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...

Chef Joy

Since we have a kitchen for the kids, I requested Ah Mah to sew a chef's hat and apron to complete the look.
It would have been easy to just buy from some toy shop but this is better. It's special because it's made by Ah Mah. I can tell Joy that her Ah Mah is so clever to be able to sew it for her.

Thank you Ah Mah. Now Joe wants a similar one in blue!

Hyla in the home

I've had a problem with dust for the longest time. It's more accurately called indoor pollution. Now that we have a new home twice the size of the old one, I told Daalin that I'm gonna need some help with keeping the house clean but I still don't quite like the idea of maids or cleaners.

So we finally got a Hyla. It's much more than just a vacuum cleaner.

The stuff that comes out of the mattresses and pillows is just shocking!

Can you imagine sleeping with all that every night?

So far, cleaning has been a breeze. I can clean everything from ceiling to floor with this Hyla. There's even no need to wash the curtains because I can just suck everything up and flush it down the toilet. And thus far, I'm glad to say that Actifed is no longer my best friend!

Bellygood Restaurant

Sometime ago we bought two 50% discount vouchers each for a 3-course meal + drink at Bellygood Restaurant in Sunway Mentari. We went twice and found it closed both times, before eventually finding out from their neighbour that they close on Mondays.

Then we forgot all about the vouchers until last night, and the vouchers expire today! So Daalin and I had a really nice porky lunch today.

For drinks we had iced lemon tea.

Then came the salads.... Grilled Bacon Salad...


...and Smoked Salmon Salad.

Next up came the main course...Pork Belly...

...and Baby Back Ribs...

Nice. But I wouldn't pay full price for it.


For desserts, we had a choice of Cinnamon Apples with ice-cream or Sticky Date Pudding but the ran out of the latter so we both had the former.

Compared to Nambawan, this place is more refined. It's a rather cosy quiet place. But the food is pricier although not as pricy as the few famous american foodchain restaurants. Nambawan is not fully-air-conditioned and doesn't have the ambience of a place where you'd bring someone for a first date. But it's value-for-money.

I guess I'd go back to Nambawan....especially for the RM6.90 pork burger!

I'm a banana. Yellow outside but white on the inside.

I also have a western stomach. I'd much rather have pasta or burgers than rice. Anyday. In fact, I'd be quite happy to not have to eat rice.

For a vacation, I would pick USA or Australia over China. Anytime. For that matter, I've been to both USA and Australia but never to China and I would go again and again to USA and Australia (if I had money unlimited) and it would not matter if I never went to China.

I know, I know....it's so un-chinese of me. Kacang lupakan kulit.

But my children will have to go to chinese school and learn to read and write chinese. He's already learning it in kindy and they are tested on 'ting sie' every week.

This is what he had to write last week.

Gong Ji (rooster) and Mu Ji Hui Xia Tan (mother hen can lay egg). Not easy and so many strokes. So my smart son being the adaptive child he is, wrote Tan as in his surname because he couldn't remember how to write tan as in egg.

But he did eventually get it right in school. After 2 big chee tans, this time he got 9/10. I know he has the brains if he will just focus and concentrate on his work. For now, he's such a dreamer and so easily distracted.

Nana's Birthday

Yesterday Nana turned 64 years young. We had an early celebration on Monday because KimKim is on night shift the rest of this week. Simple makan and chit chat at home. And the kids wanted to cut the cake again and again...
...and again and again...

Yesterday on the actual birthday, I told Joy-Anne, "today is Nana's real birthday" and she gave me a duh look and said, "again ah?"

Nana & KongKong went to Shogun on their own for dinner. Birthday girl eats free and senior citizen gets 50% off.