Last Holiday ... Singapore

Sorry, that this is such a be-lated post.

At the end of the school hols, also the Merdeka Weekend (national day), we actually made a last minute decision to go down to Singapore. And as usual, we stayed with my sister.


This time round, we visited a nice public pool in Seng Kang,
It has quite an elaborate playpool with slides, tubes and fountains.
As usual, Micah had a splash if a time, while Max had to be persuaded to stay wet a little longer than he wanted to be.


Myron took a nap while his Daddy and brothers were having fun.



We also went on the Singapore Flyer. This we targeted to get on about sunset, so when we boarded the "capsule", it was still light, but when we came out it was dark.
Look at the city's night-lights. Nice.
(I took the shots below with my camera. Gadget daddy has some really nice ones with his more sophisticated camera.)



It is always good to spend time with family, especially those we don't see enough.

The kids sure had a good time together.

Father's Day

We had two celebrations for Father's Day this year.

My sister and her family were in town until Saturday, so she planned a surprise Father's Day celebration for her husband and mine.

We had dinner and care at Tony Romas.



While waiting for the food to arrive, the kids had some fun with the doodle-sheet.


Earlier, the boys had brought back their craft for Father's Day from school. It actually comes with a picture stand. Gadget-daddy was impressed with their drawings.

Portrait of "My Dad and I" from Micah and Max.

On Sunday night, we went out for dinner again. This time it was a dinner with Grandpa, Grandma and suk-suk (Uncle on the father's side, the father's younger brother/ cousin brother).

The main dish(es) were 2 types of crabs. We also had ribs marinated and stir-fried in stout, a steam fish and toufu.

And it seems to be more and more a practice that Mommy's too busy with the boys, feeding them, when the food arrives that no photos of the delicious dinner as proof. But we all had a good time, and for Mommy, the most important part was that the boys ate well too.

Whatever the celebration maybe, when you have young kids, they tend to be in the limelight.
:)

Breath In... Breath Out...

The reason why I have not blogged is because it is completely exhausting having to run around with 4 kids, and sometimes including a little latch-on pumpkin.

The last week we were completely swarmed with my sister's visit.

We went out everyday, sometimes half a day, sometimes a full day.
Sometimes she ends up in my place the whole day, and sometimes we end up being in Ah MA's house the whole day.

Most of the time I was just too busy to even think of taking photos,
but here's one of the days we went out, to our favourite hang-out place, The National Science Center.

They had a special exhibit of "Animal Mechanicals"

mechanical platypus

mechanical giraffe and mechanical grasshopper

We also had other amusements,
like turtle racing


and fun with camouflage cloaks.


This was just a fraction of what we did.

We also visited the special "Survival" exhibit at the Science Center. It was more of computer generated stuff, very high tech, not much of a sensory encounter. The kids enjoyed the computer games, but we had a lot of explaining to do about the environment.

The we did the usual of playing in the ball-pool room and then continually telling the kids it's time to go.

It took us half an hour to finally get to the car.

It's always exciting and draining at the same time handing the dynamics of four pre-schoolers in a group.

*Phew*

Happy Birthday Xue Han!

This little boy turns two today.


He is Micah, Max and Myron's cousin brother who lives in Lion City (Singapore).


We love you, cutie.
We will be seeing you soon to celebrate your birthday with you.
Micah and Max can't wait to give you your presents and have you open them.
Myron will be making his first journey out of Malaysia. Oh, so exciting for the boys!!
So exciting for all of us.

Xue Han,
May you continue to grow in wellness and excellence.
May there be many milestone markers.
May you continue to bring joy to the people around you.
May there be many more to come.

God bless you and keep you.

Found Them CNY Pix

Update:

I finally located the photos I had intended to put up in the last post, but was just too tired to think clearly where to look for them.

So here are the shots of:

Tea Ceremony at Ah MA's -




Lion dance in action -


Me and the two kids on my knees.




More happy shots of the kids -





My Boys:Their cousins:

Our Family Pix: CNY 2009

More Of Our CNY In Colours

Sorry this is so late, but looking up some photos, thought I'd put this up anyway.


The first day we went to Ah Ma's house and did the usual tea ceremony.

This is the time we usually get some shots of all the kids in their New Year clothes.
None in a traditional Chinese garb this year.



Then we visited a family friend who had the Lion dance at her house.
It was totally thrilling for the kids to see one so close this year.
The fire crackers were deafening.

(Sorry I did not manage to catch the Lions in action as I was holding Max and my niece close to me. I had one child on a knee each. They were thrilled and terrified at the same time.)


We managed to visit 2 other homes.

By the time we got back it was time to shower and change to get to Ah Ma's for a steamboat dinner, with Yee-sang again.



Then we did the cake and song thing for Gadget-daddy.
This time, we had 2 cakes... just for the kids to sing and blow the candles.
Does this mean he aged 2 years instead of one this time? ;)



And in the midst of all the food, fun and noise, Micah was fast asleep on a lazy chair. All because he was too in volved in all the earlier visitations he did not nap. Hence he missed the dinner (Max was sleeping in Gadget-daddy's arms while we were visiting the third house).

Year End Bash

We had two exciting celebrations for the year end, which we will be repeating for many years to come.

Max turned 3 on 28th Dec, but we had a nice barbecue party on the 27th at Ah Ma's house. It was pretty much a family do, with the special presence of a few friends.


Oh, we were all just so excited over the presence of our friends and the presents and the cake... that the only shots taken were from Max's uncle's camera.


Then on the 29th, we had a nice sit-down dinner at a Chinese Restaurant to celebrate Ah Ma's birthday.

We all sat and ate the meal like for the longest time, but everyone had fun, especially the kids playing with the karaoke set, singing Happy Birthday to Ah Ma until we had to tell them to "SING SOMETHING ELSE".

The food was good, and the cake was just a drool!
But it really ended at almost 11pm. We were actually later than a wedding dinner that was held in the main hall (they gave us a private room).

Just less than 24 hours to a new year...
Time sure flies....

P/s - Thank you everyone, for such wonderful presents.

Doing The Touristy Thing.

On Boxing Day, my niece declared she wanted to go up to the Kuala Lumpur Tower. It's a structure we could see everyday whenever we journeyed out of Ah Ma's house.

So we all had a visit. It was the first time for all of us except Gadget-daddy who had been there a couple of times before for his company function.

So we paid the fees (RM38/adult for a package), got our paper binoculars and headed up.


There were actual binoculars for anyone's use at the observatory deck. Gadget-daddy showed the boys where our house is located.


The other attractions there were the winterland display
(terribly disappointing as everything is just cut out of Styrofoam and plastered with cotton and silver dust, and it's in the open air of which, knowing our weather, was just swealtering hot and nothing like winter) ...


... and an animal expo, called the Animal Zone.
This was actually quite good.


We all had a couple of breaks for the kids mainly.


By the time we were done, all the children and adults were exhausted but happy.



For me, there was just one tinge of sadness.

This bird's eye view shows where my school used to stand - now just a horrid red patch of dirt under construction.


Yeap.
The wonderful old building of St. Mary's Secondary School,
and also the primary school, the fields, the old bungalow on stilts and our small canteen
no longer exists.