Shopping and eating @ Vivo

Seriously, we hardly go out on weekends to shop. However, this Saturday, Daddy wanted to change Keziah's shoes that were given to her during her Birthday Celebrations to a larger size and so we trotted down to Vivo City after their nap. However, Crocs@Vivo has ran out of the design and we got her another design instead. Her new shoes....

We splurged on dinner tonight at Mommy's favourite Japanese restaurant, Shin Kushiya. The food was ever so good!

One thing about this place, their cold noodles are not the usual buckwheat green noodles but white ones with a firm bite yet silky. Daddy ordered on with accompanying duck broth dip. It tasted a little like miso sauce but nonetheless yummy.

We ordered the usual beef noodles for the kids and kushiyaki while Mommy had her sashimi rice bowl.

We also ordered Yakimono, charcoal grilled speciality. This kimchi stuff charcoal-grilled squid was fantastic! Despite it being spicy, our girl loved it, eating one piece after another eventhough she had to down water after every mouthful.

For the first time, we indulged in dessert here - black sesame icecream and plum wine tiramisu. What a glorious wrap up of the meal!

How our kids enjoyed the food. You will never go wrong with noodles with them.

K's Art - Elephant and Turtle

This was the elephant that Mommy was talking about the week before. Can you believe it was done by Keziah? Her teacher helped her with all the outlining and she did the colouring herself.

This week, our little girl and her teacher (Xinyi Jie Jie) drew a family of turtles. Mommy was told she had improved in her colouring tremendously, colouring all within the area drawn, selecting her colours with some guide.

The final product...apparently, the green shell one was Daddy, the purple shell one was Mommy, the little yellow one was Abel and finally, the pink one, her!

Mmmm....Mouse

Few days back, Keziah pulled out some of the printed craft sheets that Mommy had left in her activity folder after dinner and asked to do this. Of course, we can't leave Abel out. Keziah did the colouring, cutting and pasting all by herself while our little Abel was a little playful today, not wanting to colour much. Mommy cut out his pieces and he put them together to form this mouse. Not too bad in terms of spatial sense of where those ears were supposed to be. They both got to choose their colours for the base paper.  Since Keziah's more interested now to write, Mommy simply spelled the words and she wrote the letters for both Abel and herself.

Birthday Celebration with Classmates

Today Keziah had her celebration in school with her friends. For the first time, Mommy saw all her classmates as Keziah's on schoolbus and Daddy is the one who drops her off. Interesting to hear how the school celebrates the kids' birthday. The birthday kid is invited up on stage to a dummy birthday cake and the whole assembly will sing a birthday song to him/her. Afterwhich, they can celebrate their birthdays in class with the REAL cake. How sweet!

We had some fun at Fidgets again! This time, Abel was more than eager to run around on his own to explore the place compared to when we went with him in March hols. Then he needed some warm-up time. Now the place is his world!

Our little girl requested for McDonald's for dinner and since it was her birthday, we allowed. Somehow McDonald just has a draw on the kids.

Our little Abel wanted nothing else aside from a few mouthful of corn and nothing else but fries! Yes, fries dipped in tomato sauce.

Reading...

To get Keziah prepared to read, we have started her on blending words. Slow it may be, she can read simple books from the phonic set that we have within the short 'vowel a' word family. She is still getting used to blending words as she seems to forget the letter sounds once she tries to put the sounds together though she can sound out each letter very well. Nonetheless, this is only the beginning. Slow and stead wins the race.

Cake for school

Mommy almost forgot about celebrating Keziah's birthday at school. Thankfully she remembered in time and managed to get her a cake after all. How do you like this agar agar princess cake?

Keziah was really excited over the cake and even more so with preparation of little gifts for her friends. We had bought these little magnetic bookmarks some time back ready for today. Keziah enthusiastically packed all of them into little packs for her friends, insisting that every one should be done by her.

Birthday celebration with Ta Ta and Nei Nei

Having our lovely Japanese food again!

Keziah's 4th Birthday @ Zoo

Birthday with a difference this year for Keziah. It's at her favourite spot, the zoo, with her friends! Today she also had many other firsts!

We were welcomed by the party signage at the entrance and off we went for the ferry ride - her first!

The kids were all so excited and can't wait to get on the ferry. It was such a coincidence that some of her friends from her previous school hit the ferry the same time as us. The girls just wanted to sit together.
On the ride, we were introduced to the water monitor lizard and the crocodile. The kids got to feel the the skin of a water monitor lizard which was retrieved from illegal hunters and also the egg shell of the crocodile. First experience again!
As we were early, the kids had some time to just go wet and wild in the water park at Kidzworld while we waited for the rest of the guests to stream in.
The party venue:

Here's our friends at the party:

The little girls who can't stop catching up with one another, so did the mommies
Our relatives...
Churchmates...
Friends from music school..
As it was a surprisingly crowded day at the zoo, we had our meal of KFC before going into game time of nothing more familiar than music chairs and treasure hunt. However, the kids were more interested in playing with one another that only a few were left playing the treasure hunt.
Cake cutting time! The lovely Hello Kitty with compliments from Andy Pak Pak and Yee Mei Pak Mei. Yee Mei Pak Mei's sister was the baker behind the scene for the creation of this lovely rich chocolate cake as well as the cute kitty shortcake gift pack! It was so customised that some mommies even thought that Mommy made it herself. Mommy wished she could have just such great skills!
As much we remembered to take our family pic, Mommy realised only thereafter that she forgot to get the kids to have a picture together for memory. Sorry my little dearies, Aunt will remember the next time.

We never missed exploring the zoo even today. Feeding animals was the kids' favourite and we caught the 1.30pm feeding of the rabbits and guinea pigs.

First ride on the pony! Complimentary for the birthday girl. Keziah has really grown and now has greater courage to try out things new. She had no fear going on the pony and was all smiles throughout the ride. She even touched the pony and told mommy that its hair was rough and spiky.
And for others, they ended their day at the waterplay. Hope everyone had great fun and family bonding time!

Thank you everyone for your lovely gifts! How did her friends know that she likes Hello Kitty? We had quite a number of Hello Kitty gifts of different sorts.

The day didn't end after our zoo party. We went for another party to celebrate one of Keziah's good friend, Cheryl. Fun to have a party with a playscape. The kids were literally entertaining themselves while parents caught up. Even little Abel scaled the heights after some warm up time in the ballpit. Daddy even had to transverse the structure eventually to get our dear Abel down to go home.

And we know Aunt Nat will never disappoint us with wonderful cakes at party!

Day out with Mommy

We haven't quite had time alone for a long time. Today, Keziah was off from school and Mommy also had her day off from work. We had some last minute shopping to deal with before her party the next day. Mommy has already gotten her a dress and hair ties and now it was just left with her princess heels which she had wanted so very much. We were racing against time as we had to drop Abel off to school, collect Daddy's parcel from the post office, then shop around Robinson's first before landing at United Square for our shoe hunt if we can't get any and have our lunch all before picking Abel up from school lastest by 1pm.

It was definitely a busy morning. We finally found a pair of lovely shoes albeit a size bigger for our darling princess. Just look at her smile of satisfaction!

Our simple lunch of wan ton char siew noodles of which our little gal insisted on eating with chopsticks. Hmm...wonder if it tasted better as such?