Snippets of CNY

CNY this year has been extremely hectic for us. It almost seems like we're making up for not being able to go visiting last year coz we were all down with HFMD. On the first day of CNY, we were out at 7am to go to church and then it was a whole day of visiting and we only came home at 10pm. We were all very tired, we were stuffed up with new year goodies and the kids were extremely cranky by the time we got home. The following 2 days were slightly better but still as tiring as we were either out visiting relatives or meeting up with friends and going for gatherings. This actually continued for the whole week. ND's school was closed for the week so on Wed, we hosted some of his classmates at our house and they came, helped me to eat up some new year goodies and we played lots of boardgames the entire afternoon. We managed to get a day of rest on Thursday and then it was off to another of ND's classmate's house for another gathering where we ate more new year goodies and played more games. And over the weekend, my mum invited my cousins from my dad's side over to her house for dinner. And my mum, being the way she is, cooked enough to feed an army.

Even though we did a lot, we took very little photos coz we were either too busy talking, eating or just too tired out to do anything else. So here's the snippets that we captured from CNY this year.

Meeting up with relatives from ND's side of the family

Dua Gu Gong with the kids

 

 

Caleb and Sarah getting bored with all the adult conversation and wandering off to play on their own. They're pretending to be some secret agent and hiding from the enemy.

 

Group photo with some of my cousins from my mum's side of the family. 

See my grandma in the photo. I think she's 97 years old  this year!

Caleb wearing his chinese kungfu suit and looking like a big boss in the car

 

One of the many lo heis that we had. This one is with ND's JC gang

 

Here's the long row of dishes that my mum prepared for our dinner on Sunday. We had at least 10 dishes and that's not including new year goodies and dessert. I was full after taking a spoon from each dish.

 

My dad ordered "Pen Cai" for our dinner. My mum was worried that there wouldn't be enough food and so she cooked another huge claypot of "pen cai" to add on. At the end of the dinner, there was so much excess food that we all had a few tuperwares of left over food to bring home. For me, I had enough to feed my family for all our meals for the next 2 days.

Hide and Seek with Sarah

Sometimes when Caleb and Sarah are at home, they like to play hide and seek. Our house is not big and don't have that many nooks and corners to hide so when it comes to hiding, they've got to get creative.

Between the two of them, Sarah's better at this game, simply for the fact that she's small and she can be absolutely quiet. All we need to do is to help her to get into her hiding place and if she doesn't make a single noise, it can be quite hard to find her.

Here she is hiding beside our TV console, amongst the toys, books and cushions.
Caleb was standing right like half a metre away from her but he just couldn't see her and she just sat there throughout without making a single sound while he kept asking us where Sarah was.

This one's even better. She hid behind ND's computer screen on his study table.
Even I didn't know she was there!

Over the weekend, we went to Godma Mei's house for breakfast and the 2 kiddos continued with their game of hide and seek and my dear Sarah once again went hiding away. If she didn't let her legs stick out from under the cushion, I think Caleb would never be able to find her.

Sophia and the Butterfly Fight

Here's Sophia fighting it out with her butterfly. Who do you think won?

Time With An Old Friend...

Last month, my "oldest" best friend, Cherine, came back to Spore for a visit and both our families managed to get together to catch up. I say "oldest" not coz she's old but coz we've been really good friends since primary 2 and we've stayed that way for the last 25 years?! Yup, my friendship with Cherine has lasted a quarter of a century and I'm really thankful that God has blessed me with this dear friend.

Even though we were both very busy in Jan, we managed to squeeze in a morning for her family to come by our house for brunch. Caleb was in school then so he missed out on all the fun but the girls had fun playing with toys and eating snacks. Cherine has got 4 girls of her own so during that visit, we had 6 little girls in the house!

Here's Sarah joining in with the other girls at the kid's table for lunch

We had a great time catching up and decided that we had to find time to meet up again before Cherine and family went back to Australia. So, we agreed to meet a week later at Pasir Ris Park on a Monday morning. This time round, I pulled Caleb out of school for that day so that he could join in the fun.

We arrived earlier than Cherine and family so we hung out at the car park for a while to wait for them. And to kill time, we asked the kids whether they wanted us to take a photograph of them and Caleb promptly posed like this for us.

And I said, " Wah, he looks like a child model." And he asked me what's a model and I told him that it's somebody who poses for the camera and gets his photos taken. And he very enthusiastically started giving us different poses on his own accord.

 

 

So does my son have the makings of a model? Haha, I guess only when he's in the mood huh...

Well, whilst he was in the mood, Sarah was definitely not in the mood for photo taking that day.

Caleb tried to get her to join him in taking photos but she just kept frowning and hiding her face with her hat.

 See the grouchy look on her face...

Finally, we spot Cherine and family arriving at the park

We had a busy moment saying our hellos and letting the kids warm up to each other

And then, we lost no time in moving ahead to conquer the playground!

First up was this bridge made of wooden planks and ropes. The older children got through it very quickly and easily.

Then the little ones followed behind...

Next was this spinning wheel that we spent quite a fair bit of time on. 

The kids just had so much fun screaming each time they got to the top of the wheel.

Ame and Corlette got onto the wheel first...

And then Caleb saw that they were having a lot of fun and wanted to try too. 

He didn't dare to get on it by himself so he got ND to hold him.

 

Next up was Sarah's turn...

Even Sophie had a go at it...

After we were done with the spinning wheel, we moved on to this rope bridge

 

Again the 2 older girls led the pack and moved ahead very quickly

Caleb was a little scared but he went along with the girls, albeit a little cautiously.

Though Sophie was the youngest there, she didn't want to be left out of any of the action and tried to join in whenever she could

As for Sarah, she was still feeling slightly moody and chose to sit in the girls' stroller instead

Oh, and we saw the good old flying fox. 

As a child, I used to stay at my aunt's place just 5min away from the park during my school holidays. Me and my cousins came to the park almost every other evening to play. And my memories of the flying fox was that it was much higher and bigger. Now, it looks really miniature to me. 

I tried to get Caleb to try it out. He was really quite terrified and kept  telling me he wanted to get down. I think he lasted about 1min on the flying fox. 

Well, though the kids weren't that interested in the flying fox, the mummies were!

 

Ya, that's the 2 mummies with 7 kids between us,  going back and forth on the flying fox!

After the mummies had enough fun on the flying fox, we moved on to the next section of the playground.

This time round, it's another roped up area for the kids to climb. Caleb was extremely thrilled that he could manage this rope obstacle.

After this, we moved on to the toddlers' section where the kids had fun going on the swings. 

The park was so empty that we had the whole row of swings all to ourselves.

Here's the 2 youngest kiddos, Sophie and Sarah on the bucket swings. Me and Cherine got their older siblings to push them while we just stand around to supervise...

Sarah's really pleased that Caleb's pushing her at the swings. 

She loves it when her korkor plays with her.

I accompanied Caleb on the swing as well and I tried to teach him the technique of swinging himself

After all that fun, we decided that it was time to leave and go fill our tummies.

We took a parting shot of Cherine and family before leaving the park.

With so many kids between us, the obvious choice to end the day was to go to Macs for lunch.

The kids enjoyed themselves very much and so did I. 

It was really nice to be able to catch up with Cherine and her family and for our kids and husbands to spend time together.

Familee Photos

It all started with me wanting to take some photos for Sophia since she was all dressed up...

And she was in a rather happy mood...

And was giving me a number of facial expressions... like this Mr Peanut face...

And this highly excited happy face...

 

And then, along comes Caleb, and we decided to take a couple of photos of me, him and Sophia...

And then, along comes ND and Sarah, and they decided to join in the fun too and so we ended up attempting to take our family photo... It wasn't that easy considering ND had to hold the camera and try to aim and capture all of us without looking... so here's some of our better attempts...

Not a bad attempt... but my face's cut off...

Better attempt but my face's still cut off and Sophia's not looking at the camera...

 

Now, it's Caleb's face which got cut off... what a waste coz I thought we girls look pretty nice...

Now, what's Sarah doing with her feet??!!

We're getting there...

And here's probably our best attempt...