With her new tricycle

I saw one of our friends' Anna's post on FB with a picture of a pink bike to give away. I contacted her thinking it might have already gone to someone but she told me that she would keep it for Ashley! How lucky!! I was picturing a normal tricycle but we were so amazed when we picked it up.
Look at the size of it!! It is just so cool!!

Here is Ashley having her first ride on her super tricycle:

I couldn't get her off the bike for the entire day or the following day either!

Miss Pink

Can you guess her favourite colour is PINK!?

Back into some exercise

Hooray! I am finally exercising again!! Rowena and Meisha have started going to yoga lessons in the next condo so I joined them. The class was held outside under a big tree. It would be just perfect if the construction site for the new MRT station is not right next door... a bit too noisy.  Still I really enjoyed the class and felt so good to stretch all parts of my body :)

Story time

It is so nice to see Oliver can read both English and Japanese books to Luca and Ashley. The best part is he really enjoys doing so.

Tonight he was reading a Japanese story from his textbook to them.

The story was slightly too long for them maybe... these two are so funny.

Cupcake making

I must bake more with our kids. Matthew is so much better than me these days.
Ashley and Luca had fun making Minion cupcakes with him this afternoon! Yum yum yum!

The Banana Leaf Apolo

When we shopped for Christmas lights in Little India we had lunch at this great Indian restaurant.

Everything was served on banana leaves:

We had our usual dishes, palak paneer, dhal and some naan bread. They were so so yummy! I wish one day our kids can eat some spicy food with us. At the moment they cannot enjoy any of these wonderful curries. Like Luca in the picture, they just eat some naan bread :(

Christmas decorations 2016

Finally the time of year is here - slightly earlier than usual but since we are leaving to NZ for a Christmas holiday I had to make sure we have enough time enjoy the Christmas spirit in our own house.

Opening my Christmas boxes - I started with only one box in Brunei, now they are squeezed into 4 boxes...

Things I got while in Osaka - a wooden hedgehog decoration for Oliver and a golden deer cushion for  the living room. 

Oliver making a LEGO Christmas rocking horse: 

Ashley helped me put the mini tree together:

All the Christmas story books are out now!

While I placed all the decorations in the house the kids were happily listening to Christmas carols and had fun with their Christmas workbooks.

I also got two gorgeous little wooden Santas in Osaka. They are traditional Japanese kokeshi dolls. 

I realised we needed to buy new Christmas lights for the tree. So we had to wait another day to decorate it. The kids all got one new decoration each. Oliver and Luca got a hedgehog each, Ashley got a pavlova fairy from NZ. 

Luca spent a long time studying all the Christmas books before he went to bed. He was way too excited!

The following day we went to Little India to look for Christmas lights. It is strange to visit Little India for this reason but we know of a very good mall with one floor full of Christmas decorations. 

I found these in one of the shops, are they pohutukawa??

We also bought a wreath for our front door and a mini tree for our bedroom. 

With an extra 100 lights this year our tree looked even better!

It was time to put all these decorations up on the tree :) It was such a nice family moment. 

Once it got dark it really felt nice and Christmasy with all the lights. 

You will hear this from me a lot until Christmas, but I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!

Yuto's sleepover

Oliver was so happy to finally have his school friend over for a sleepover!! Yuto is one of Oliver's best friends from his class. They played basketball for a long time and had a swim before they came upstairs for a nice long bath together.

I thought they would be excited and stay up late but NOPE, they were too tired from all the exercise and fell asleep very quickly. 

In the morning they had pancakes with sausages and scrambled eggs - so happy!

As Yuto had basketball training in the early morning they only spent couple of hours together. Still, they had such a great time. 

I hope I can arrange another sleepover soon. Nice to see Oliver smiling so much :)

Prawn sushi monsters

While Oliver was at school I took Luca and Ashley to Bedok Mall. We only eat sushi in this Japanese restaurant now. Both of them are crazy about prawns - they both ate so well!

Veramping & Balconist

While Glamorous Camping = Glamping, camping with bath, toilet, aircon, bed, sofa etc is getting popular around the world, in Japan a new term "Veramping" = veranda + glamorous + camping was created by a publisher LaLa Begin. As you know Japanese people have limited time and space for leisure (I am not a usual Japanese...). But more and more people are making their balcony/veranda as a leisure space/outdoor living room and enjoying picnic lunch and coffee etc.

I am very lucky to be able to do this for the last year and a half since we moved to this bigger unit. Having a bigger balcony makes a huge difference. I would love to make the space more cozy by putting nice lights and more cushions etc but having occasional strong sun, rain, wind and storms I have kept it very simple.

Yesterday Kei and Hiroko came around and made some yummy pizza from scratch. Of course we had  a bottle of wine with it! We just love our lifestyle here so much!

Coffee morning with baby Noah

Our friends Shem & Naz had a baby boy Noah in late October and finally he came out of his house and joined us for a coffee morning.

It is so amazing how small a newborn baby is. I cannot believe our ones used to be this small! Noah came into the world with lots of hair like our kids :) He is just so cute!

We had turns holding/cuddling Noah. Here is Rowena and Noah:

Meisha and Rowena with Noah:

As we live in the same condo, we will get to see him grow. Out of our three Luca is the most excited one. He loves babies but as you know he is very intense so I need to watch him closely around tiny baby Noah from now on - he might squeeze him a little too much!