Indoor Beach Party

Joe's kindy had an indoor beach party this morning, on the last day before the school holidays! I was initially too lazy to do anything but I had a sudden last-minute burst of inspiration yesterday and even did something for Joy so she didn't feel left out.
Yup....I have a Beach Hunk and a Beach Babe!

And the 2 hula sisters looked absolutely pretty as well!

The teachers obviously put in a lot of effort with the deco to cook up the right ambience.

While waiting for the party to start, we walked around and took photos with all the lovely art work on the walls.

And then they started eating...

Tonnes of food as usual....and mostly the usual food....sausages, nuggets, fishball......but one kid in Joe's class brought a big tub of cut apples! And I'm so surprised that Joe opted for apples instead of potato chips (which he kindly declined).

While the kids were busy eating, Joy had some fun smiling for my camera...

I asked her to pretend to kiss the dolphin and she kindly obliged me.

Then she made herself very at ease with Joe's class...

And she even parked herself behind kor kor when it was time for a class photo. Teacher was so kind to let her busybody.

At the end of the party, the teachers announced 2 names from each class for Best Dressed prizes. My Beach Hunk was one of the 2 from his class. Such a pleasant surprise considering it was a last minute effort.

Back home, my Beach Babe obediently posed for me again with her pink sunglasses. And she wants to go for another indoor beach party!

busy updates

I know, I know....I've been rather inactive with blogging lately. Busy is the usual excuse.

In fact, I just realized my desktop calendar is still at April when we're more than halfway through May.

thank you YeeTeow for the pretty PINK Timberland sandals!

All's well though.... and the children have been good. Joseph's appetite has been exceptionally good lately and he hasn't had any antibiotics so far this year. His latest 'thing' is to practice holding his breath underwater while he swims the diameter of the baby pool.
Joy is blossoming and all ready to be a big sister. She's very motherly to her brood of 'babies' i.e. Boots, Angelina (her little bear) and baby Jaguar.

Sometimes, she's too mature. She says things like, "You shee shee....I also have to shee shee ah? See...I told you I have no urine!"

And her latest thing.... refusing her afternoon naps yet having energy to keep going till 10pm!!!

Sofas are not for sitting

When we bought this promised land, it came quite fully-furnished. But I was thinking of changing the sofa set. I'm quite glad now that I didn't...

one of those rare times when she sits like a lady

I don't know if it's a universal thing with children or just unique to mine but they have this inability to actually put their rear ends on the sofa for a decent amount of time.

They prefer instead to climb and jump and imagine it's some high cliff that they have to climb over to escape the great white shark swimming below. Or imagine she's humpty dumpty sitting on the wall...
I guess I shouldn't curb their imaginative play which is why I'm glad it's not a brand new and NOT WHITE sofa.

They can jump all they want until they grow out of this phase and I don't have to get stressed out and scream at them everyday to sit down and stop jumping.

coz I didn't buy it!!!

Annual Family Holiday Down South

Last weekend was a long weekend for us and what a weekend it was!

The 'holiday' started early for Joe with a school trip to Zoo Negara on Thursday. After having visited the Honolulu Zoo in 2008, Melbourne Zoo in 2009 and Singapore Zoo in 2010, he finally visited our local zoo this year.

The next day (Friday) was a post-outing school holiday. Since Daalin was also on his Easter mid-semester break and I don't work on Fridays, we drove down to Yong Peng, arriving just in time to watch the Royal Wedding live on TV.

I find Yong Peng relaxing because the kids can entertain themselves and I don't have to do house chores :-)

The next morning, we made our way to Desaru and checked into Lotus Desaru Resort. We picked this resort mainly because it's located in Johor, has many-rooms apartments and something to entertain the boys.

The resort water park with a long water slide was certainly the highlight for the boys.
At night, we celebrated Ah Mah's birthday.

While the boys spent morning and evenings at the waterpark, my princess preferred to stay dry and close to me.

She certainly found Tua Pek's iPad more entertaining.

The boys loved this coconut too. But my princess was terrified of it!

The coconut tips over with a big splash when full....Joe thought it was great fun!

Besides all the water fun, there was a lot of iPhone and iPad and Wii time and of course just chit chatting and enjoying family company.

We had all our meals in the hotel room. Ah Mah was a fantastic Food Minister. She brought frozen nasi briyani, beef rendang, char siew, devil chicken, boneless roast duck and a lot of other stuff.

We even had sushi-making in the hotel room!I think the hotel staff might have freaked out if they had seen us carrying in the rice cooker, hot plate, pots and huge ice-boxes (filled with frozen food). Lucky for us, they didn't.

On Monday, we checked out and left the hotel at 11.30am, arriving in Yong Peng at 2pm. After a late lunch, Daalin took a short nap while I packed our car and fed the kids milk.

We departed Yong Peng at 4pm and the drive home was certainly one of the most pain-in-the-rear-end ones for me. Around Tangkak, a milk truck crashed to the road side creating a 5km jam because busybody Malaysians stopped their cars on the emergency lane to loot the milk.

Then it wasn't even 6pm when my son surprised me by saying he was starving. We stopped at the Ayer Keroh overhead rest stop to tar pau KFC. There was a huge crowd and long queue at KFC. Then it poured heavily when we wanted to leave.

Just after entering the highway again, there was another jam due to another accident.

We finally passed Seremban at about 8pm and traffic slowed down again....all because of an accident on the south bound lane!!! It took us 45 minutes to cover the stretch between Seremban and Nilai.

KL was jam-free and we got home at 9.30pm. It took 5.5 hours for what normally takes under 2.5 hours!

Joseph wants to go to Lotus Desaru again....

We'll see..... maybe when the Senai-Desaru highway opens, and it's off-peak period.

He sure did enjoy himself though.... family time is great!

Six today!

Joseph is 6 years old today! We had a mini joint-party with Nat in school.

Nat's mummy and I were schoolmates and though we didn't 'pakat', Nat is 2 days younger than Joe while Nat's sister is 11 days older than Joe's sister.

It takes very little to get children happy and excited. A simple chocolate cake with dinos on top was enough to make the boys happy.

Knowing the kids don't have a lot of time to eat due to the short recess time, we only had simple egg sandwiches and vitagen.

Joy-Anne was very happy to go to Kor Kor's school.

I hope this means she will adapt well next year, without much crying like her kor kor.

Blessed 6th Birthday Joseph!

I am pleased with the way you have grown....how you show so much love, care and concern for your family and in particular the way you care for and protect your sister.

I am glad you can tell right from wrong.

Most of all I am pleased you have Jesus in your heart. We pray that you will grow up to be a man after God's own heart - that you will love Him, obey Him, serve Him and walk with Jesus all the days of your life.

A butterfly for my sister

Joseph received this from Clarysse for his birthday - A DIY Finger Puppets kit. He was very excited to start making some puppets. Much to my delight, he said he wanted to make a puppet for his sister. I was very glad that he thought of her first, instead of himself.

So he made this butterfly one for her, with help from mama of course. Needless to say, she was very happy when he gave it to her. Only after that did he think of making a puppet for himself and I helped him make these two..... and orca and a great white shark... Now he's gonna tell me a story about a killer whale vs a great white shark!

A Dino Party for Joseph

Now I know why I like my new home so much..... it's spacious for parties!!! And what a blast we had... Joseph actually turns 6 this Thursday on 14th April but we had an early celebration yesterday evening.

Truth be told.... I liked Azlin's food so much after our home-warming that I had to find another reason to cater from her again. So we had a party for Joe.

Shireen baked Joe's dino cake - Japanese cheese cake with dinos, trees and a volcanoe as well!

I handmade a photo frame for each child - personalized with their name on it. And I made Joe write a thank you note for each frame. He wrote it 16 times in all! He did complain a little but I told him he had to share a bit of the work with me.

Uncle Billy @ Ah Ku did a great job at entertaining the kids, parents and grandparents.

He also led them in some games to work up an appetite. We sang Happy Birthday and Daalin prayed for Joe before everyone attacked the food.

The evening ended with Joe opening his presents after all our guests had left.

Now the princess wants a pink butterfly party when she turns 4 years old...