December 2014

And so the year is drawing to an end, amazingly fast how each and every year whizzed us by, a reminder of how fast the children are growing and how we are getting 'wiser' by the days, months and years.

Due to the fact that grandma is away for holiday with the elder child, obviously I would need to be on leave to care for the girl. It so happened that the hubs were forced to clear his annual leaves and while we were lazing around at home, an idea struck out of the blue. Why should we waste our leaves staying at home when we could venture out for a short road trip on our own as well! Naturally the same old nearest destination come to mind, Melaka like again. With the attractive rate at an awesome hotel and 2 hours drive away, the choice is ideal. Everything fall in place real quick, checking out availability, emailing the reservation department and we are almost all set to go. No response on the email so called out to hotel directly, booked and the luggage is out for packing. This has got to be the most impromptu trip by far, booked today and set off tomorrow. Not very much my style since I do not do travel arrangements last minute and usually put in huge efforts in planning and researching.

The trip was great, relaxing with just one child in tow, everything was simply carried out with ease without any major objection of whatsoever. All the activities are ad-hoc, carried out at whim and fancy and we actually achieved more than the last trip.

Took the river cruise which was supposedly over the 1st trip but accidents happen so did not. The only upsetting aspect is Zethan did not managed to enjoy the river cruise to which Zelyn enjoyed herself loads. Walked back to the hotel and decide to dash across a busy 4 carriage lane expressway for yummilicious award winning nonya food (spotted last trip but great resistance prevented us from venturing there).

Babies prom 2014 concert together with the Chiams family. Zelyn enjoyed much better this time and was attentive and focus through the whole concert, well done lady! Upon reaching the venue, hubs car gave problem thus had to return home to swap car before picking up the kit for Standard Chartered Kids Dash 2014 at Singapore expo.

Next day being Standard Chartered Kids Dash, in fact it is Zethan's very first marathon / kids run, how very exciting right. At the very last minute in the morning, we decided to bring Zelyn along and no prize for guessing right who put up the most resistancy for this decision, as usual the daddy. Giving thousand and one excuses of weather too hot, too crowded, not easy to get around etc. It was a very sunny and humid morning as we reached Esplanade meeting up with the Chiams. Daddies and elder children get to the flag off point while the mummies and younger child were trying to locate a good location to catch the children in action. Unfortunately by the time we managed to approach the finish point, the children are very likely to finish their dash, too late. Zelyn is rather moody perspiring buckets, totally not in the mood to snap a picture or smile for that matter. Next tedious task would be to meet up the children again at a favourable location which prove to be an uphill challenge having to manoeuvre the stroller among the humongous crowd. The daddies complained of the horrifying management of the dash with no proper crowd control and flag off. Sound like no more next time.

All time favourite festival for the children ~ Christmas. Our first party are with the July babies and this should be our 2nd year running held at our Lao Di Fang. Quite a fair amount of efforts put in by the organizing committee with finances and logistic issues, kudos! Not an easy task for gift exchanging arrangements too and all are ware in advance who they should be buying the gift for.  Children are too young for any games but they sure do enjoyed with sticker tattoos, spray snow and gifts exchange while the mummies had a great time catching up with each other. All of us had a whale of time, no doubts with great company, nice food and lots of pressies for the children as well as mummy.

My 2nd Christmas party were the company's, nothing much to shout about, interesting venue, reasonable food, nothing fantastic games but awesome drinks they have. Could not even recall when is the last time I drink and was glad to make the wise choice of not driving thus no worries on alcohol intake.

Winter Solstice, bought the dough to make our Tang Yuan for the children to have a feel of the nearly extinct traditional festival Dongzhi. The saying goes that everyone have to taste the tang yuan which signify turning a year older. Guess I have not turned a year older since probably 20 years old, that s how long I have not had any tang yuan on Dongzhi especially the homemade ones. It looked simple but it is not as the right texture needed to be achieved with the dough before one can get the little tang yuan in shape. Too dry and it fall apart into crumbs while attempting to shape them into balls while too wet will get all sticky. Nonetheless we had a fun time and managed some tang yuans fit for consumption.

 Christmas eve were special this year as we had a family potluck party, can be considered as a first so far. We hosted the party with homecooked curry chicken, popiah party and soup for the children. It was pretty much hard work preparing the ingredients; cutting up the raw ingredients made my hands sore which had to be ready a day in advance. The response for popiah party was not very good as most of them are simply too lazy to roll their own, all the spoilsports! The other reason being most of them do not know how to roll one properly which make me looked like a popiah master among all!

What is Christmas without pressies and the joy of ripping the wrappers to reveal the surprises! The children get the joy of unwrapping their Christmas gifts on Christmas day and boy they sure are excited and elated with the gifts they received. Zelyn got to unwrap some of the birthday gifts too. Yes we had kept them away for a good 5 months, without her knowledge of course. 

Snow, something we could never ever get to experience locally, at least not the real ones. The closest we could get are the projected foam made believed to be snow, manmade snow. To enable the children to experience it, we head to Changi Airport where they have several snowing timing. Closest to dinner time sound ideal since we could have out dinner after.

Non stop of feasting for the month does not stop after Christmas as it is daddy's birthday next! Decide on a fuss free simple celebration with a simple dinner nearby and a cake to end the day. Our favourite haunt these day would be Three Chefs near Sin Ming as the food is very reasonably priced and taste as good, no crowd battling experience too.

Soon after we are approaching end of the year, spent some time with the children and ensure that preparations for new school term are in term. Thus the last few days are spent on last minute purchases for school reopen. One more year had passed and 2015 will be an exciting year ahead!