Castle Beach on East Coast Park

This weekend, we had planned to go to the beach with a group from the company my hubby works for and build castles with "the castle man".  He is called that because he shows you how to build castles with some great sand castle tools, then conveniently sells his building products.  However, I must say, he is an incredible motivational speaker and teaches you team work in the simplest of ways - and his sand castle building kit is the best I have ever seen!

It has been raining every single day here late in the afternoon.  The castle adventure was scheduled for late afternoon.  The organizers of this great event were concerned that the rain would put a damper on the activity, but me and my optimism kept trying to refocus the attention to the fun we would have.  After all, my thought is we live in Singapore - what are the chances of it NOT raining?  Everyone knows this, right?  And this guy has been doing sand castles for years now, so I had to hope he knew what he was doing.  I told one of the women to quit worrying about it, if it rained she could watch me eat my words with chili sauce.

Saturday dawned as any normal day does; hot, steamy with an air about it that assured me it would rain.  Not that it might rain - it would rain.  I just hoped it would not rain during our castle building fun.  Steve and I packed all the loot we needed to bring (I had all the snacks for about 40 people), and we hauled it down to the lobby area to catch our inevitable taxi.  No, he doesn't have the car right now - his counterpart does.  Once we loaded up the taxi trunk (literally) we headed out to east coast beach.  On the way, looking around, I was dismayed to see rain on the right, rain in front of us and rain on the left.  I was too darned afraid to look back - but I knew without a doubt what I would see.  Our little taxi must have had an umbrella over it though because it was not raining on it.  As we got closer to the beach, I saw very dark storm clouds looming very close by.  I sighed, texted one of the organizers and said, "bring chili sauce" knowing she would understand.

I needn't have worried.  I don't know how, but the rain went all around us - like the beach where we were had a huge umbrella on it.  It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen - but the rain stayed away and we had the time of our lives!

For obvious reasons, I am not going to post pictures here of everyone, but I do have a few pictures to share:

Ann, this is for you  :-)

Since it important to have very wet sand to make a castle, Steve had to fetch a lot of water.  Kids spill too much even though they loved going to get it, so Steve helped by bringing water to them:

He had plenty of help:

We could see storm clouds far out on the horizon:

And storm clouds not far out on the horizon:

Loved this picture:

Don't know what kind of flower that is, but it looked very similar to a hibiscus, but it grew on a tree - not a large bush, an honest to goodness tree.

This is part of one of the castles they built:

And finally time to go home:

Dry and happy, we had a great day with friends.  If you are interested, check out Castle Beach website for more information.  Make plans, take your kids and go out and join the fun!

Sunday we had another nice day.  We walked back to east coast park and went all the way back to the beach - about a 5 mile walk.  We took it easy and just strolled the day away.  We had intended to eat at the hawker center, but while we were walking, I started thinking about Steve's bbq... chicken I had out... Steve's bbq sauce... air conditioning... Steve's grilling... quiet evening... or the hawker center.  Steve's bbq won out.  I suggesting going home, relaxing while he grilled and watching tv.  It was a perfect ending to a perfect weekend.  

He makes the best bbq sauce ever!  Would you like a copy of his recipe?  Beg him for it and he might let me post it!  Yum!

 

Off to dreamland so I can start a perfect week   :-)