Get married?!

So the other day, I had just picked Solomon up from school and he said,


Solomon:  Next time I want to get married.

Mum:       (Taken aback) Get married?!
                 Marry who??

Solomon:  Neh... like last time hold candle walk on the road one ah...



Oh.......

I then realized what he meant.

You see, recently, Sis no.2 and I have been busy with preparations for our cousin Athena's wedding. Alaena, Claire, Eva, Amelie and Asa are all going to be flower girls. So I supposed he heard us talking about flower girls, 'getting married', etc..

And a couple of weeks ago, it was the feast of Corpus Christi, and we went to St Joseph's Cathedral. The kids experienced a candlelight procession on the road for the first time. It was fun that they got to hold candles with real fire and walk right smack in the middle of a large road!

In front of the procession were flower girls leading the way and throwing flowers on the ground. So I suppose he figured; "Flower girls = getting married!!"

So it seems, the poor boy thought he got married!! lol!

Ben & Von finally got married! ;)

Took this lovely pic off your FB Von, hope your friend doesn't mind! :)

We have a couple of friends, Ben and Yvonne, who, like Hubby and I, were high school sweethearts! Since they have been together for so long, everybody have of course been wondering when they would finally tie the knot!

So last month, everyone was excited when they finally got married and held a wonderfully fresh and casual reception at Damai beach that night. Quite a few ex-high school classmates from good ol' St Teresa and St Joseph's came for the event, with a few travelling from KL. It was nice to catch up with "teenage-hood" friends and reminisce the good ol' days as well as marvel at how fast time flies!

Anyway, a lot of the guests spent the night at Damai Beach. In anticipation of alcohol-induced incapacity to drive (among other things), we also booked a room for the night. Kids stayed over at HQ, so we had the night to ourselves.

At first we had a hilltop room, but found out that they still had a Baruk suite left, at a special rate for the wedding party, RM300. The Baruk suite usually goes for around RM4-500 I think.

I used to work at Holiday Inn Kuching, as a First Choice Club telemarketer, (that's a whole other blog post right there!) so I've seen the Baruk suite before during a room inspection. It's a gorgeous round shaped bungalow, in the style of a Melanau round house. The beds face glass doors which look out onto the sea and there is even a jacuzzi. So we changed to a Baruk suite, even though they only had one with two queen sized beds left.

First thing we did when we got to the new room was to push the two beds together, then promptly went to sleep! (It's not often that we get to have afternoon naps!) Oh yes, before that, I got stung by a wasp on the balcony! Luckily it was not Hubby who got stung, because the last time he was stung by a wasp at the golf course, he ended up in the ICU!!


Anyway, during our afternoon siesta, the doorbell rang twice, and both times, there was no one at the door! After another mysterious ring, we called maintenance to come and have a look. A guy came and could not find the problem, so we requested that he just disconnect the wires of the doorbell button.

Even though the day started out gorgeously sunny, it soon started raining and quickly escalated to a strong, windy storm! The doorbell went crazy (even after disconnection!) and even the lights flickered! With the 'poltergeisty' activity, the high ceiling and creepy enormous urn behind the bed, the room was beginning to take on an ominous feel...

Then, I noticed that the doorbell ringing coincided with lightning, so I mentioned it to Hubby and he figured it was a short circuit somewhere and then it dawned on him that we must have disturbed something when we moved the beds!! Duh!

So we pushed the beds aside, and sure enough, there was the stupid doorbell speaker, among other wiring! Hubby happily pulled out the wires of the speaker and placed it on the bed head. Now, if that wireless speaker rang again, it was definitely time to change rooms!! lol!

After all that doorbell drama, the room never felt comfortable again, and I don't think we'll be staying at Baruk suites in the future! (We both had nightmares the next night at home.... coincidence??)

I digress... back to the wedding...

So they had a wonderful set up of tables at the clifftop poolside for the dinner that night. It was a beautiful location, with a magnificent view. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, the weather took a sudden turn for the worse! So everything was moved to an indoor location a little further down the hill. It was still a lovely place anyway.

At least the weather didn't turn into mini typhoon proportions as it did the night before! The night before, there was a storm with winds so strong that trees were uprooted, and there were flash floods and electricity blackouts everywhere! Even the big old mango tree behind my dad's house was uprooted and crashed into the fence and neighbour's awning!

Daddy's poor mango tree

So luckily it was just a normal rain which let up when the dinner was about to begin. Here are some of the photos of the fun night:

Looking decent (-ish) pre-alcohol...

with the gorgeous (and very tall) bride :)

Bride & groom with the St Teresa gang. This is right after Hubby (taking the pic) called us "Aunties"!!

and so it began...

nope, definitely not a conference meeting...

these little boys always love a good party...

Congratulations Ben and Yvonne! You guys make a dashing couple! Here's wishing you a wonderful life together, filled with an abundance of love and laughter!

Mother's Day 2012

It was Mother's Day a couple of weeks ago, here's my stash this year!! ;)

Missing my own Mummy too... wish she were here to see all her grandkids. She would be so proud!!

Happy belated Mother's Day and God bless all you supermums out there!!

Rubbish collector

Newsflash!

My only son wants to be a rubbish collector!!

He was playing with jie jie on the toy car and then hung onto the back of the car.

"Just like truck man", he said, and Daddy realized he meant the rubbish collectors who hang onto the backs of the rubbish trucks!! lol!!
 

Annie's 11!!

I made a 'lollipop candy' cake for her.

Gosh, my 'little' girl Annie just turned 11 on the 20th! She's almost as tall as me now, and I expect she'll overtake me by next year!

Wow, where did the time go??!

I brought a cake and some ice-cream for her friends at school. The weather has been insanely hot lately, and their school is having some problems with the generator, so they are not allowed to turn on the air-conditioning! So, ice-cream was a good idea!

Annie requested for an ice-cream cake so I got this at Lof bakery.

Since her birthday fell on the day before their exams, Annie decided not to have a party, so we went to 'The Junk' for dinner with family instead. They serve excellent Western food, and the kids loved the decor (smashed kettles and assorted junk/antiques)!

Happy Birthday darling Annie! You are a wonderful big sister, mummy and daddy love you! :)

Suffer?

So we were on the way back from church, and Eva suddenly piped up, "I know what 'suffer' means!"

She must have heard the priest use that word in his sermon earlier. I was quite surprised that she would know the meaning of such a 'deep' word, so I asked her, "Really? What does it mean?"

Her answer, "It's like when you drink 'nenen' (milk) and eat cookies at night before you sleep right? That is 'suffer'!"


Hahahahaha.... yes, supper....

I wonder how she interpreted the whole sermon!! lol!

Riddles

Eva is now 5 years old. She's at the age when they're really curious and ask a lot of questions. It's really funny how they process the information you give them. You explain one thing to them and they might just interpret it into a totally different thing! Once in a while they will give you a glimpse into their minds and it's hilarious how their 5 year old brain has stored the information.

Sometimes they will ask seemingly cryptic questions and it takes a while to click... it's like a riddle and you have to put yourself into a 5 year old's shoes to figure it out!


Here's how one went;

Eva:          Who is the richest man in town again?

Mummy:  Huh? Richest man in town?? Err..... Taib Mahmud??

Eva:          No... The one who makes windows and computers!!


.......

*crickets chirping....*

.......


Mummy:  Ah.... Bill Gates?!

Eva:         Yes! That one!





Hahaha...

Yes, I mentioned Bill Gates to them before. You see, Claire was saying how her classmate and her siblings each have their own iPad! So I remembered something I read about situations like these. They didn't ask to buy an iPad each, but I thought it was a good opportunity to try out what I had read.

The gist of it is like this, when a child asks to buy something, saying you cannot afford it sends out the wrong message. Something about putting too much import on money and something about guilt? I forgot. Anyway, the alternative they suggested was what I liked. They said to instead tell  them that we can indeed afford it, but is it worth buying?

So that's what I did and in an attempt to convey to them that money isn't everything, I went on to tell them about Bill Gates who donated more than 90% of his wealth to charity. They asked how he became so rich and I told them about Microsoft and Windows and apparently I wasn't clear enough! lol!

'Town', 'country' and 'the world' is another concept that needs more attention!!

Squeak! squeak!

So, a couple of days ago, Eva lost another milk tooth.

Now she looks like this:

Solomon commented, "like mouse..." 

lol!

Universal Sudios Singapore 2012

The third day of the trip was dedicated to Universal Studios Singapore. Annie has been to Universal Studios, Gold Coast, but she doesn't remember much.

We started the day with a scrummy breakfast at the hotel and then waited at the bus stop outside to take the free shuttle to Sentosa Resort, where Universal Studios is located.

Universal Studios is divided into a few sections, Hollywood, Jurassic Park, Madagascar, Far Far Away and Egypt or something like that... We started off at Hollywood and went into a real movie set, where they showed how they made special effects like thunder and lightning, rainstorm and explosions.. etc! The kids were intrigued and a little scared, especially the two smaller ones, because we were standing right in front and could even feel the heat from the explosions!

Next was the Transformers 3D ride. That was the newest attraction, so we just had to go, even though it was a 1 hour wait! Luckily there were plenty of Transformers paraphernalia to see and fiddle with while we waited in the long snaking queue.

The ride was worth the queuing, it was uber cool! We sat in a car and wore 3D glasses and were tossed about! It was like riding in an Autobot while it drove and flew around fighting the Decepticons! I couldn't immerse myself totally in the experience, because I was worried about Solomon and Eva! I didn't want them to get traumatized! In the end Eva kept her eyes shut and Solomon was dumbstruck!

Some of the children friendly rides... a spinning one which makes me wanna puke! and a Jurassic park flying pterodactyl ride. There were two intertwined, scary looking roller coasters. One was a sitting-down one and another was a legs-dangling one! It was for adults only, so we passed... Annie met the height requirement for the roller coaster in the dark (Egypt/ pyramid), but she refused to go with daddy, so we passed on that too!

The Waterworld show was action packed! It was based on the Kevin Costner movie, set in a future where polar caps have melted and submerged all the land! There were many stunts and explosions. We sat in the "splash zone", and in front of us was the "soak zone"!! To make sure people understood, before the show began, they started splashing the audience with water! We got sprayed by water guns and some in front even got buckets of water thrown on them! The kids found it hilarious!

I think my favourite  place was Far Far Away. It looked exactly like the quaint town from the Shrek movie. The 4D show was fun and the kids were squealing with excitement! Except for Solomon who fell asleep and woke up crying when Donkey sneezed and they sprayed water at us! lol

The girls went on the high speed roller coaster ride at Far Far Away with daddy, it was much milder and they went on twice! Solomon barely reached the height requirement and I didn't think it would be suitable for him, so we both waited for them outside and glimpsed Puss in Boots, Shrek and Princess Fiona walk pass! :)

The last place we went to before calling it a day was Madagascar. I love the characters from Madagascar, they're really funny, especially that King whatshisname... ( you know, I like to move it, move it...) lol

Everyone had a blast at Universal Studios and hopefully we'll be back next year!??

Even though we were really tired, we of course wanted to make the most of our last night in Singapore. So, we went to the water and light show in front of Marina Bay Shoppes. We had our dinner of burgers sitting at the steps in front of the show.

So the next day it was Bye Bye MBS Hotel and back to Home Sweet Home :)

Singapore Zoo 2012

Annie in her 'craft heaven'

So when we first reached Singapore, we had lunch at Ta Ee's house which is very near to the airport. Then as promised, we brought Annie to Plaza Singapura, where she could scour Spotlight and Daiso for her craft supplies!

Eva and Solomon fell asleep at Gloria Jeans, while Annie and I explored! Claire had gone to Sis no.4's house to play with cousins Bryan and Ethan.

That night, after dinner with the whole gang at Great World City, we went back to the hotel to rest up for the big trip to the zoo the next day.

Waiting for the rest of the gang to come

Our whole gang consisted of; 8 kids, one grandpa, 3 mummies, 2 daddies, one Uncle Polycarp and 2 kakaks!

The different modes of transport available at the zoo!

some of the cool animals we saw

The kids really enjoyed seeing the animals up close, animals which they have previously only seen on tv! Actually, I think the adults appreciated it even more! lol!

Only Annie has been to the Singapore zoo before. It's a first for Solomon, Claire and Eva.

The part of the zoo trip which they enjoyed the most however, was the Waterpark at the fairly new Kids Village at the zoo.

It was fun, fun, fun!! They spent hours playing in the water under the hot midday sun!

We were very lucky to have had sunshine throughout our stay, cause they said it had been raining everyday for the previous few days, before we visited!

Everybody had a blast at the zoo! We spent the whole day there and everyone, kids and adults alike were thoroughly pooped by the end of it all!