Happening December

Yes....happening December. What an exciting month it has been to cap off an exciting year!

 

We managed to check out a few malls...just for the fun of it. Decorations are just soso... For the record, I have not been to Midvalley in all of 2012!

 

The Curve

Ikea

Sunway Pyramid

Tropicana City Mall

Ikano Power Center

Barbie Doll tree @ IPC

 We had to flee a fire in our apartment on 6th December 2012.

 The kids walked up 21 floors at 12 midnight after a long tiring day, with no complains and no whining.

Two days later they did great at the Children's Church Christmas Party Musical - Bows of Holly.

Little Lamb Christmas Party was on 9th December 2012.

cute little lamb cupcakes made by one of our leaders.

We spent a wonderful 6 days in Singapore with family.

On 21st December 2012, I accidentally kicked daalin's dumbell and badly injured my toe. No gross fracture but suspected chip/fragment fracture. It hurts till today.

And finally.....our PMC (pre-marital counselling) counselees got married!!! This is our first time doing PMC - as in we are the counsellors. **DUMC has a very strict policy that compels all couples intending to wed, to go through a series of 13 sessions of PMC with an assigned 'experienced' couple.

I love December - it's totally the happiest and most relaxing time of the year!

Christmas Dinner at home

Blessed Christmas!!!

We had Christmas dinner at home - food, family and fellowship.

I made salad.

This is my staple on a daily basis - huge bowl of raw vegetables with a squeeze of lemon/lime juice. I prefer this than oil-coated cooked vegetables. It also resolves my constipation problem (due to post-pregnancy haemorrhoids) and is the secret to how I lost all that baby fat.

Pre-Christmas Lunch at Latest Recipe@LeMeridien KL

It's 2 days to Christmas!

 

We had lunch at Latest Recipe at Le Meridien @ KL utilizing our Starwood complimentary dining voucher (2pax) and a nomination letter (2 pax - free dining when you refer a friend for Starwood membership) so we paid a total of zero ringgit.

first round - Caesar Salad, oysters, salmon sashimi

It had all the standard 5-star hotel fare as well as several live stations. You have to check out the live stations instead of just browsing the laid out fare, otherwise you  miss the best stuff.

Joseph enjoyed his spaghetti carbonara, nasi briyani and the mushroom soup which was very good. Certainly not canned soup.

Joy-Anne had her oats with mushroom soup and a generous portion of sweet desserts.

The roast lamb was really good with mint sauce. The skin came crispy!

Temaki from the Japanese station. Pretty good.

The teppanyaki beef, chicken and prawns from the Japanese station also deserve a mention. My mum who usually doesn't eat beef because it's smelly said the teppanyaki beef was good.  

 

There is quite a decent spread of indian food at the Indian station. If you like indian food, it is worth checking out Latest Recipe.

Desserts may not look like a lot but the quality makes up for the apparent lack of variety.

The waffles were very good. Light and crispy yet melt in your mouth.

I realized just as my tummy was getting really full that there's the option of teppanyaki ice-cream. There is a cold plate there where you can choose your toppings to be mixed-in to your ice cream.

I was really full by the time we walked out and I'm still full even now at 6 hours later!

 

The kids had some fun posing for photographs around the newly-refurbished lobby. Joy-Anne likes 'atas' places. Every time I tell her we're going out to eat, she will ask if it's an 'atas' place.

Good food is abundant. But let's not forget the real reason for the season....Jesus!

May your best present be Jesus! Blessed Christmas to everyone!

Singapore Family Holiday Part 4 - Sentosa Island

After a slow and easy day to recover from Universal Studios, we visited Sentosa Island on our second last day in Singapore.

It's just something I wanted to do because my parents brought me here when I was a kid. And we took the cable car too.

While the cable car station in Genting Highlands would be packed during the school holidays, the one at Mount Faber in Singapore was really empty.

 No queues is good news for us!

 We pre-bought mydeal vouchers for Daalin and myself. The package included return cable car tickets, 2 rounds on the Segway and the luge+skyride at Sentosa. For the kids, we bought the cable car tickets on the spot. S$18 each. Kinda pricey.

 The kids got free angry bird masks...

love birds...?

 It was a lovely clear morning and the view was breathtaking.

 We could even see the dolphins at UnderwaterWorld...

 Once on the tiny fun-filled island, we went for the luge first since it was right next to the cable car station. I had planned for Joseph to double with Daalin. But he wanted to go by himself. So we had to buy a ticket instead of paying the top up of S$3 for doubling.

Both boys thoroughly enjoyed the ride! Daalin enjoyed this way more than the roller coasters at Universal Studios because unlike the roller coasters, he's in control of this!!!

Joy wasn't feeling too good because she had a fever the day before so she wasn't quite interested in the luge. Joseph went a second round this time doubling with me.

I really enjoyed it too. It's a really cool ride and it's true...one time is not enough. But it's just too expensive with our weak RM against the Singapore Dollar.

The skyride back up the hill was also way cool!

I gave Joy some paracetamol to bring down the fever while she drank lots and lots of water. We then made our way down a few escalators towards the monorail station and then took the monorail to the Beach Station.

Transportation on the island (monorail, bus, trams) is complimentary.

By the time we got to the Beach Station, it started to rain. We took shelter inside McDonalds to have lunch while waiting for the rain to stop.

It did stop just long enough for Daaling and the children to have some fun on the Segway.

 After the ride, Joy told me she wants a segway for her 5th birthday!!! Now if only she knew that it costs as much as a Proton Iswara!!!

 It rained and rained after that. We took the tram out to the beach just to look see but there really wasn't much we could do.

 By then the kids were rather tired so we made our way back to the Cable Car Station and back to Mount Faber where we redeemed our complimentary drinks that came in souvenir Angry Birds-themed cups.

In spite of the weather, it was a lovely day out with many new experiences and lovely memories for us as a family.

We departed Singapore the next day. It was a very very good holiday - time well-spent with the family making priceless memories.

Family Holiday in Singapore Part 3 - Jacob Ballas Children's Garden and Ice Cream Chef

After a tiring day out at Universal Studios Singapore, we decided to do a free and easy rest day before venturing to Sentosa Island the next day. Thus on our 4th day in Singapore, we visited the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden.

This garden is a part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens and is located within the grounds of the National University of Singapore. It came highly recommended from just about everybody we spoke to. 

I found it to be a very educational place. Lots of stuff for the kids to feel and see and lots of greenery to shade and cool the place.

There's a treehouse for the kids to climb around and slide down. Bigger kids may find this boring though.

There is a lily pond and a floating pontoon on which you are encouraged to jump.

We explored some water plants...

 So I asked the kids if they could drown a water plant....and they started putting rocks on the plants to try to sink it.

 The verdict : the plants won.

This is supposed to be a 100-year-old tree trunk that was zapped dead by lightning.

Have you ever seen a fig tree? This was my first time seeing one!

 Joy enjoyed the sensory garden...

...and finding her way through the maze...

I got the chance to show Joseph a banana tree upclose and he remembered this amount of bananas is called setandan pisang.

Joy found a friend at the sandy playground and started making sandcastles.

There was a very low tree with lots of wide-spread branches. I encouraged her to climb it because it's not everyday that you find a tree so easy to climb. Initially she was apprehensive. But with some encouragement, she took to the challenge.

 And then she enjoyed it so much, she did not want to come down.

 We spent over an hour there before we had to go home for lunch...

Ah Mah's char koay teow

 In the evening we had dinner at home with other relatives and then my newly-promoted daalin treated everyone to some ice cream. My food-enthusiast nephew decided on Ice Cream Chefs.

 There is actually quite a number of artisan ice cream shops just around the corner from where we were staying. My nephew selected this over other options (like Udders and Salted Caramel) because he finds the selection of flavours better and the mix-in option something special and different.

 Here at Ice Cream Chefs, you pick your flavour, and then a item like Famous Amos, marshmallows, cookies, sprinkles, etc etc to be mixed-in on a cold stone.

Joy had a very BIG scoop of pink rose-flavoured ice cream on a cone.

 She didn't finish it.

Joseph had blueberry flavour with chocolate sauce (FREE!) on top while Daalin had the Durian Decadence and Yoghurt ice cream.

 I had the Durian Decadence and Chocolate Hersheys mixed-in with Famous Amos. It was very very good.

 Ice cream makes everyone happy!!!