The Line

Celebrating Daddy's birthday at the LINE at Shangri-La Hotel.

The food was good...especially the sashimi, raw oysters and prawns. There was a great spread but the dishes was good but not fantastic. One thing we realised, we have aged. We no longer have the capacity to eat buffet. After 2 or 3 servings, Mommy was almost full.

Goodbye gifts..

Well, after much consideration, Mommy was going to pull her out of school for the next 2 months till January when she starts again at a church kindergarten. Yes, it was a financially consideration and also to be fair to Abel to let him have opportunities for learning as well. Even if Mommy was going back to work, seriously we couldn't afford paying for 2 to be in this current school as it would simply means Mommy was working to pay for their fees.

Keziah certainly had great fun at school and made friends. In fact, with Mommy staying home, she also made friends with her classmates' moms. We decided to prepare some goodie bags for the little kids as she bids farewell to them tomorrow.

Our enthusiastic cook making banana and chocolate chip muffins...

A simple recipe to follow to make yummy muffins

Ingredients

3 ripe bananas

1/2 cup brown sugar

100g butter

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1.5 cups flour

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Method

1. Melt butter and set aside to cool

2. Peel and mash banans in a separate mixing bowl. Add sugar, mixing to combine.

3. Lightly beat together butter, egg and milk. Add banana mixture and sifted dry ingredients.

4. Mix lightly with a fork just to combine. Stir in chocolate chips.

5. Bake in deep muffin tins at 190C for 15-20min.

Even Abel was helping to pack goodie bags..

Pizza Day..

She did it all herself, following mommy's demonstration..

Her Artwork for Daddy's birthday...his special pizza..

Yummy...looks just how she enjoys her works..

Abel's little activities at 20.5mths

How did the apple tree grow?

The week before we had our arty day and forgot to update on our 'tree'. Here they are...the tall one belonging to Keziah and the short one belonging to Abel...

Lower Pierce Reservoir

We took an evening stroll at Lower Pierce Reservoir. It's been a long while since we last did that. It was a nice cool evening and there were so many people fishing by the waterside. The kids were amazed with the catch of mini lobsters, prawns and fish and simply squatted next to the little tanks where people placed their catch. There was an old playground with those merry-go-round which now you could hardly find in most modern ones and the kids had fun going on it though it was rickety and cranked with every move. Keziah had fun with hopscotch too...

Daddy's prebirthday celebration

Yes, Daddy's turning 33 in 6 days and this was our pre-celebrations at Ta Ta's place with crabs and to top it off, durian cake from Angie's choice.

Art Trial

It's the 2nd art trial class that Keziah's been. The first being with her schoolmate and this being one with Xinyi jie jie whom she's familiar with. Since Xinyi's parents started Vince Art and Music school at Goldhill Plaza which is so near to Ta Ta and Nei Nei's place, Mommy thought why not just let her try it out after her nap and before going over for dinner. As it was a school holiday, we invited Cheryl along and the girls had a good time painting while the parents went off for tea. Mommy was actually quite impressed with what Keziah came up to the extent of asking Xinyi how much of it was done on her own. It was a good job for a start. We might consider to put her there since she's having fun. Of course, the girls had their afterclass fun at United Square and then dinner together.

P.S. Pictures from Aunt Nat as Mommy didn't bring her camera.

Oil Pastels to begin with...
Admiring their finished pieces....Cheryl's piece...

Keziah's piece...

Simple fun on this ride that did nothing much then gently rocking from left to right...

The Very Hungry Caterpillar....'T' for tree

It's time to mess around again. Abel was taking an extremely long nap so Keziah got her hands on some glass paint and started on her Melody picture which has been sitting there for a long time since we got it from the block party weeks back. Looks like her fine motor skills are getting better with a good spread of colours without merging everything into one. Mommy only did minimal to guide her along.

When Abel was up, we started reading our Very Hungry Caterpillar Story and threading the food through the little manipulative that mommy made. We did a catepillar rhyme to remember the life cycle of the caterpillar which Mommy thought was rather cute.

Caterpillar Change

There was a little caterpillar crawling all about. (Walk with fingers on arm)
He worked and he worked without a doubt. (Wiggle fingers)
Wrapping himself in a snug cocoon.(Wrap other hand around fingers)
Waiting and waiting, will it be soon? (hold fingers)
Look, he's coming out, my oh my! (raise arms in excitement)
For now he's become a beautiful butterfly (Cross thumbs and flap hands like wings)

Keziah had some simple Math activity and maze worksheet to do with counting, addition and pattern. Ok, it will be some time before she knows what addition is all about.

Next, we got our hands messy with paint to create the trunk and foliage of our tree to follow up with the next story on the "Make an Apple Pie and See the World" in line with our letter for the week "T" as that's where we are going to get our apples from.

Abel's starting to enjoy this mess of paint compared to a month or two back when he refused to get his hands dirty at all.

Glass House

One of Daddy's old churchmate invited us to his place. What an amazing place that's really all made of the glass, even the stairway! Sometimes wonder if the stairs will give way under immense weight strain as it's mere 2 pieces of glass at most 4-5 inch thick. Ok, not very child-friendly nor skirt-friendly.

Of course, the kids had fun exploring this huge 3-storey house and playing with each other.

MV Doulos

The Doulos is here in Singapore for this weekend at Vivo City. The MV Doulos is the world's oldest active ocean-faring passenger ship. She is now owned by the German charity Gute Bücher für Alle (English: Good Books for All), and is used as a floating bookshop. We took the chance to have the kids board the vessel to have a look at what life was like up there. Sadly, we didn't make it for the tour as it was booked till 2 hours later. Can't afford the wait without having the kids nap first. Anyway, we did tour around the deck where the bookshop was and Keziah even opened up one of the toilets to see how small it was.

K's first dental visit

Yes, it's our first dental visit. We went to NTUC Denticare just across the road based on recommendation by forum mommies. This dentist, Dr Chan, is indeed very good with kids. He sure succeeded in coaxing our little girl to open her mouth for him to do a check on her teeth, even rewarding her with stickers. Keziah has now the full set of milk teeth, 2o in all!

"Business" Time...

Let's see what our bookworm Abel does....

First Car Wash...

Our little girl's first car wash, all because she threw up in the car...

Fire Fighters...

It was an eyeopening visit to the Central Firestation. We had the chance to be up on the red rhino, the fire engine, up the elevated ladder and get our hands on the mist gun and experience hosing water like a fireman out of the hose at a pressure of 2 bars.

Fidgets here we come...

Our first visit to Fidgets with two of Keziah's classmates from school. The kids had great fun...even our little Abel was making himself comfortable, looking for Mommy who was chatting with the rest of the mommies once in awhile.

Mooncakes...

Thanks to Aunt Pauline who so kindly encouraged MOmmy to try making her snowskin mooncakes, even to the extent of giving us some of the ingredients that she's left with after making her batch of mooncakes, weighing scale and the mould. Keziah was actually quite excited about this whole session. She's all ready to get her hands on moulding the mooncakes.

Here's the recipe we used from Aunt Pauline with some modification as there were no premix available:

Ingredients
300 gms Phoon Huat Premix Fried Glutinous Rice Flour (糕粉) (150 gms Fried Glutinous Rice Flour and 150 gms icing sugar)
40 gms Hong Kong Flour (usually used for making 包子)
50gms Fried Glutinous Rice Flour (for dusting)
65 gms Shortening
150 ml Ice Water
2tbsp Fresh Milk
500 gms Lotus Paste or Green bean paste
50gms Melon Seeds
18 Salted Egg Yolks (optional)
*300 gms of Fried Glutinous Flour made 14 medium size snow skin moon cakes

Method of Preparation
(Salted Egg Yolks)
- Drain the liquid out of the salted eggs
- Add 2 tbsp of oil onto a plate
- Place the egg yolks onto plate and steam it for 10mins
- Set it aside after it's cooked

(Moon Cake Skin)
- Rub shortening into flour mixture till it looks like coarse meal
- Add Milk & Ice Water a little at a time till you get a soft dough that doesn't stick
- Cover & leave the dough in a cool dry place (or refrigerate it) for up to 30mins
- Scale & Weigh 35gms per portion (depending on the size of your mould; you've got to trial & error on this)

(Filling)
- Mix lotus paste with melon seeds
- Scale & Weigh 40gms per portion (including egg yolk)

(Assemble)
- Wrap each portion of filling with a portion of snowskin
- Roll it into a ball
- Press it into the mould
- Smoothen the base of the moon cake
- Knock it out of the mould
- Chill before serving