The Canadian Matchmaker

Meet Jody, aka Rosie, aka Canadian Matchmaker. She and Ben have been pals since they were in diapers fighting over the same toy in nursery. I met her when we were crazy singles working at Deer Valley. She and my cousin became best pals, which meant we quickly became friends too. After we got to know each other Jody insisted I had to marry her friend, Benji, who was serving an LDS mission in Russia at the time. So, she is responsible for the Ben and Cheryl show. Jody is truly one of the most delightful people you will ever meet. I adore her. My dad was a big fan too. He told every single (meaning not married) person who came to my parents' home about 'the Canadian Matchmaker.' He'd even give out her contact information.


Meet Dano, aka Samara's new BFF. He's Jody's husband of 10 years and he's awesome too. They came to visit us the last two weeks of October for their anniversary. They suffered no jet lag. You see, they have 5 kids, the youngest being a set of 20-month old twins. They got 6 hours of undisturbed sleep on the plane over and that was enough to put them in a whole new time zone. I overheard Jody's dad telling her while they were skyping, "Enjoy your vacation. This is the only one you are going to get." They were welcomed home with everyone catching the flu. They definitely lived it up while they were here though and went nonstop seeing and doing everything. They are our kind of travelers. It was neat to experience some of it with them--both old and new places...


...like this sweet cat forever glorified in bronze at the Peranakan museum. (Is this hilarious to anyone else?) We hadn't been to that part of the city yet and this was the perfect excuse to go there. The first picture in this post is in front of the museum. There is beautiful and unique architecture in the area.


The museum is great too for kids. You get to make stamps and seals throughout the museum. Peranakans are descendants of the foreign traders who married locals and assimilated into local culture by adopting nusantara customs (whatever that means). We'll definitely be returning to the area again as it was very interesting.

We also made it to the tree-top walk, which we attempted one time before but got totally lost and didn't make it to the suspension bridge. We went a different long way this time but they were good sports. Ben says he's never going hiking with me again.


See how the humidity gives us a nice healthy glow and makes Samara say, "I want to go home." the entire way.

We also spent a very rainy day at Sentosa. Who says rain has to ruin a day at the beach?! Well, the lifeguard did when he made us get out of the water. Samara loved it and was not happy when the lifeguard kicked us out.

I am just going to copy what Jody said about this picture because it's much funnier than how I'd put it. "When it started to rain Cheryl and I made sure everything was well covered... We left Samara to keep an eye on the progress. That is the defeted sholder slump of Dano after he put his first castle on the well manicured foundation and Samara knew that it was then her turn to SMASH it......Cheryl went running while yelling Samara NOOOO. I laughed really hard and took a picture"

Jody told me at least 29 times when Samara was, well, acting like a two-year old, "That's so much funnier when it's not one of my kids." Thanks, Jod! :)

Jody and Dano are foodies too, so we enjoyed trying some new foods with them. Above was our spread when we ate at the Food Republic (a food court in the mall but better than mall food courts back home). I think we got something from almost every stall. They are much more adventurous eaters than we are though--they even ate snails.

We also took an evening river cruise of the downtown and hadn't done that before. It was lovely. As you can see we even have that lovely humid glow at night.







Jody and Dano, we miss you!! Thanks for visiting and celebrating your anniversary here. They tell us our bunk beds are the perfect way to celebrate your 10th or any other special occasion, for that matter.
We even give our guests cold cereal for breakfast--no oatmeal for our visitors. Who wants to come next?