cold temperatures and winter weather in Virginia.  Jen and Katie are sad to miss all the winter fun.  When we moved to California for a year and half they missed the blizzard of 2009 with about a foot of snow falling in Virginia.  Now once again gone from VA, there has been lots of snow.  We joke that every year we go away will be filled with snow.  As sad as Jen and Katie get over this, as a parent I'm quite thrilled to not have to deal with those snowy winters.  Shoveling the driveway and canceled school is never fun for the parents.  Oh yea and all the wet coats, pants, and gloves brought in - constantly running the dryer and wiping up the puddles left by the snow boots.  It's fun for the kids, but not the mom!

So the ironic thing is, in Singapore the El Nino has caused the most beautiful weather - since 2009.  We are in our monsoon season and it hasn't rained in 3 weeks, we have had low humidity, beautiful sunshine, and temperatures in the high 70's to low 80's.  It's absolutely gorgeous!

The first day I noticed the change, I was at Katie's soccer game.  The winds were picking up and the weather seemed to be getting nice and I thought oh no, it's going to rain, her game is going to get cancelled.  However, it didn't rain, it was just a perfect day to play and watch soccer and since then the good weather has stayed.  Three weeks later as everyone is commenting on the great weather and realizing this won't last I dragged the family to do an outdoor activity.

Singapore has a fair amount of gardens and hiking areas especially for how horribly hot and humid it is here.  No one in their right mind really wants to hike a trail in 90 degree hot and humid weather, but 70-80 maybe; and definitely if 70-80 is considered a cool day.

We ended up going to a garden area I really like called Gardens by the Bay.  It has beautiful flowering bushes and these super cool metal tree like structure soaring 25-50 meters high.

As you can tell by the photos the day isn't the beautiful blue sky crystal clear day I said we were having.  The clouds came in while we were there and just a few rain drops fell.  I really hope I didn't jinx our good weather.  Keep your fingers crossed tomorrow is nice too!