Super Simple Celebration

Oh yeah, I’ve grown another year wiser. In other words, another year older. :p Although last weekend was a long weekend, we didn’t go anywhere. Basically just laze around at home. We didn’t even hang out at the malls as didi was having runny nose. The weekend before that, the kids requested to go play at Megakidz, MidValley. PaPa offered to stay there while Kakak accompanied the kids inside the play area. And I got to walk around the malls (Gardens and MV) by myself for 3+ hours. What bliss! I actually walked till my legs cramped. *aiyoyo* Managed to buy some tees for myself (and inner wear too :D). On our way to Madam Kwan’s for dinner, we went to Crocs coz I saw earlier that they’re having a promotion where you get 30% discount if the said day is 6 days prior to or after your birthday. Not sure if this promotion is valid at other outlets as well. I got hubby to “approve” the design I chose (A-Leigh Mini Wedge Leather) and he said he’ll get them for me as my birthday pressie. This is my 2nd pair of Crocs. The pair of Crocband I bought in Hong Kong hurts my toes so I hardly wear them. Waiting to pass them over to jie jie. Y’know, her feet is almost as long as mine, just a little less meaty. o.O She can already wear my sandals. And she’ll try on my wedges whenever she gets the chance (high heels mah). Girls... *shake head*

~ take a wild guess, whose feet are these? ~

Back to d-day, we went out for dinner of my choice -- Korean BBQ (haven’t had it for so long, the outlet that we’ve been frequenting in Sri Petaling has closed down :D). So we went to another one nearby, Daorae Korean BBQ Restaurant. Food’s not bad. The barbequed meat were yummy. But they don’t have a very big variety of side dishes. And the waiters ignored my requests to top up some of the side dishes. *hmmmff* Maybe they didn’t understand me. Or they were just too busy to attend to us. :-(

~ didi and jie jie at Daorae ~

Before going to the restaurant, we went to Tong Kee to choose my cake. We only cut the cake at home as I felt shy to be “sung to” in the crowded restaurant. hehe When I looked back at last year’s blog entry, I realised that the cakes were the same pattern, just different flavour. Hubby chose the cake last year so it seems like we have the same cake preference. ;-)

~ vanilla fruit cake... yummy ~

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank my family and friends for all the lovely wishes. Thank you for making my day extra special! *muacks*

Last Parent-Teacher’s Day In Kindergarten

Yay! Kids’ exams are over. CE’s was in the 1st week of October while XY finished hers on Friday. We even had a mini celebration that night. They invited their cousins over and had pizza for dinner.

I went to CE’s school this morning to collect his report card. I’m very pleased that Teacher J doesn’t have any complaints about him. Well, the only thing she highlighted is that he needs to be more macho (yeah, that’s her exact word! :D). He’s still very shy and timid. He needs to build up more self-confidence. She said he’s improved compared to the 1st semester -- more talkative and sociable now. Other areas for improvement are his spoken languages, especially Mandarin. Hmm… these are almost the same feedback as in the 1st semester.

I’m also very happy with his exam results. He managed to score full marks for Science and Bahasa Malaysia. Although he didn’t get very high marks for his Chinese paper, I’m actually impressed with his ability to answer the questions. At least it shows that he can recognise quite a number of Chinese characters and understand what is required. :-)

The teacher's note in his Report Card :
A pleasant and hard working child who is able to express himself clearly. His work is always neat and tidy. His academic result is bright. Well done!

It was confirmed he got 2nd prize in the colouring contest which was held in school. He told me a few days ago but I had to see it to believe it. hahaha It was really a pleasant surprise. *wide smile* But I do wonder how they selected the winners. :p

His colouring contests in kindergarten :

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6 - 2nd prize

Well, at least can see an improvement over the years. :-)

10 minus 1

My little girl is no longer very little anymore. She celebrated her 9th birthday 2 days ago. One year short of being a decade old. haha As usual, we had a simple celebration at home. We have a (slightly) bigger group this time because Yeh Yeh and Mah Mah are here. Food was all bought except fried noodles. We had Subway sandwiches, Kenny Rogers roasters, cocktail sausages and satay. 7 adults and 3 kids couldn't finish all these food.

food to feed an army? :D

Subway platter - bought 3 foot-long, free 1 foot-long

After the kids have finished their meal, they played Wii games. I didn’t prepare any special activities for them, so what else is there for them to do? I didn't pump any balloons so no decorations and no balloons to play with. At least they won’t run around and make too much noise. :-)

XY chose pandan layer cake with dessicated coconut

sing-song session

After eating the cake, XY opened her presents. We bought an ambulance Lego set for her, which she chose herself. CH and family gave her a tutu while Yeh Yeh and Mah Mah gave her an angpow. Po Po and Zi Mai Po also gave her angpows which I took back from Penang in June. She even got a present (stickers and stationeries) from her piano teacher when she came for lesson yesterday. So sweet and thoughtful of her.

big princess and little princess

The Celebrations

This is another very backdated post. As mentioned earlier, we had a small party at home for CE’s birthday. I was really lazy to make balloon decorations. I told ah boy and he was okay with it (wah, so considerate hahaha). Then while he was napping, I felt bad so I pumped a few balloons and hung them on the curtain rail.

super simple deco

We had our usual “party food”. Bought satay, ordered pizza and Kakak fried bihun and nuggets (just a bit for the kids) and cooked curry chicken. After the kids finished their food, they played Wii games, as requested by the birthday boy (coz usually no pc/tv games on school days).


jie jie, didi, kor kor and mei mei

blueberry cake

presents



For the celebration in school, I bought a black forest cake for him and prepared party packs for his classmates. I planned to make the paper bags myself by referring to Sasha’s post. Thanks for the tutorial, girl! After buying the brown papers, I found it so tedious to cut the papers into the right size, fold, stick, fold, stick, fold some more and open it up. And I had to prepare 24 of them (including for jie jie and his cousins)! I wanted to give up so I went hunting for those ready-made paper/plastic bags. But can’t find any suitable/nice ones. There aren’t many choices around my area. The patterns are very girlish, not that suitable for his class where majority are boys. So I had no choice but to make the paper bags myself. Luckily I bought a steel ruler and a penknife (really sharp!) so it made the work a little easier. I cannot imagine the amount of work needed if I were to do exactly like Sasha. Cut out the alphabets to make the kids’ names? Oh, forget it. So I just printed some characters (decided by birthday boy) as decoration. I also eliminated the strings and just folded them over. Jie jie helped me a lot with making the paper bags and sticking the cartoons. The birthday boy wrote the names of his friends on the paper bags and put the goodies into them.

contents in party pack

party packs for friends

I also prepared some gifts (chocolates and sweets) for the teachers as they were celebrating Teacher’s Day on the same day as well. Got this idea from mom2ashley’s post. Thank you, D! Found some white plastic bags in the drawers, printed some wordings on coloured paper and cut out rectangular shapes from manila cardboard. Again, I got CE to write the names of the teachers himself.

gifts for teachers

Her Four-Eyed Journey Has Started

We finally brought XY for a refraction test on 12th May (yes, this is a very backdated post :p). I know she is shortsighted (she can't see the whiteboard in class clearly) but didn't realise it has become quite serious. She now needs glasses as her power is 175 for the right eye and 200 for the left. She has slight astigmatism in both eyes too.

The next day, we brought her to an optical shop to make a pair of spectacles. There aren't many choices of plastic frames and half-frames for children so we chose a metal frame for her. As for the lenses, we used the Myopia Control lenses, as suggested by the optometrist we saw in ISEC.

'sei ngan mui'

Since 20th May, she has officially joined the four-eyed gang in the family. After collecting the glasses, I asked her to start wearing them, to get used to it. For the lenses to be effective in reducing her shortsightedness, she's advised to wear them frequently. She seems to be very excited about wearing glasses. Keep comparing her vision with and without glasses. One moment she'll say "I can't see this/that" and then the next moment, "Now I can see already" as she lifts them up and then put them back on. *mommy shakes head*

She’s been wearing glasses for a month already. And she seems to have gotten used to it. There are still incidents where she got squashed in the face when playing (rough) with didi and the nose piece got bent. Just got to keep reminding them not to play like that with her spectacles on.

6 Years Old

CE turns 6 today. We'll have a small do for him at home tonight, just us and BIL's family. He'll have another session in school on Friday. It's a combined birthday celebration for all children born in the months of April, May and June. I asked if he'd like to celebrate with his friends in kindy on his actual day but he said just a celebration at home will do.

At the beginning of the year, PaPa made a deal with him. We want him to learn to be more independent and do some simple chores on his own. By his 6th birthday, he must be able to clean himself after doing his big business, bathe himself and brush his own teeth. If he fails, there won't be a birthday party for him. hahaha Well, he passed the toilet test. But still not very good at shampooing his hair and brushing his teeth. I doubt they are brushed thoroughly. A good effort on his part, so the party is on. :D

Collected his 1st semester exam results on Parent-Teacher's Day last Saturday. Academically and socially, he's doing fine. He scored above 90% for all subjects, with a perfect score for BM (what a surprise). He mixes well with all his friends. Teacher J doesn't have any complaints but she highlighted that he needs to build up his confidence, to be bolder and speak up. He's very timid and soft-spoken in school (which is a total opposite at home o.O). Another thing to take note of is his Mandarin (oral). Guess we've to speak more to him in Mandarin. Actually, I think his BM is just as bad, especially his vocabulary. I wonder how he was graded.

The teacher's note in his Report Card :
CE is a smart and soft spoken child. He has improved in his social interaction skills among the friends. He is able to master in 3 languages. Keep it up.

Happy Birthday, ah boy!

May you grow up healthily and be happy always.

The Temporary Kakak

Before I continue with my post, here's wishing all mothers out there :

Happy Mother's Day!

I wonder if the kids can keep their promise of being extremely well-behaved just for the day.
:-)

The kids' exams are over... phew, what a relief. Luckily CE's exam was 1 week before XY's so I had time to coach them individually. Revision with CE was quite a breeze as his syllabus wasn't a lot. As for XY, although this was the mid-year exam where all the subjects were tested (8 altogether), I didn't spend that much time revising with her. We totally left out Moral (books not given back by teacher) and just browsed through PJK (only 1 writing book to look through). Anyway, these subjects are not calculated in the overall marks so I concentrated more on the 4 major subjects. :p

There's another reason why I didn't spend much time doing revision with XY. I was busy being the temporary Kakak. We gave Kakak a 2-week holiday back to her kampung as she wanted to attend her BIL's wedding. She's been with us for 4 years already and this is the third time she's gone back. Actually house chores are not difficult work, they are just time consuming. But I've got plenty of help. XY helped with sweeping and mopping the floor, using the magic mop. She also helped to hang the clothes sometimes. I only needed to iron the kids' school uniform coz hubby ironed his own working clothes. I rarely cooked, just a few times of simple noodle soup for lunch. We ate out during weekends and for dinner on weekdays, we "catered" from SIL. :D She was so kind to offer to cook for us. We ate at their house most of the time (I don't even have to clean up after that as she's got a helper) and packed food home for hubby (he's usually back from work quite late). When Kakak came back last Saturday (5th May), I happily passed all the work back to her. Ahhh... back to my blissful life.

Oh yes, while the kids were digging for stationeries for their exam, they found some "treasure" in the drawer. I've kept them there and forgot all about it. They are brand new, box unopened. Hubby won them in a credit card contest last year. I'm putting them up for sale. It's great as a gift for your little ones. XY likes to listen to it. She's learning a new Mandarin song (还是要幸福) by Hebe. I've printed out the hanyu pinyin lyrics, together with the Chinese characters, to help her pick up the language. Anyone interested to be their new owners?

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