Christmas chow...

I made smoked salmon pizzas for Christmas Eve dinner, and they turned out really well! Was so pleased :)

Blessed Christmas everyone!

Christmas at Pavilion

Pavilion usually has one of the coolest Christmas decorations- perfect for photo opportunities! Isn't this just so sweet?

We took the kids for a ride on the carousel; so that was good fun. We wanted to ride in the teacup but some other kids beat us to it. Drat.

Publika playground!

There's a new shopping mall in our area! Publika is the name. I'm still wondering why we have 3 malls in such a small area, but that's another story I suppose...

Check out this cool playground! We bought the kids there the other day, and it was their first time on a swing (yeah, sad I know :p).

Arty-farty playground, eh? :)

5th Wedding Anniversary!

We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary recently; time flies- 5 years already! We took the day off to spend some time hanging out- just the 2 of us. I was very excited at the thought of our outing and spent ages planning what to do that day, as well as how to use some of the vouchers that I purchased online! Haha.

Hubby got me these- I love the perfume, and isn't the bottle just too cute? He sent the flowers to my office the day before our anniversary, so that was a sweet gesture. :)

We started the day with breakfast at Jalan Imbi- yummy bak kut teh! We were sooo stuffed after that though. We then went to Pavilion to do some shopping before heading off to catch a movie. I was so disappointed that there weren't any shows that we really wanted to watch, so we ended up just choosing something that hopefully wouldn't be too bad. And so.. we watched Petaling Street Warriors. Hmmm. I certainly wouldn't watch that again. :p

Next up was a late lunch at Tenjin, Grand Millennium hotel, where we used the Groupon I purchased. The food was really delicious. The sashimi was very fresh, and even the simple green tea ice-cream was superb! I would certainly not hesitate returning to Tenjin to dine.

We had a spa appointment at Solaris Dutamas next; again, we made use of some vouchers. Hehe. Overall the experience was quite ok; although I probably wouldn't go for a body mask again- it just feels too sticky and uncomfortable. We were pressured to sign up for a package after we were done, but we managed to 'escape' in the end, so that was ok.

For dinner, we initially considered trying out a luxurious degustation menu at Millesime, but since it would probably take too much time, plus we weren't sure if Chef Max Chin would be cooking, so in the end we just ended up having a simple and quick dinner at OverTime. Hardly romantic, and the food was so-so, but we were quite tired and my tummy wasn't feeling 100%, so I guess it was the best choice.

A rare day out just by ourselves! 

Thank you dear God for 5 wonderful years together; and we humbly ask that you grant us many many more blessed years of walking with each other, and with You. Amen.

Trip to Ipoh- Nov 2011

We made a trip to Ipoh in November to celebrate my grandparents' birthday (yes, both of them); it was my grandfather's 90th (Chinese) birthday!

We stayed at the Tower Regency hotel; the apartment we managed to book was decent and spacious, although I have to admit the hotel is rather run down for a place that is relatively new (about 2-3 years old).

The birthday dinner was quite good; and we had a nice time catching up with the relatives. I hope my grandparents enjoyed themselves; I'm sure they were happy to have so many family members celebrating with them. There were 4 generations there that day! 

The next morning, before we came back to KL, we decided to visit the Kek Look Tong Cave Temple, a tourist attraction situated in the natural and picturesque area of Gunung Rapat in the south of Ipoh. It was pretty nice walking around and exploring the area for a little bit. The air in the cave was cool, and there were many stalactites and stalagmite formations to admire.

A short overnight trip; but well worth it I would say...

16th East Asian Actuarial Conference

Nothing much to blog about the conference, except that it was a great opportunity to catch up with friends.

Check out the menu for the farewell dinner! The food that night was dismal, though.

Trip to Genting Highlands!

Hubby’s company organized a trip toGenting recently and we brought the whole family along. Actually, it was more of me helping hubby to plan the trip and everyone just followed the plan! Haha.

The drive up to Genting was surprisingly short, and it took us only about 45 minutes or so to reach Gohtong Jaya.We stopped to visit the Genting Strawberry Farm, where we had a great time showing the kids how strawberries were grown. Armed with a pair of scissors and a basket, we also had fun ‘plucking’ strawberries, which we later purchased (about RM 6.50 per 100 grams I think). The strawberry farm is a great place to visit with the family, I would say. 

We also had lunch in Gohtong Jaya beforemaking our way up to Genting itself. Lunch was ok, although we did find a tiny worm in the vegetable soup! Yikes. Ah well, can consider it as protein.:p

Crystal fruit

Mushrooms

Giant pumpkins

We managed to get an early check-in,and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the Family Room was quite new and nice. It had 2 double beds, a couch, and plenty of space to walk around, so the kids could run around a little bit. Our room was right next to the Outdoor Theme Park though, so while it provided an interesting view, it was quite noisy with all the screaming from the thrill rides.

We had a fairly nice break in Genting although we did not get to do much. It was raining a lot, with strong winds and a LOT of mist; at times it really felt like we were in some English countryside! Visibility was so low that we could not even see the theme park from our window most of the time. At night, the wind howled and moaned, and it was a tad scary, to be honest. The Outdoor Theme Park was also closed since the weather was so bad, which meant that everyone just congregated in the Indoor Theme Park making it terribly crowded! :( 

We paid for an All-Day Pass for the IndoorTheme Park, but only got to go on 3 rides! Gosh, what a waste of money! I thought we could do more rides, but with kids, it's hard to do much,really. They get tired and cranky easily, and everything just takes more time when you travel with young children. Ah well. 

One big gripe I have with the 'resort' (if you can call it that), is that it is AWFULLY unfriendly to young kids (who need strollers) and people with disabilities. There are stairs and escalators EVERYWHERE, which makes getting around a real nightmare. After the first evening, where we had to haul our 2 strollers around (thank God we had help from from hubby's colleagues), we learnt our lesson and from then on, we only took the lighter one out instead. It was a whole lot easier even though one of us had to carry one kid at any one time. 

Guess the kids need to be older to enjoy Genting a bit more....

Glow-in-the-dark bowling

More on our little girl...

Gosh. Updates on our little girl are waaaay overdue. So much has happened over the last few months- where should I start? Hmmm.

• She started walking at around 11 months, which was really exciting to watch. When she could walk around a bit more, she would hold both arms up- bent at the elbow- to balance herself, and toddle around, with each leg somewhat 'flapping' in turn, swaying a little side-to-side. A bit like a penguin. Hilarious!! At one point she also liked to pat herself on her chest while she walked. Feeling proud of herself, I suppose. Heh.
• She loves to explore and play on her own; she's quite independent that way. Good girl.
• She does get bullied quite often (sigh); her brother loves to snatch her toys away and sometimes shoves or smacks her as well. We're working hard on trying to get him to be more civil towards her, and we're slowly seeing some improvement, so we do hope that continues. She's learnt to kick up a big fuss whenever she gets bullied, and at the rate she's growing, she'll probably be big enough to defend herself soon! :p
• She's a real screamer- her screams and wails are seriously deafening.. and she's a real drama queen too!
• Her motor skills are quite good as well, and her physical development does appear to be faster than her brother's at the same age. One of the things she can do is to swirl a ball in a 'bowl', which is not really that easy because it involves a certain amount of control to keep the ball from swirling out of the bowl.
• Dancing- she loves that! It's sooo cute to see her pointing her fingers to the music, bending her knees and shaking her head and butt, and turning round and round :)
• For some reason, she drools A LOT! So much so that a bib is perpetually round her neck. Hmm, we never had that problem with that for No.1....
• She likes to 'smack'/pat pat me while I nurse her :p
• She loves bouncing on things; if she sees us lying down somewhere she would climb onto our backs or tummies and bounce away!
• She also loves bouncing and playing on the bed, which is actually quite dangerous. She's quite oblivious to the danger, going very near the edge of the bed, expecting us to always be there to catch her. Also, she loves to plonk backwards onto the bed! Such a playful little girl.
• Sad to say, she's a chronic thumbsucker. She sometimes even uses the other hand to pat pat her elbow, thus helping to keep the thumb firmly in her mouth. She sucked her thumb so much that a nasty looking scab developed on it. Yuck. We've since devised a way to help wean her off her thumb, using a sock tied firmly over the hand. Of course, we've had to substitute her thumb with a pacifier, so now she's hooked on the latter instead. Sigh.

May God bless you, our little darling!

No.2's birthday celebrations...

Hubby and I took the day off on our little girl's birthday and took the kids to MegaKidz in MidValley. It was a weekday so we virtually had the entire place to ourselves, which was nice. The ball pit was being cleaned though, so that was rather disappointing, as the kids absolutely love playing with balls.

Scary-looking slide..

My dear mummy cooked a lovely dinner for all of us- featuring noodles, of course!

In addition to her birthday party, we had another 2 mini-celebrations for our little girl. Check out the makeshift 'cakes' we had- a muffin 'cake' and a doughnut 'cake'. Haha!

Hubby and I bought her a new toy, which was of course 'hijacked' by her older brother. Sigh. It's really tough trying to teach No.1 about sharing; we hope and pray that both kids will learn to get along better as they grow up together.

May our good Lord watch over you always, our little darling! Blessed birthday! :)

Our little girl turns ONE!

Time flies- our little girl turned one in early October! We threw a birthday party for her the weekend before and both kids had a great time!

Our little boy was busy messing about with the helium balloons with his friends (the balloons were a real hit with the kids, and each kid got to bring 1 or 2 balloons home); and the birthday girl was smiling from ear-to-ear from all the attention she was getting as the star of the night.

We ordered a lovely cake from Choffles- complete with a Baby TV theme. Isn't it amazing? I got the decoration ideas from all the research I did online, and hubby drew a sketch for Choffles to follow. We were super-duper pleased with how the cake turned out; the looks on all the kids' faces (and all the oohs and aahs from everyone) when we unveiled the cake was simply priceless! Hmm.. looks like every cake we order from now on has got to top the previous one- oh no! :p

Check out the lovely gifts our little girl received- thanks everyone!

And to our precious little girl- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! We love you so very very much.

*HUGS*

Beautiful Maddy

I stumbled upon this blog about a year ago via Facebook. The writer and I have a mutual friend, and one day I chanced upon a comment that my friend left on her friend's wall, leading me to this amazing blog.

I truly believe God led me there. I was in my confinement period after delivering my little girl; and things were very hard. I was crying often and feeling crappy most of the time; partly due to the crazy hormones and the challenges of breastfeeding. Reading this blog actually made me cry even more, but it was a great reminder that the opportunity to be a mother is a blessing from God, and one that I would not trade for the world, despite it being a really tough job.

Maddy is about a few months older than my little girl, and she has Diastrophic Dysplasia, a rare form of dwarfism. This wonderful blog is mainly written by her mother, Nicole, and in it she displays an amazing amount of courage, optimism, strength and love. She writes about learning to live with their 'new normal', and her writing gives me a glimpse of her own motherhood journey. She writes about her feelings, her thoughts, Maddy's medical challenges, and through her writing I have learnt so much about dwarfism... but more importantly, what it means to be a mother.

As mothers we all hope for our children to be perfect and healthy, and sometimes, we may even take it for granted and just assume that will be the case. But sometimes, God allows the special mothers to be given special children, and along with it, He will supply an amazing amount of strength and grace. And that is why we read of mothers (and also fathers, of course) who will sacrifice anything and everything for the love of their child. And what amazing stories are those!

I have been so touched and humbled by this blog that I dropped Nicole a message on Facebook to tell her that, and she was gracious enough to send me a short reply. I still follow this blog closely and try to keep the family in my prayers; sometimes it feels like I 'know' little Maddy although I have never met her. She is such an adorable and beautiful little girl! :)

Do check out Nicole's blog if you can; start by reading 'Maddy's Story' and work your way from there. There is also one particular post written by Maddy's father- Bernard, which I guarantee will bring tears to your eyes.

May the Lord bless you and keep you always, lovely little Maddy!

Bangkok Trip- Day 4 (Last Day)

We went back to the Platinum Fashion Mall bright and early the next morning; even the taxi driver snickered, saying that it was still closed. When we got there, almost all the stalls were indeed closed, save for a few. Hmm.

Nevertheless, we took our time walking around slowly, and watched as the mall slowly came alive. Most of the early morning visitors were those getting their stock for their businesses elsewhere.

Needless to say, we bought loads of stuff! Shopping is so much fun when things are affordable. Plus, shopping in the mall is so comfortable, as opposed to sweating it out in outdoor markets. That really tires you out after a while.

When we were done shopping (or rather, when we absolutely HAD to leave to catch our flight); we went back to our hotel, freshened up, and made our way to the airport.

The airport is actually quite nice, as you can see from the photos below. I was hoping to catch a foot reflexology massage at the airport, but we didn't have enough time. Too bad.

We had a nice trip, but we were glad to be going home. We really missed the children!

Check out the stuff we bought! :)

Bangkok Trip- Day 3 (Shopping and Eating)

Our next stop after Dusit Palace was the Platinum Fashion Mall in Pratunam. We planned to have a quick lunch and then spend a bit of time shopping; the idea was to head back to the hotel before the traffic jams started.

Boy, we severely underestimated how much time we would take to shop there. First of all, the place is HUGE! The mall caters to wholesale buyers, which means there were loads of people dragging huge bags (the big China-stripey-plastic ones) around the mall. If you are a retail customer, you can usually still get items at wholesale prices, if you purchase 3 pieces from one shop (mixing of items is allowed). The downside is you cannot try the items before you buy them.

We went absolutely nuts in the mall. After 2 hours, we only covered 2 floors! And most of it was spent shopping for clothes for the kids, especially for our little girl. I bought sooo many outfits for her! Everything felt so cheap! I can totally understand how a business model like this could work; even after factoring in the air ticket cost, someone in KL could probably still make some profit by buying stuff here and selling it back home (say at a weekend market or something).

We had dinner plans, so we decided to tear ourselves away from the shops, head back to the hotel... and return to the mall the next day! We effectively sacrificed a trip to Chatuchak Market for this, but I guess that was ok.

Dinner was really yummy, and it was really wonderful catching up with friends. I had a strawberry+pineapple+mango+apple+lychee drink (no kidding!); so that was a bit of a laugh. The tom yum was really delicious- the soup had slices of coconut flesh in it, so that was quite unique. We had lots of seafood- big prawns, squid, fish, and other yummy dishes. I for one certainly ate until I was ready to burst!