Here's the kids after they had their fill of breakfast. They were all in a very agreeable mood and so, we were able to take a very nice group photo for them without any struggle.
See all the "mini-mes". It's an amusing coincidence that all of us have got a boy and a girl each.
The older kids in the cg fooling around
Me and Sarah in very good spirits after filling our tummies with prata
After driving for about an hour plus, we stopped at Jusco in JB for shopping, food and toilet break. Unfortunately, the Jusco that we stopped at was a small one so there wasn't really much for us to buy or eat. The most exciting thing for the kiddos were the shopping carts which came in the the form of little cars.
When we arrived with our 8 kids in toll, we kinda grabbed all the little cars that were available.
The kids were really glad to get out of the car and get some leg exercise.
After roaming around for an hour, we decided that the place was too "down" to stay for lunch so we headed on to Desaru and went to this restaurant called Good Luck Seafood Restaurant at Sungai Rengit for lunch. It was a restaurant recommended by one of our friends and the food was good. The highlight of the meal was the deep fried butter lobsters. They were huge and really yummy. And considering their size (about the length of my arm), they were cheap (about S$10 for 1 whole lobster). I didn't take any photos of the food other than the lobster, coz we were extremely hungry, especially me, the preggy.
So here's the delicious lobsters.
After lunch, we headed to the hotel to check in.
Some views of the hotel.
The kids were really excited upon arrival at the hotel.
Here's Caleb and Kimi checking out the pool.
During the church camp, we had speaker sessions in the mornings and evenings. Afternoons were free and easy so we could plan our own agenda. The first afternoon that we were there, we arranged to visit the Ostrich Farm with Kimi's family. The Ostrich Farm was located about 15min drive away. The visit there was quite interesting. When we arrived, we were greeted by the sight of a huge ostrich egg and it's gigantic egg yolk.
There was also a day old chick on display.
We were allocated a guide who brought us round the farm to show us the ostriches at different ages, as well as explain the life cycle of the ostrich.
As usual, my dear city boy reacted in a very "atas" manner when we first stepped into the farm. First he complained that it was very smelly, then he refused to walk onto the sand and wanted us to carry. So we had to carry him for the first 10 to 15min before he finally got more curious about the ostriches and decided to walk on his own.
Here's our attempt to take a family photo at the start of the tour.
Some interesting facts from our visit.
Do you know that the ostrich egg is actually very hardy and doesn't break easily? It doesn't break when you drop it on the floor and it can withstand quite a lot of weight. The guide got our friend Lorraine to stand on 2 ostrich eggs and there was hardly a crack on them.
So how do the ostrich eggs hatch? Well, according to the guide, the male and female ostrich would take turns to chip at the egg throughout the day and night until the egg cracks so that the baby ostrich can come out of the shell. However, in the farm, they actually collect the egg and use an electric drill to extract the egg.
There was actually a demo done to show us how the egg is extracted using a drill. Really quite interesting.
Here's part 2 on the process of extracting the egg.
And this is a piece of the ostrich's chest. It is actually very, very hard and acts as a shield for the ostrich. When we took a closer look at the material, it felt like some form of plastic fiber.
The guide who showed us round the farm also let us feed the ostrich some dried corn grains.
Here's Caleb's first attempt at feeding the ostrich on his own.
We ended our ostrich farm tour by tasting ostrich meat and egg!
Here's the menu. We ordered the satay and egg omelette to try.
Surprisingly, the satay was really good! The ostrich meat tasted very tender and soft. It tastes softer than chicken satay. We let the kids try this and they were all asking for more.
Caleb savouring his ostrich satay.
The egg omelette actually tasted like normal chicken egg. We couldn't really tell the difference.
After the visit to the ostrich farm, we headed to Sungei Renggit again to try the seafood at another restaurant called Jade Garden Seafood Restaurant. Again the food was good and even cheaper than Good Luck Restaurant. Ha, but no photos again coz the preggy's very busy feeding kids and of course the little one in my tummy.
The 2nd free afternoon that we had, we decided to stay in the hotel and check out the pool. It's been quite a while since the kids went swimming so they were dying to spend some time there. The pool was very, very crowded when we went but still the kids had a great time playing with the water slide and splashing around.
Other than swimming and visiting the Ostrich farm, of course, Caleb took time to spend with his gf Kimi. He was really happy that Kimi just stayed a few doors away from us and he invited Kimi over to watch DVD with him.
I really like this series of photos that we took of them together. Very sweet lah!
Btw, just in case you think that that's what church camp is all about... eat, sleep and have fun, heehee, not really lah. Our mornings are filled with speaker sessions, followed by group discussions. We break for lunch, then rest and after dinner, we'll have a night session.
Our church was very priviledged to be able to invite Ps Edmund Chan from Covenant Evangelical Free Church to be our camp speaker this year. The word that was delivered was excellent and it definitely spoke to me. I was reminded that I had to build a strong foundation for myself so that in times of crisis, I'll be able to stand strong and withstand the trials. And I'll be able to build a strong foundation for myself if I am disciplined to spend time daily with God to read his word and to memorise them. I also felt God speak to me that if I do not lead by example and have a strong foundation, I will not be able to influence my children and give them strong values and foundations. Ps Edmund said that values are caught and not taught. I can only impart strong Christian values to my children if I am grounded in the word myself and am a good role model. Well, that made a lot of sense to me and I thought, isn't that what I want? Staying home to spend time with the children in the hope that I can be a positive influence in their lives. That's probably the best investment and education that I can give them.
So whilst the adults had our spiritual food, the kids had a ball of a time with Scripture Union. Scripture Union had programmes lined up for children aged 3 to 12, and they did singing, colouring and played games. On the 3rd afternoon, they actually put up 2 song performances for all of us. Me and ND thought the kids did really well in their performance, but unfortunately, I'm facing some difficulty uploading that video. All I can say is that my boy thoroughly enjoyed performing and he really sang with lots of gusto.
Well, we left the camp happy(coz of all the food, fun and fellowship) and spiritually recharged. There was one hiccup though. If you take a look at the photos we took of the hotel, you'll think it's a nice place to stay? Hmm, let's just say it's all due to ND's photography skills.
The hotel was on the run down side but that was still bearable. The worst part of the camp was the food. It was not very palatable and to top it off, we ended our last night at camp with a major case of food poisoning. How major? Let's just say that out of about 400 campers, about 100 to 200 of us came down with food poisoning on the last night. Me, the preggy had the runs like 6 times that night. If you've ever been pregnant and had diarrhoea whilst being pregnant, you'll know that it's one of the worst things that can happen to you. Somehow, the pain is double and you can't take a lot of medication! Yah, so half of us spent the last night running to the toilet and the next morning, our camp doc had to set up a make shift clinic to check on us and dispense medication. Thank God, though we all had the runs, don't think anybody had to go to the hospital. We all just felt sick. Some had diarrhoea, some had fever, some vomitted. Think the worst hit were the primary school children and teenagers coz they were at the age where they could eat a lot.
After the night of diarrhoea, we were all very cautious about eating the hotel food after that. After the morning session, we ended our camp. Lunch was provided by the hotel but our group decided that we were better off eating elsewhere so we armed ourselves with bananas (just in case we got hungry) and headed towards JB. This time round we found a bigger Jusco with lots of restaurants and retail shops. So we spent the entire afternoon there before heading home to Spore in the evening.
Other than the food poisoning incident, we had a great time at the camp and spending time with our friends!
Btw, the hotel that we stayed at was the Desaru Golden Beach Resort. It will be our first and last time staying there!
