Mothers do what they need to do...

My MIL is away in East Malaysia for a week now. I am now cooking in the evenings to feed hubby & the kids and also sometimes for my FIL and SIL who are at their home nearby. MIL will be back next week. So today I went to Tesco during lunch break to get some vegetables for tonight's dinner. Actually, I find it still quite manageable. I leave immediately after work, fetch all kids who will be at my daughter's kindy and get home around 6 pm. Starts cooking and dinner will be cooked by 7 pm. Not bad at all. But of course, it does need a little bit of pre-planning, like defrosting meat/fish before hand. I don't mind this at all but I believe my MIL still wants to cook dinner for us, so I'll still leave it to her when she comes back.Unless of course she changes her mind.

Christmas was yesterday, went to church on Christmas eve and Christmas morning. In the afternoon, we went to have a small family get-together at sis' house. I ended up cooking, with the maid's help, while my sister and my mum had to do some last minute shopping for kids' presents. I did mine earlier. So the kids were all happy with a couple of presents each. Anyways, the kids had fun and it was wonderful to spend time with my siblings and their families.

The new year is coming soon, the kids will start school on 2nd January. I have yet to see how we can manage because one of the boys will be schooling in the morning while the other will be in the afternoon. The two boys, although cannot stop quarreling sometimes, are like always together. So now, this year, they will see each other less. When one is in school, the other will be in daycare and vice versa. I hope their bickering will be lesser. Anyways, they like to gang up against their sister and make her scream, still don't know how to stop that, both they making her scream and she screaming...

I was talking with my mum and siblings and the subject about how to teach children came up. So my mum said we should not shout/scold or hit our children but reason with them. Hmmmm... Ironically, I don't remember having a lot of chit-chat with my parents while growing up... In principal, yes, we should not scream and scold at them. But in practice, it's not easy. I blow my top sometimes, even hubby does that. When either of us do that, we get annoyed at each other. I believe my parents felt the same too, more my mum because dad was not at home as much as mum.

Sometimes, we just need to sit back and look at things in the kids' perspective. They have siblings to contest with for attention, they get bored easily and they are just mischievous little creatures by nature. When they can get their siblings miserable, they are happy! My sons would do anything to be able to play computer games! I definitely control that, I don't like them getting so hooked up at the PC or iPad/iPhone playing games. Fortunately (or unfortunately) my Streamyx at home sucks, so loading online games takes forever, that kind of hinders their online gaming activities (and also my Maaduu sessions as well :( ).

I think, we just need to help them spend time doing something more interesting and beneficial, together, or even apart sometimes. Last week, we spent sometime doing some paintings. We also should have some outdoor fun and exercise too. I think I am going to draw up a schedule to include some of these activities into their lives instead of shopping every weekend. Let's see how that turns out.

I got this book for Christmas, Thanks MT. One of the quotes inside goes like this:

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.

                                                      - Benjamin Spock

2013 Round the Corner

The end of the year is less than 2 weeks away and Christmas is in a week! Oh, not forgetting, end of the world is in 3 days. So what have you guys done in preparation for D Day? I have not done anything for end of the world, just thought I should packed up some drinking water and non perishable food. What the heck, we will consume those stuff eventually anyway so why not...

This year was hard for us. We went through a whole lot of emotional upheaval, stress and difficulties. When things were hard, we have family and friends that cared which made things a lot easier. Thank GOD that we came out of these difficult times stronger and more faithful. Most of all, Thank GOD for giving us the beautiful gift which will remain in our hearts until the day we leave this world (and beyond).

Coming back to the year end celebrations. Christmas is so close, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. So what have you done in preparation for that? Hmmm, for us, we had caroling a few days ago. Singing house to house for our church members staying here. The house is decorated, most of the presents are prepared. I think we spent quite a lot of money already shopping :(. Spiritually, what have we done? We have gone for confession and are paying more attention during mass. Frankly, I think we need to do more, for the church and for charity. Lord, please steer us to the right direction, to do more of Your works. I am ready, to serve more. It doesn't mean only for Christmas but all year long. Lord, guide me.

So for all those reading this, have a Blessed Christmas and a very Happy New Year. God bless you.

Oat and Durian?

Hey, I checked my blog today and my last article was read 15 times! I usually get like 4 hits, and that could be myself reading my own blog. So 15 is good, since I posted it only 2 days ago. Hmmmm, wonder who have been reading my blog :P.  Anyways, hope you come back often and bring more friends so that I may soon have enough traffic to become a fulltime professional blogger! (Yeah, right...)

Back to reality. I got great news last night from a dear dear friend. She is getting married in 2 months. I am super happy for her. CONGRATULATIONS, PY!!!!

So I don't know why I am super excited about her up coming wedding, probably because she totally deserve every happiness in the world because she is such a dear. So you know what came to my mind after she told me, I need a diet and I have 2 months for that! I plan to dress to the nines for her wedding dinner and I definitely can't do that with my spare tyre around my waist. SOOOOO, my target is to lose 15 kgs in 2 months! Ambitious or not?? Hehehhee....

Actually, I don't eat a lot. But problem is I don't move a lot either.... so where to start?

I am sacrificing lunch for at least 2 months. When I am hungry in the afternoon, I will drink some oat beverage. Lets see what we can achieve with this diet in a week! I will start tomorrow because I am going for durian lunch in Broga today :P. So I am bracing for tomorrow, ok?

Appetising?

APPETISING!!!!!!!!!

My Week Off

Was off work for the whole last week. We went to Legoland in JB on Monday and then sent the boys to BP to stay with my mum for 2 weeks. They are still there. Legoland was ok, it's more for kids between 6 to 12. Except for 2 roller coaster rides that adults may fancy, the rest are too kiddy for adults. If you ask me, I would say, go once. It's nice to visit at least once but I wouldn't go again personally. Not sure if you get the same answer from the kids though. Plus the wait for each ride was excruciating! We had to pick the ones we really like cause there wasn't enough time for all.

Legoland, good for kids only.

 Back from Bangkok after a 4 day trip. Had a pretty good time with my daughter while my husband went to work there. She is a brave 4 year old! We went on planes, vans, limo, taxi, motorbike taxis, motorised (James Bond) long boat, boat on oars and even went on elephant! All that and she didn't even wince a bit! I was surprised, I actually thought she will be afraid, especially on the elephant but she was like, "Yes, I want to ride the elephant!" Even after me reconfirming with her a few times! There went 900 baht for our elephant ride...

My 2nd son talked to his sister on the phone from my mother's house in BP and the 1st thing he asked her was, "Was it fun?". His sister of course said, "Yes!" and the poor boy was so jealous... But I have promised to take the 2 boys on a trip on a plane somewhere next year, so wait your turn :).

People in Thailand look very much like Malaysians, most of them speak to us in Thai, thinking we are locals. This was the same when I went to Chiang Mai. Bangkok looks a lot like KL too, but I think it's about twice bigger. The jam is worse than KL and another scary sight was the electrical and phone wirings running like some tangled mess along the road on posts. We don't see that in KL, thank God. I heard there are about 10 million living in the city, no wonder the jam is so bad. Otherwise, the city is nice for shopping and food, relatively cheap. Still, I prefer Malaysian food.

Authentic Tomyam Koong POWER!

The best place we visited has to be the Floating Market in Damnoen Saduak, which is about 1.5 hours from Bangkok. Things there are very expensive but the experience to ride on the boats which bumps and slides into each other was pretty cool. It's like traffic jam in the canal where boats slide along each others' side and the boatmen and women maneuvering expertly through. We were reminded to keep our hands and fingers inside the boat, if you don't want to lose them...

We also went to the Grand Palace but I think that isn't that nice. I wouldn't recommend that. When I came to Bangkok some 15 years ago, we didn't come here but to another temple, I think it was the sleeping Buddha temple and that was more beautiful. The Grand Palace is less interesting compared to that.

My girl and me at the Grand Palace.

The hotel area where we stayed was largely a Japanese expat area, so there were lots of Japanese restaurants apart from massage parlours. There were no tourist pasar malam, so I didn't get to shop alot. We did go to Tesco Lotus and BigC (equivalent to Carrefour here) and bought some clothes. I brought some 20,000 baht but couldn't finish it :(, I wished I had more time and more places to shop.

This Friday, we are off again to Johor to bring the boys home. We need to be home on Friday evening because my eldest has Confession and Confirmation (correction: it's Communion not Confirmation) on Saturday and Sunday.

Alexander Tan Shi Rong!

And I am officially a godma! My new godson, Alexander Tan was baptised last Saturday. Isn't he a cutie!

Election 2012

We have planned out what we are going to do and go for the whole of next week. Starting from Saturday evening we will travel south to BP, on Monday we will proceed further south to the tip of the peninsular for LEGOLAND! And we will be back in time for our flight to Bangkok on Tuesday. Then Friday late night we will back back home in time for next Saturday, the baptism of my godson, Alexander. I will remember to take photo of Alexander and post it up :). Will be a busy busy week, but something different from our routine. Kind of a busy break.

In the meantime, today we see the USA having her election. Me, having some weird kind of fixation with US of A (A lot of us are, come on, admit it!), am also following the results live on the CNN website. Looks like Romney is winning for now. I am glad, because Romney is pro-life although I don't dislike Obama. But what the heck, like it matters who I support. Now I am itching to vote for my beloved Malaysia, when will the PM call for election?! Well, he only has until March 2013, so our long necks will be able to rest soon.

Well maybe you will find this interesting like me, the amount of money (2.5 Billion USD) spent on the 2012 US election campaigns and where the money is coming from. Watch this link. Wow, that's a lot of money! Imagine that being used for other more worthy cause!

Back...

Okay. I am feeling loads better, so I am back to post here. Been a good week for me, much better then what I had been going through recently. We have been having busy weeks with Rosary prayers at BEC members' houses almost every week night as it is October Rosary month. As the lovely Auntie A said, the BEC members have been very supportive of late of all the BEC activities and this Rosary month has been the most participated in our BEC history. I agree. It is lovely to have prayers in homes, as one or two gathers in HIS name, HE will be amongst us! Having Jesus in your homes, isn't that lovely!

Amongst other things, I am going to be godma to a lovely baby boy, almost 3 months old. Cannot wait to manja this baby with lovely gifts. We are also going to Legoland in November, tickets already purchased! The boys will be at their grandma's place for a week after that and the girl and I will be going to Bangkok with their dad, if all goes well. He is there to work, so me and the girl will just tag along for a few days. The boys, especially the 2nd one, weren't that happy to be left behind but being able to spend a week at grandma's helped convinced him abit. Also, we promised him to bring him somewhere on a plane next year. The boys do not have passports yet and I am waiting for next year to make them theirs since the government will give half price for kids passport. Next year is just a few months away mah. I feel a little guilty leaving them behind but dragging all the kids along will be hard since hubby will be working during the day.

Nothing cooking tonight, having pizzas!

Sad Loss

It's been such a long while since I last updated my blog here. People who know me, know that I had recently been through a very tragic family loss. I have blog about it in my other blog so I will not repeat them here.

Things are getting a little better for me as time passes but life will never be the same. I won't let it be. That's all I can muster today here. Maybe, later on, when my mood is better, I will upload more notes here.