Auld Lang Syne

Here we stand at the threshold of a brand new year; 2010.

The end of yet another year naturally brings about a plethora of emotions;
Nostalgia, for the years gone by.
Joy, for gifts of birth and life, and likewise, sorrow for the loss of loved ones.
Love and gratitude for the mere presence of loving family and friends.
Fear and hope for life chapters yet to be written.

As we age, time seems to move at an increasing pace. With this realization comes alarm, and a sense of urgency to evaluate our lives.

I would like to think that with age, comes maturity and wisdom. The wisdom to see the big picture and not waste precious time and energy on petty issues.

It is said that we will regret more the things which we have not done, rather than the things which we have done wrong. I suppose it is better to make mistakes and fail than to not have tried at all. Our lives are too short to not give everything our best shot!

So let's not care about who is watching, or what other people think. Leave your comfort zone and do everything you want; climb your mountain!

Let's savour every minute of life and embrace all that lies in our path. Happiness is a state of mind. You can always choose to be happy no matter the circumstances.

Gratitude is important. If you find something to thank God for everyday, you will know your blessings and thus will be happy.

These are the things I hope to remember, to bring me through the year ahead and also the many more to come.

LIFE'S A PARTY! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!
CHEERS!!!

New baby

My newest Christmas pressie from hubby! A white Baby-G!

Sporty yet classy eh? Me likey... Most importantly; waterproof and doesn't cost a bomb to service! (Just spent RM700 to repair and polish my other one!! Could've bought two of these with that money!)

I am not very good at taking care of expensive, fragile gadgets. Look at my handphone with its many dents and grooves! Heck, look at my car with its many dents and grooves!

My handphone regularly does somersaults on the tarmac. iPhone and Blackberry are definitely out of the question for me. My car? Dowan to say anymore lah.. just look here.

My watch was in for repair because it had water inside after I went swimming! How could an expensive Omega drown, was what I would like to know. So the watch shop guy opened it and found there were broken bits and even rusty bits inside! He said he'd never seen anyone abuse a watch like I had.

Well, now you have. Isn't it grand to learn something new everyday?

So anyway, I have decided that the Omega is going into storage. I'll save it for my grandchildren maybe...

This Baby-G however, suits clumsy me perfectly!

"SHOCK RESIST" sealed the deal!

Thanks Darling!

And so the feasting began...

The marathon feasting started with a cousin's wedding dinner on Christmas Eve, followed closely by Christmas day lunch at Kung Kung and Popo's house. Then there was a huge dinner at Kung Kung Titus' house on Christmas night. On Boxing Day, it was a mee suah dinner at Sis no.2's place. Lastly, the night before, we had a barbecue dinner at our condo to celebrate ours and Sis no.4's wedding anniversary and also to welcome hubby home!

Feasting season at it's finest I'd say. Now that the season is more or less over, I'd better not waste time resuming my love hate relationship with diet and exercise!

Before that, let's recap the fun-filled holidays we spent surrounded with the people we love, and the scrumptious food that we bought, prepared and mostly, devoured!

The girls in new identical tees from Tai Ku. The shirts say "home-made cupcakes"! :) Eva is holding her new dolly from Po Po and Annie is wearing her new necklace from Sei Ku!


Grace before meal at Kung Kung Titus' house.


Dig in!
There was roasted curry lamb leg with pumpkin, ham, turkey, nestum prawns, mussels in a white wine cream sauce, home-made skinless sausages, deep-fried battered calamari, mashed potatoes, e.t.c...


Here's the best part, which all the kids have been looking forward to for weeks! Presents!! And even ang pows from Kung Kung! Happy, happy!


Here they're at Sis no.2's house having a blast with sparklers specially flown in from Singapore!


There was even a line-dancing session with Big Aunt! ~Don't break my heart, my achy breaky heart..~


Can you believe it? More presents!! (Our home is currently in a mess, with present aplenty and storage space diminishing!)


Modelling our pressies!! :P


Junior Pictionary; one of Annie's many gifts! This one is from Aunt Julie.


Last night's barbecue dinner at our condo poolside. More food! There was barbecued chilled beef, lamb chops, chicken wings, potatoes, nachos with guacamole or cheese dip, fried mee and fried tang hoon, coleslaw, chicken curry, pasta bolognaise, e.t.c...


Hubby's childhood buddies...


Happy Anniversary Darling... I love you.


(Hubby is back, which means the camera is back too! :) Only you have to excuse this last pic which is over-exposed cos hubby put the camera at ISO1600 for the sparklers and I didn't put it back...)

Yuletide frenzy

Well the Yuletide festivities are definitely in full swing now, so I really can't afford the time to blog, but... what the heck, here's a quickie anyway! :)

All the Singaporean aunties and uncles and cousins have congregated. Therefore dad's house is now a nursery of turbo-charged kids, high on festive sweets and the ever-escalating holiday spirit! Here's most of them (still not complete) at the park spending some of their superfluous energy.

(That's the great Admiral Zheng He whom most of us Malaysian Chinese must thank for living in such a beautiful country)


So all us mums are now running around like crazy headless chickens trying to fit in as many fun activities as possible for our precious little ones, so they'll have wonderful Christmas memories to warm their hearts for years to come. (They'd better remember all this when debating on whether or not to put us in the old folks home in the future!!)


There's been carolling...



carolling...



and more carolling.

(Here's a group which consists of some who are hearing impaired and they sign the song while others sing.)


I've also been baking gingerbread men...



more gingerbread men...



some snow men...



and other stuff.



This is what will happen sooner or later when you bake at 3am! I have no idea how I ended up putting a cake pan straight from the oven onto my forearm!



So anyway, it's almost Christmas, and more importantly....
HUBBY"S COMING HOME!!!

:) Hubby will be back on Christmas Day! This is the bestest Christmas present ever...

Princess and the Frog

So Disney has finally come up with a African American princess (who's not even really a princess at first). The movie is set in New Orleans, during the height of the Jazz revolution.

A spoilt prince, due to greed, is turned into a frog by an evil witch doctor. He then persuades a girl, who works hard to realize her dream of owning a restaurant, to kiss her. However, instead of turning that frog into a prince, the frog turns her into a frog as well instead!

It was a pleasant movie, with an interesting enough story line. There were parts which scared the smaller ones a bit though. These are the scenes where the witch doctor practices voodoo and summons evil spirits and such.


Well, anyway, the kids enjoyed themselves, though Claire and Eva were a bit afraid of the scary scenes and grew restless towards the end of the show. Halfway through the movie, Eva made me bring her to the loo to do the big one, again. (I did try to bribe her with ice-cream to stay at home with Grandma, but unfortunately, it didn't work this time! Need to think up some new bribes!)




After the movie, we celebrated Grandma's birthday. That's cousin Hughie (on Grandma's lap). He's on a long visit from Miri. He's around half a year younger than Solomon but they're almost the same size! He might even be a bit bigger! :) He's also the opposite of Solomon. Solomon is mostly serious and quiet whereas Hughie can't stop 'talking' and making noises with his loud voice! He also loves to laugh and smile! He's a real cutie pie!

Rubbing your eyes...

Small Aunt just had LASIK performed on her eyes to correct her vision. She was experiencing some eye discomfort after the procedure and Claire asked her:

Claire: Sei Ku, why your eyes painful?

Sei Ku: Because I went to 'laser' my eyes.

Claire: Why you eraser your eyes??

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase; 'rubbing your eyes'...

Santa Claus?

For want of something to do, I brought the kids to Green Heights Mall to meet "Santa Claus"! It's a sign of bad times when Santa only hands out one teensy sweet per kid! :) But, I know, I know, it's the thought that counts...

Annie told me later that she thought Santa would be handing out gifts like Wii and Nintendo DS!! Yes, that would've been nice wouldn't it?!

Solomon was not too interested in Santa. He was more excited about the sweets he was passing out!


There was some carolling as well, by a church group, which included some violin-playing. 'Twas all quite pleasant, nothing impressive.

Anyway, kids happy + killed some time = mission accomplished.

(As you can see, the Christmas mood hasn't really kicked in for me yet... hence the slight 'Scrooginess'!)

Holiday season

Every mother is painfully aware that children are now on their way too long school holiday. Initially, the novelty of not having to wake up at 6:30 am to clothe and feed cranky kids who resent you for disrupting their sleep, was so very much welcome. No more waking up early. No more thinking of what to make for breakfast. No more getting evil stares from kids who just want to sleep some more!

However, after this novelty has worn off, you realize that you have traded a mere hour or two of extra sleep for those precious 4-5 hours of peace and tranquility you had in the mornings. That was the blissful period of time when you could drive around and get your errands done while listening to music other than "The Wheels of the Bus"! Sometimes you could even fit in a hair wash!

A week into the holidays, and the kids have burrowed right down to your scalp after being in your hair 24/7! Not an hour goes by without hearing these favourite chants:
"Mummy, I'm bored!"
"Mummy, I have nothing to do!"
"Mummy, what do I do now?"


So, to prevent kids from going nuts, and Mummy getting depressed, we have to come up with lots of activities for kids to keep them occupied over the holidays.

These are some of the activities we have done post Genting Highlands trip:

• go to the park to play on the swings
• go to the shopping mall to do sand art (again)
• make gingerbread men cookies
• put up the Christmas tree
  
• pack 550 presents for the upcoming Christmas party for children from rural villages
• start intensive private swimming lessons
• start private art classes

Since there are so many cousins, we could organize private art classes at Grandpa's home on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. May 'The Force' be with the poor art teacher who has to teach all 9 of them!

I have also arranged private swimming lessons at our condo for the 3 girls on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. They really enjoyed their first lesson, because the coach is really good with children and makes their lessons fun! This is a humongous improvement from our condo's resident coach who once scolded Annie, "Can you understand English?!"

The nerve of him! He is the one who can't understand English, because he kept asking Annie to stroke with her right arm and Annie kept doing it and he kept yelling, "Right arm! Right arm!" It was the right arm already for goodness sakes!

So anyway, we still have plenty of time before school starts. Tomorrow, they will attend a Christmas religious camp in the afternoons for 4 days. This was organized by Grandma and includes hearing impaired children. Grandma teaches sign language and speech and has worked with the hearing impaired for many years.

Well, that will keep them busy for another week. For next week, we'll see what we can rustle up and I'll report it soon.

Baby shopping

I love getting sneak peaks into kids' minds and discovering their sometimes hilarious understanding of things.


The other day, Claire asked Big Aunt, "Why don't you have a baby?"

Big Aunt replied that they hadn't gotten one yet.

So, Claire suggested, "Just go to the hospital and buy one la..."

*Sigh* If only it were that easy!



With this scenario in mind, the next one makes more sense:

This was a few weeks later. Solomon was going about doing his thing as usual, being cute. Claire was watching him.

Then she asked me, "We choose one this baby cute ho?"

Well, I guess mum is good at choosing the cute ones at the 'hospital shop'! :)

New Moon is rising

On Saturday, I went to watch a movie all by myself! This is the first time I've done this. I used to think it would be pretty sad to go watch a movie alone, but it was great! You can really immerse yourself into the movie as if without a care in the world! (Especially without the non-stop babbling little ones! This wasn't a kid movie anyway.)

Hubby has done this a few times and said it was actually quite cool! He encouraged me to go when I mentioned that I wanted to watch 'New Moon' on the big screen. (Hubby's away and men will most likely detest this movie anyway; no kung-fu and more sexy men than sexy women!)

I didn't watch 'Twilight' at the cinema, and I found the movie rather crappy. So, I thought, maybe if I saw 'New Moon' on the big screen, it might add to the enjoyment of the movie. Moreover, since there are more special effects in this sequel, what with the hunky werewolves and all, I thought it would be much better savoured on the big screen.


So anyway, I really enjoyed the movie, only because I have read the whole 'Twilight'' series. Therefore, I am well versed on the backstory of all the characters and I know all the little details which you cannot portray in the film. Without all this, and especially without the understanding of the intensity of Bella and Edward's love, the movie would just seem downright corny!

Honestly, it was just a so-so movie with not-so-great acting, but, and this is a big but, it's 'Twilight' okay? Nothing any cranky old movie critic can say to condemn this movie will deter the millions of 'Twi-hards' from paying good money to watch it! AND... another two reasons this movie has broken all box office records is of course... Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner (or rather, Taylor Lautner's body).

Okay, this is a classic case of "a picture is worth a thousand words", so here:



FYI, I am Team Edward! :)

Well, whatever the case, I had a great time watching this movie. For two marvelous hours, I lost myself in the rainy town of Forks, Washington.