Thankful Tuesdays: Grateful to Gather

Hello!  Its been a busy day and I still have dinner to cook, but I thought I'd quickly pop in to count my blessings... This week, we give thanks to God for:

:: Him being our Shepherd.  In times of doubt or worry, it is always comforting to know that our God watches over us.

:: Sunlight: That allows plants to grow, and gives us rainbows.

:: Family, that wrap around and keep the children close and safe, and always have time to read "just one more book".  That lend helping hands so you can take a break.  That are patient with your shortcomings, and tolerate your flaws.

:: The visas being cleared, which means we do not need to navigate another admin minefield of applying to another country.  And also means we can move ahead with the planning and hoping, and dreaming too... :)

:: Reminders of love in the commonest places:

:: Food, that nourishes our body and keeps us going.  And how most of us have the happy problem of deciding "what to eat" or "what to cook", rather than wonder about when the next meal is ever coming...

What are you thankful for this week, friends?  If you blog, and decide to take some time to list your blessings for the week, do add your link (to the specific post) below so that we could gather in cyberspace to encourage each other and give thanks together.  And to allow your readers to hop over to the gathering, please copy and paste the code provided below at the bottom of your post.  Let the thanksgiving begin!

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Weekend wanderings: Bits and bobs

The in-laws left for home yesterday, so today has been a busy day for us while we get back into the usual swing of things.  I asked my mum to help out during lunch, since baby J was really cranky and insisted on being carried.  All. the. time.  (I think he misses the grandparents.)  She had some make up dance class, so she turned up with a can of tuna, and asked me to make my own sandwiches, LOL.  In the end I made cheese sandwiches for Junior J and myself.  Cheese sandwiches are great when you have to eat while walking and rocking a grumpy baby, since stuff doesn't drop out when you take a bite.  

Anyway this post will be totally random, since I can't seem to gather my thoughts into any sense of coherence:

:: In an attempt to take more family photos (especially since I tend to be behind the camera, and have very little shots with the kids), we signed up for one of those photoshoots during a Groupon promotion.  The shoot was held yesterday, and didn't go too well.  Our photographer was probably used to co-operative subjects that posed for him, and we went from point to picturesque point and were asked to do this and that.  However, Junior J as usual refused to look at the camera, and I think having a stranger follow him and point a big black lens at him freaked him out.  Poor photographer kept going "boy, please look at the camera, boy, please smile", which ensured that the boy did the total OPPOSITE.  Then the hubby was asked to take off his specs since they had transition lenses and were dark from the sun.  He put them in his pocket and promptly dropped them during the shoot, and didn't realize it until much later.  We spent 20 minutes combing all the places we went to try to find his specs (he tried to find them too, but that was totally unhelpful since he couldn't see!).  Thankfully we found them in the drain.  By the end of the shoot, baby J was totally hot, and unhappy and screamed... and poor baby ended up with a really bad heat rash.  Oh well.  At least some pictures were nice.

:: I can fit into my jeans again.  Finally!  Now I can go back to the usual jeans and T-shirt uniform.  :) 

:: This CNY, I've more or less eaten my way through 2 containers of pineapple tarts.  They are terribly addictive.  No wonder I can only fit into two pairs of jeans!

:: This post comforts me on days that I feel guilty for hoping that nap time will come sooner, so that I can get a break from all that craziness.  And encourages me to treasure those kairos moments.

:: When we run out of stuff and I don't have time to write a proper grocery list, Junior J sometimes ends up eating peanut butter sandwiches if we have to dine out (I always worry cheese will go bad so I avoid using that).  While we got our ramen fix at Ramen Champion (Thanks, E, for the recommendation!), little boy chomped on omelette, bread, baby spinach, cherry tomatoes and dried cranberries (we ran out of fresh fruit, and papaya's rather gross if you stuff it in a bento).

:: The hubby recently watched this and suddenly got obsessed with "West Side Story".  He just came back with the CD by the original cast (even though I had the songs, he insisted it had to be Jose Carreras), and has been singing "Maria" at the top of his voice, while substituting my name inside.  I don't know whether to be pleased or embarrassed.

:: Junior J was born on the 2nd last day of the year of the rat.  We realize he has mouse-like dietary leanings: he likes his veggies and loves cheese to bits.  Nothing brightens up his day like cheese dippers:

Ok, enough rambling now, I bet you are throughly confused if you've managed to reach the end of this post!  Have a blessed week ahead, and do join in if you can for tomorrow's grateful gathering!

Saturday scrapping: Mini albums for gramps

You know grandparents love to whip out their phone/camera/photo album from their bag and show you photos of their grandkids?  I know my in-laws love to do that, so I intially planned to make little mini albums for them as Christmas presents.  But December went by and I didn't manage to get down to doing them until this week!  This is my MIL's one:

This is still my fav shot of my MIL and Junior J when he was a baby.  Love the light in the photo!

There are various shots of her with the grandkids (my SIL just gave birth to a boy end Dec so they are overrun with grandsons), and other family shots.  12 pictures in total:

This round, I kept the embellishments simple.  Nowadays, I have not much time to scrap, especially with Junior J waking up a couple of times every night.  And I had to scrap at the dining table, so I didn't want to flood it with a whole mess of scrap stuff!  

Anyway, this folds up nicely into a small little book that she can carry in her handbag to show her friends:

Hope she likes it... Now I've gotta run, will share the grandpa's one next week! 

Junior J's 3rd: What we ate

Last year, we opted for local yummies like home-made duck soup, popiah and mee siam, and this year we went Nonya instead:

Fish head curry.  Slurp!

Kueh pie ti.  We had this last year too! 

We ordered a whole bunch of dishes from Ivins (including stuff like the ayam goreng rempah, mee siam, ikan kuah nanas), and the food was pretty good.  The service wasn't great though.  And of course, there were fruits (the in-laws are great at chopping fruits up in double-quick time) and drinks too.  Since most of the food was spicy, we opted for home-made bentos for the 3 kids:

Starfish rice cakes, egg roll with button mushrooms, carrots and peas.
Junior J almost finished all of the stuff in his box (his godpa took over the feeding, thanks DK!).

And for the cake, we ordered a truffle cake from Laurent Bernard Chocolatier, which is currently our favourite cake shop since they make a mean chocolate cake!  We decided that plain and simple was good when it came to cakes, I always can't bear to eat into those prettily decorated ones...

Favourite family shot.  Thanks Uncle Monster for helping us to take some pics!

All in all... I think we had a blast celebrating Junior J's third birthday.  Next year's will be different, since we'll be in Germany (We just got our visas approved so its CONFIRMED, thank you God!), so we'll see how it'll go!  Blessed weekend, friends!

Junior J's 3rd: Under the sea party packs

Hello!  Am back again to share about the party packs we did for the little guests for Junior J's party (details on the decorations here).  He got to choose, and invited three friends.  However, one could not make it, so we only needed to prepare  for three kids.  We started off by decorating plain paper bags, using another idea off Pinterest:

Foam stamps!  These were made using cut shapes from craft foam, and milk bottle caps.  Since the party was supposed to be a jungle themed one initially, we stamped leaves using paint.  Then he changed his mind, remember?  I didn't want to waste those leafy prints, so I made another foam stamp, this time in the shape of a fish, and got him to stamp fishes in red ink.  Since time was short, I lent the boy my glimmer mist and let him spray a little blue mist to make it look like the fishes were swimming among the seaweed in water:

We filled those bags with cheese dippers, apple juice and lollipops.  Then each kid got an under the sea scene with their name (I drew the stuff in using Crayola gel markers, which show up nicely against dark backgrounds)  and a pack of stickers:

Then when the kids arrived, they got to design their own ocean scene using stickers.  I laminated them when they were done so they could double up as placemats.  Only problem was that we had to get the stickers in a rush (since the theme was changed 2 days before the party), and the hubby only managed to find felt stickers... which resulted in air bubbles after we laminated it.  We just told the kids the air bubbles were to make the scene look more realistic! 

Oh, and those octopus balloons.  Junior J helped to make the tentacles by stamping these circular shapes on construction paper, these were supposed to be the suckers (the stamp was just some round plastic thing I dug out of our tool box):

Then the FIL helped to cut out the tentacles, and we pasted them on using normal scotch tape.  We added goggly eyes and a mouth, and tada!  An octopus with tentacles complete with suckers:

We made three of these, and the kids got to play with them and bring them home.  All in all, I think they had fun!

Click here to see what we prepared for last year's party packs!

Junior J's 3rd: Under the sea party decor

Hello!  I'm down with a cold with a fuzzy head, so I'm just going to be babbling about the crafty bits of Junior J's birthday party for the rest of the week.  We just had a really tiny gathering this time, since we preferred to take things easy and chat with people.  Having a bigger gathering usually meant we were fluttering crazily around trying to settle everyone.  (I really wish we could celebrate his birthday with all our friends, so sorry if we didn't include you this round!)  I discussed with the little boy about the theme of his party and he said he wanted a jungle theme, so I already had in mind things like vines and monkeys and toucans... We had it more or less sorted out when we came back from Malaysia.  Then, 2 days before the party, the little boy decided to change his mind and wanted an under the sea theme instead.  No monkeys, thank you very much.  So I panicked and started trying to brainstorm for ideas again.  Thankfully Pinterest came to the rescue... and I remembered pinning some DIY jellyfish up.  So we modified it and made these:

The boy got markers and paper bowls, and got to go all crazy on them...

And we cut up pages from an old Ikea catalogue into strips and stuck them as tentacles:

We also made starfish, and I got the boy to help too:

For this one, he got to use markers and dotted spots of colour all over pieces of construction paper:

He started getting really excited, so the dots started becoming lines, and he nearly spoilt the marker tips!  Then I just randomly drew squishy starfish and cut them out:

Then the night before the party, I cut up 2 rolls of green crepe paper into strips, and with the FIL's help, hung them from the ceiling using yarn and masking tape.  He did a great job, and even ensured that the yarn was evenly hung from the ceiling!  (FIL was jet lagged, as he just flew down from helping the SIL with her confinement in Norway, and couldn't sleep, so he was happy to help.)   The hubby was on call, so FIL and I just went nuts decorating the place, and he even asked me to draw fishes for him to cut out:

We also turned some balloons into octopuses (or should it be octopi?  I have never figured out which it should be!), but that's for another post:

Then finally we just stuck on the letterings, which I had made last time for Junior J's one year old party. These were recycled from old posters from my teaching days!  And there you have it, our very own wall of seaweed and underwater friends, no scuba gear required!  (And it cost us about $3 bucks in total!)

Happy birthday, my big boy... I'm always so amazed how you've grown, and I'm so thankful God blessed us with you!

Thankful Tuesdays: Gathering of the imperfect

It is Chinese New Year.  People visit each other, and feast.  The little ones get hong baos, and eat too much candy.  For most families, it is a time to come together, to remark upon how fast the children grow, to wear new clothes, to take lots of photos.  It is a shiny, happy time, full of red and gold, the loud bang of drums, the festiveness of new blooms and lion dances.  It is another time for us to gather.  

But gatherings, be it two or more, are made of imperfect people, trying to love each other in imperfect ways.  How do you love, when sometimes a hubby chooses to watch a movie he has watched before, when you ask him for help to change a printer cartridge?  How do you love, when visits from grandparents always generate poor appetite and constipation from your child?  How do you love, when sometimes a daughter-in-law is impatient?  How do you love, when a child is disobedient and testing your patience, when your patience is already strained from sleepless nights due to nightmares?  How do you love, when a loved one is impatient, or doesn't listen when you most need a listening ear?  

How do you love, when attending cell group seems draining, because everyone meets once a week, shares their complaints as prayer requests, then disappears for the rest of the week?  How do you love, when the person next to you in church gives you a limp handshake and doesn't look you in the eye?  How do you love, when someone cuts in front of you in traffic or in the checkout for groceries?  How do you love, when your neighbor drips water all over your almost dry laundry?  

This week, as we gather again as imperfect people, trying to love imperfectly, I am reminded that "since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." (1 John 4: 11-12)  I am shown how imperfect is my love for others, and how much I need God to enable me to love others more.  And I am thankful for the little signs of love around me, imperfect as they are, as they can be taken by our perfect God and made complete. 

And I give thanks for these imperfect gatherings that allow us to celebrate milestones... of a baby turning 3 months, and being able to flip halfway....

... and being able to sit in his Bumbo seat, and babble and coo.  

I am grateful that we can gather, to share the joy of a little boy turning 3 years old, and laugh with him as he huffs and puffs at his candles which refuse to go out...

... and all the helping hands that made that birthday party possible.

Blowing balloons with the pump.

I give thanks for these gatherings, that help us see the brighter side to things, and allow us to make light of sunburnt ears and falls...

Junior J's ears swelled up after a swim during our recent trip to Malaysia as the hubby forgot to apply sunscreen on his ears.  He looked like an elephant for awhile, but thankfully applying calendula oil helped the swelling go down quickly.

... and togetherness that allow all things to be shared, be it food, or good news, or even Bumbo seats.

Yes, he's so skinny, he can fit in it!

Imperfect gatherings, where God's love can be made complete in us.  What are you thankful for?  

PS: Our first grateful gathering starts next week!  Are you ready to give thanks and link up?

Saturday scrapping: An album

Hello!  Have been so busy, I've yet to scrap at all this year... However, I found pics of an album I did some time ago for a friend's kid...

It was meant to house ultrasound pics, so I left plenty of space for scan pictures... as well as pockets of journalling here and there...

This was done using Crate Paper's Brook collection.  Love the cheery colors and nature inspired patterns!

Have a blessed Chinese New Year, folks!

The ride of our life

We left the hotel Wednesday afternoon and headed home.  We only managed to check out at around one, since we all overslept and then Junior J and the hubby went to the pool.  Baby J threw up for the fourth time, and I ended up trying to pack up with him strapped to me.  Junior J threw a tantrum while we were trying to pack, insisting that we carried him.  Before that, he tried to do a WWF stunt on his brother by jumping off the side of the sofa onto the bed on which baby J was lying on, and got smacked for that.  Understandably we weren't in too good a mood by the time we left, but everything proceeded smoothly and we reached Seremban (after getting lost for a bit) and had a yummy beef noodle lunch (everything else was already closed!).

We were leaving Seremban when the hubby heard a "pop" sound, and the car's air con DIED.  So we had to drive 3 hours in sweltering hot weather (it was 30 plus outside and sunny) back to Singapore, without any air con.  We couldn't open the windows, since the wind would have caused a lot of drag.  We had two options: either use the fan to circulate warm air around the car, or pipe air from outside into the car.  Either way, it just meant we were traveling in a sauna.  At high speed.  In the end, we opted for both: we piped air in most of the time, and switched to just circulating the air when we drove near heavy vehicles belching exhaust fumes.  Thankfully, when the heat began to get unbearable, it started to rain.  I have never been so thankful for rain in my whole life!  But the rain stopped after about 20 minutes, and things started heating up again.

Then we made a rest stop to feed baby J, plus check on him, since we were worried he might overheat.  He was drenched so we decided to just leave him in only his diaper! So we zoomed all the way back to SG and crossed customs (the immigration folk must be wondering why our baby was almost naked).  Breathed a sigh of relief, only to get stuck in a jam.  One that crawled on for 30 minutes.  Baby J started to cry, so I managed to squirm to the back to carry him.  After inching forward bit by bit for what seemed like eternity, I started feeling claustrophobic.  The back of the car was even hotter than the front, and I was wedged between 2 car seats, holding the sweaty hand of a toddler and carrying a very hot, bothered and squirmy baby.  I think if the jam continued, I might have opened the door and make a run for it.  To anywhere, just away from that furnace of a car!

Finally made it home.  Cool showers have never felt so good before!  All in all, we're thankful that even though we were traveling in terrible conditions, Junior J didn't fuss at all, and was content to nap for the first part and then drink his cold juice for the second part.  Baby J also managed to nap for some time, even in the heat.  Whatever the case, we've decided that for March's trip back to Penang, we'd better fly back instead!