JE's 9th Birthday

My eldest girl's birthday is in September. She had been doing lots of preparation for her 9th birthday party months ago. Her friends were verbally invited a month before the party. Based on the idea from her best friend's birthday party last year, she prepared lots of present to give away to her friends during a game session. All friends who attended her birthday party had at least one present. Although it did not run smoothly as some of her friends complaint that my girl gave the bigger present to her best friend, kids are still kids as they played happily after that.

After reading about Chin Nee's preparation for her girl's birthday, I prepared the beads for the girls to make their own bracelets. I confirmed their attendance to JE's birthday a week before the party and bought the necessary beads especially the alphabet beads for their name. None of them had the experience in beading and they found that it was very tiring to bead. In the end, I have to help the girls to finish up their bracelets! Anyway they enjoyed the bracelet making session and satisfied with their own made bracelets. Here are some of the bracelets and beads.

Too bad that I didn't manage to snap the picture of bracelets made by each girl as I was too busy during the party.

The birthday party started at 5pm for game and beading session, then dinner at about 7.30pm as I only prepared the foods when the girls were playing (except for the orange juice and jelly as I like to serve food warm/hot). I was so tired by preparing all the foods and entertaining the girls at the same time since they had problem in the beading session. Below are the foods I prepared for the birthday party. The fried mee was contributed by my mom as she worried about my skill in frying mee/meehun. ^_^


The girls had fun and played until 9.30pm. My girl was happy too as she gets presents..but for me, I have lots of clean up to do after the party! Luckily my mom and hubby helped a lot in the clean up.

Book Fest Malaysia 2010

We went to KL for few days during the school holiday. The main reason of the KL trip was the Book Fest Malaysia 2010 held in KL Convention Centre. This is the second year I went there. Its a annual book fest event and it is super attractive for book fan like me. We spent the whole day there from 10am to 7pm and resulted to damage of no less than the maximum allowed deduction for tax purpose in our pocket. We have never spent so much for books in one day! And we parked our car at KLCC, which means another about RM30 for the parking fee! We have also never spent so much for parking in our life (excluding monthly parking).

We were so tired by carrying so many bags of books and 2 full backpacks. Me and hubby carried 3 bags of books and 1 backpack each whereas my 2 girls carried 1 lighter bag of books each. It was so crazy! This is a record and I don't think I will spend the same next year (a book fan like me will definitely be going to the Book Fest again next year). I had bought many books including some released in earlier years which I had long wanted to buy. Last year my major spending was in JE's extra practice books for primary 2, story books for the girls, Robin's books and I-Pen. This year lesser extra practice books for JE as the book fest was held in September which is very close to her final exam (end of Sept) as compared to last year book fest which was held much earlier (somewhere in June). My spending this year were in novels, health and cook books for myself, some novels and comics for JE and some story books for JY and JS. Bought a few games too (brain games for the elder girls and jigsaw puzzle for JS).

All in all, the KL trip was spending, spending and spending as what I did was shopping, shopping and shopping. We shopped at 1 Utama, Book Fest@KL Convention Centre, Sunway Pyramid (shopped from 11am till 9pm then only proceed to dinner) and Mid Valley. No major cash outflow yet since we used credit cards. I guess I better be prepared for the expecting high credit card bill.

Where have I been

Didn't update the blog for few weeks. Firstly kids were sick, one by one, all three of them were infected. Then its me who felt sick after more than 1 week of sleepless nights and virus infection from the kids. Luckily hubby came back from his oversea trip when I was sick, which lessen my burden.

After 2 weeks of fighting against illness, finally the girls recovered and back to school as usual for few days just before the school holiday started. During the school holiday, we spent 4 days in KL and back to Ipoh for JE's birthday party. Will update about the KL trip and birthday party later.

Crazy weekend

When you have 3 kids aged between 3 to 9 and without a maid, you will rather stay at home than going anywhere if you have to bring all 3 kids along and alone. I have been full time mother for less than 2 months. There has been no big challenge for this period until THIS weekend. Hubby is away for conference for few days, so I have to take care of 3 kids and doing all the house cores all by myself. It has been messy since Friday. My youngest girl was having fever since Thursday night. And my no. 2 also joined her sister and infected by the same illness since Saturday. It has been terrible for the past few days. I had to wake up every 2 to 3 hours at night just to ensure their fever is under controlled. Mothers should understand my pain when I said the kids are having fever.

Both the girls' body temperature sometime reached 39 or even 40. My youngest girl felt so uncomfortable and cried. I had to insert Voltaren (12.5mg) into her buttock to cool down her high fever, then I used a wet cloth to wet her whole body repeatedly for half an hour (same for no. 2). I have inserted 2 Voltaren to each girl's buttock, with gap of at least 12 hours, for the 4 days fever as their fever was so high. Both girls are taking antibiotics prescribed by doctor. While taking care of 2 sick girls, I still have to fetch my eldest girl from 1 enrichment class to another from morning till evening! If my hubby is at home, I can just leave the kids at home and I do the driver job. But he was not around, I just had to carry along my girls to everywhere that I go.

I have not finished my story yet. On Sunday morning, my eldest girl had a dance performance at a school. It was supposed to be no big issue if all the kids were fine, but not with 2 sick kids who were having fever and so weak..just imagine. Not only I had to bring my second girl to consult doctor, I also had to rush to the school to bring my eldest girl to meet up her dance members and get ready for the performance. My poor no. 2 even vomited when I feed her the medicine while watching the performance! How I wish I don't have to be there, just not everything in the same weekend. I was at the school for about 3 and a half hours. It was supposed to be a very short performance, but the earlier programme were overrun and the dance performance delayed by about 1 hour!

I am so exhausted today after having sleepless nights for 4 days continuously. My youngest girl looks like already recovered today as she did not has fever since yesterday evening, but not for my no. 2 as her illness only started on Saturday afternoon. Hope my no. 2 is getting better today and I can have a better sleep tonight. That's the end of my crazy weekend.

What to cook

I have plenty of materials in my fridge and I am thinking of what to cook for dinner tonight. When looking at recipes from blogger and found this garlic pork recipe from Ohbin. Looks very yummy. Will try that out tonight.

These are other dishes that I cooked recently which are presentable. LOL. Actually I cooked very often, but most of the time, I didn't take picture of the dishes as they are either not presentable or we are too hungry. ;-)

Fresh san yao chicken soup with red dates and wolf berries.


Fried big prawn with garlic...lots of garlic


Broccoli with fresh mushroom and carrot


Last but not least, the simple dish, steamed egg with minced pork.

Improvement

I am happy with my girl's exam results. Although most of the papers scored between 85 to 95 which were within her normal standard for the past examinations (ranged between 70 to 100), a slight improvement of average marks (increased of 3 marks) was achieved. That's not a significant improvement. However I was only full time with her in the same month that she had the exam! I felt great and satisfied. That's what a SAHM can do, by having more time with the kids to coach them. When I was working last time, I only had the night time of about 2 to 3 hours to coach her in her studies and homework. My friend said she does not need to coach them but just rely on the kids' tuition teacher to do that. I personally do not like the idea of sending the kids to tuition for all subjects and on weekdays. The kids are already having so much homework from school, and by having tuition on weekday, that means additional practices and exercises for them to complete. Being a student in a popular and very academic result oriented Chinese school, my girl has average of 6 homework every day since Primary 1. I pity her for the huge number of homework that she had to finish when she was just aged 7. Just imagine a small girl doing her homework until 12 midnight and yet still could not finish. Anyway she is in Primary 3 now and already got used to it. She normally finished her homework by 10.30pm nowadays.
Note: My girl is in afternoon session from noon to evening.

I am not that type of mother who is pushing very hard for our kids' academic results. In fact, a lot of freedom is given to the girls. I just want them to try their best in every exam that they have. At least you have tried, and at least you have done your best. My opinion is attitude is much more important (well, I didn't say my girl attitude is good, but all we as parents can do are just to encourage them to have the right attitude towards their studies and always emphasize that they are responsible for it). What is important nowadays is not really the academic results but more on ability to communicate well with others.

Affordable smart phone

Both my hubby's Sony Ericsson hand phone and our 2 years old Olympus waterproof digital camera are having some problems during the past week. We have to replace both these 2 toys as soon as possible. Normally I will read up some review and search in the web before making the decision to buy which model/brand. As hubby is so busy with his office work, as usual, his secretary (aka his wife) has to read up the phone and camera reviews and give him the comments and the relevant links. Is this also task of SAHM?

For the hand phone, we are now looking at smart phone below RM2k. I have shorlisted a few models and the top pick in the list is one of the latest HTC babies that was launched in July 2010 - HTC Wildfire (The low-cost version of HTC Desire. I love Desire, but it is too costly to us at the moment since we are upgrading few things in the same month).


Hubby is interested in the new Android and this device runs Android™ 2.1 with HTC Sense™, which matches with his requirement. This is an entry-level Android device with a generous 3.2 albeit low-resolution QVGA 320 x 240 screen, WiFi, Bluetooth and A-GPS support, as well as a 5MP camera with LED flash and auto focus. The processing power for the Wildfire comes in the form of 528Mhz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor with 384MB of RAM. The Wildfire has 512MB built-in memory and it supports expansion in Micro SD format up to 32GB. Details of specification could be found in the below website.
http://www.htc.com/sea/product/wildfire/specification.html

I have read through many of the reviews from CNET, Techradar, Phonearena and etc and the main negative point is the low resolution display screen whereas its main plus point is its cost as an inexpensive Android phone. We would like to find out more based on the actual phone but was surprised that the phone is out of stock for most of the hand phone dealers during our weekend shopping. So, we have to do some shopping again next week for the phone.

As for the camera, we have yet to decide which one to buy as there are still a lot of reviews and comments need to be read up since this is the first time that we are going to invest in a DSLR camera (or digital camera with SLR photo quality). Money, money and money again!!