Green Breakfast

We don't normally celebrate St Patricks day ourselves. Having a wonderful mother-in-law the kids experienced their first GREEN breakfast!

Lovely mint and banana smoothy to start off:

And green sourdough bread:

Happy St Patricks Day!

Pre-holiday evening by the beach

We are off to Miri, Malaysia for the weekend. It feels like it has been ages since the last holiday we had, in Germany.

Tonight we spent the evening at Mana Mana Beach Club for a pre-holiday dinner :)

We got slightly carried away... Kei and the kids joined us and we were there till 10:30pm. Oops!!

Pet rock School

A while ago I purchased a Groupon voucher for the boys to attend a craft session - pet rock making. Finally having only two days before it expired Matthew managed to take the boys into town. 

The class was very small and well organised. All the necessary materials were provided and they were straight into it! The art teacher told Matthew that the hardest part of teaching is to get the kids to speak out about their ideas and getting them to construct. Well - no problem at all with our boys. The teacher was apparently very impressed with our boys knowing exactly what they wanted. 

Oliver made a crab and of course his favourite animal - hedgehog. Luca was very happy with his turtle and a spider too.

Wonderful way to spend the hot afternoon. I really need to let them do more crafts at home. I might need to set up a proper craft station for them.

Movie date

After watching the Oscars in the morning I got itchy to go to the movies. Matthew and I haven't been to the cinema for the longest time - just because all the movies are on at the most inconvenient time of the day. We must go out soon...

Today I took only Oliver with me. I haven't had a date with him for a while and thought he would enjoy it. You can already see a BIG smile on this boy with his ticket and popcorn in his hands :)

The only kid's movie on at the moment was "Shaun the Sheep MOVIE". The boys watch the program on TV sometimes but are not super into it or anything. I wasn't sure what Oliver would think as he enjoys the more advanced kids movies, like LEGO movie and Big Hero 6 etc so far.

I loved the fact they they only talked in sheep/animal language and the kids had to use their imagination to think what they are saying. No guns and shooting bad guys in the story except the animal control guy tried to catch them with a gun, which was a little bit disappointing. They could have done it with a huge net or something I thought...  Anyway the rest of the storyline was very cute. Simple and basic animation. Oliver had a loud laugh a few times too :)

Maybe next time I will take Luca along and see if he will speak for the entire movie instead of the sheep.

Champagne breakfast and Oscars

On Monday morning we got together at Nicola's place for a Champagne breakfast. The idea was us ladies watch the Oscars award giving live on TV while enjoying the lovely food and chit chat.

There were 7 of us and we had a wonderful time. I was busy chatting and eating and forgot to take a group photo :( but it was just lovely. I am not an expert on the actors and actresses so having very knowledgeable friends with us made it even more interesting to watch!

Tick!

It must have been a good dragon dance. Oliver gave himself a BIG TICK! 

Lion and Dragon Dance

Every year Bayshore Park puts on a very good Lion dance. This year was not an exception! The Bayshore kids gathered to watch the wonderful performance together.

It took a while for them to visit all 8 towers to scare the evil spirits away before starting. The kids were very patient considering it was getting pretty hot! 

Apparently there are two different forms of lion dances (The Northern Lion and The Southern Lion dances, SE Asian countries mainly adopts The Southern Lion dances) plus different coloured lions exist. I have seen red ones and yellow ones in the past. I also spotted the green ones performing on the ECP too. I wondered what the colour difference meant and looked it up online. 

Here is the answer. According to Wikipedia "different colours are used to signify the age and character of the lions. The lion with white fur is considered to be the oldest of the lions, while the lion with golden yellow fur is the middle child. The black lion is considered the youngest lion, and the movement of this lion should be fast like a young child or a headstrong teenager. The colours may also represent the character of the lion, the golden lion represents liveliness, the red lion courage, and the green lion friendship. 

We also saw this dragon dance/performance for the first time. It was excellent! Great momentum and some tricky movements throughout the performance. In Chinese culture, the dragons are believed to bring good luck to people so the longer the dragon in the dance, the more luck it will bring to the community.  It is also believed that the dragons possess qualities such as great power, dignity, wisdom and auspiciousness. Guess what!? I am a dragon myself!

Such a wonderful way to experience a different culture! I am sure everyone has received lots of good luck from the excellent performances :)

CNY BBQ weekend

We had a rather busy weekend celebrating CNY. On Friday night we were invited to Jason and Danielle's place for a BBQ. They used to live in the same condo as us but now they are in a house nearby. There were lots of families there.  Having a few separated areas ie BBQ pit for the big boys, balcony for the ladies and heaps of play areas for the kids made it extra comfortable and fun!

I ate so much for a change. There was such a variety of delicious meat, fish and salads. I even had a very nice tiramisu for dessert :)

As the party went on the kids gathered in the lounge to watch a movie, Big Hero 6, while the adults were entertained by some live music!

Jason has this awesome music/hobby room by the balcony. Cool ha?

We didn't have much time to recover from the previous night. On Saturday we had another BBQ at our condo. This time organised by our Japanese friends. Not surprisingly, the Japanese BBQ involves less meat. Hiroko organised a BBQ fondu. Boy was it a success!!  

Everyone got pretty drunk as usual :) It is nice to have different groups of people to mingle with. We are very lucky! 

Hand me down

I love seeing our kids wearing something we got for the older one. Like this hat Ashley is wearing.

Here is Oliver in the same hat when he was just over 15 months. Actually Ashley now wears the pair of little havianas he is wearing in this photo too.  

 I cannot believe how fast our kids are growing... 

Chinese New Year 2015

This year I managed get Oliver a new CNY outfit. You'd think they sell all sorts of traditional outfits everywhere in Singapore right? Nope! it was actually quite a mission to find the right colour and right size (maybe because I left it till the very last minute?). Actually Oliver had a special request to find a red outfit with some fluffy things on his pants like in this picture so that he can perform the lion dance at school properly.

Well... I couldn't find them in the end but at least I got him a good size red ones to make him (kinda) smile for this picture. I got Ashley a Chinese dress too :)

On the way to school celebration:

I didn't get to see any of what they were doing but both came home very happy with some angpao and oranges.

Gong Xi Fa Cai !!

Valentine gift

Guess what I got for Valentines Day this year from my lovely husband!?

A proper size dishwasher!!!
Now we can spend more time relaxing after dinner instead of doing the dishes :)
Thank you Matthew, I am still wondering if the present was actually for me or for you??

The first game of the season

The rugby season for 2015 is finally here! The boys (I mean all three) were very happy to get to go out with our friends to watch the game at a sports bar this afternoon.

Oliver got to wear his Crusaders top from Merryn and Dennis for the first time.

They have completed the new complex on East Coast Park, almost behind Parkway Parade with some great restaurants and bars. The cafe/bar we were supposed to go was not open till later so we settled into this Mexican place for the first half. We basically had the whole place to ourselves, with two big screens to enjoy the game -yeah!

Then we continued onto the second bar. The place was very big and having the big grass area for the kids to run around was just perfect!

Me, Nicola and Naz:

Well as usual the big boys might have had slightly too many beers... I am sure we will be watching lots of the games here during the Super 15 and the Rugby World Cup. Very happy to find such a cool place nearby!

A visitor from Abu Dhabi

We had a special visitor from Abu Dhabi this afternoon. Nathan was stopping over in Singapore during his Brisbane trip. The kids were all over him just 5 min after he arrived. I knew Oliver would recognise him straight away, but it took a while for Luca to remember.

Not to worry! After spending the afternoon together Luca and Nathan found the special bond again :)

It was great to have you Nathan, please bring Boel and the kids next time!! Pretty please we miss them so much too!

Waitangi Day 2015

This weekend we celebrated Waitangi Day, which is a significant day in the history of NZ. It is the day the NZ founding document The Treaty of Waitangi between Maori and Pakeha (the Maori word for predominantly European ancestors) was signed in 1840.

There are a few places in Singapore which had some special events and offers. We of course chose the most kiddy-friendly option of taking the kids to Cafe Melba. They now have a brand new great big bouncing castle!!

It was a rather hot afternoon but the kids had an absolute ball!!

Ashley, Aisla and Naima - the Kiwi girls :)

The boys spent most of the time playing soccer and rugby:

The Bayshore Kiwi gang :) :) :)

We had some NZ beer Steinlager, whitebait and of course fish and chips!

I think out of all the kids, these two enjoyed bouncing around the most. Wonderful way to spend a fun afternoon with lovely friends.