Saturday, October 24, 2009 ;
11:17 PM
After the Bintan trip, we had a lot of gatherings and meet-ups with old friends.
With D and her newborn ds2. With church friend LM at her new 5-storey mansion. With ex- and current HC teachers and their families at M's house. With Angeling and Mary and their kids, with me and my kids.
Climbing with Mx and Ml at a rope-only playground.
I treated Mx, Ml and Ch to a cake-decorating session each at Icing Room. I hadn't the chance to celebrate their bdays with them this year, and thought I should make up by having us all do something fun together. I myself loved the idea of playing with cakes, but doing it with my boys alone didn't seem worth it or that much fun (they do it very messily at home when I bake with them, so I kinda guess it would be more of a waste of money if I specially brought them to do this kind of thing).
So the 5 kids stood side by side and decorated their cakes together. So sweet.
Now, I've got several hilarious video clips of the boys having such a different approach to cake-decorating than girls. Really, their brains are so differently wired.
That's ds1 with his final product. His idea of beauty and high yummy-factor was to pile the choc fudge in a heap in the center to make a mud heap, then dump the sugar flowers on top of the "soil". The rest of the cream was squeezed on in a random manner. He did have a lot of fun.
ds2 also had lots of fun. His idea of a pretty cake was choc fudge dripping here, there and everywhere. He spun the cake stand wildly with one hand, and held the cream with the other hand and squirted cream and fudge anywhere he liked. Not just on the top of the cake or at the sides, but onto the cake stand as well.
Then, it would be a waste to leave any of the sugar stuff behind, so he proceeded to dump everything he was provided with right on top of the cake. Voila, done!
Now let's take a look at how the girls did theirs. And mind you, they are not older than my kids, they are the same age or younger. So it's really a difference in how they think.
Mx is doing lovely cream patterns joining her regularly spaced out sugar flowers on the side of her cake. She already had some border and words and patterns on the top of the cake.
Ch is dotting the top of the cake with pink cream. She also obviously has an idea of how cakes normally turn out in cake shop displays. She was very meticulous and detailed in her decorations.
Naturally, my boys were the first to finish, since their work didn't need that much skill. They happily got their cakes packed and boxed. At home that night, after dinner, they both ate up HALF of the whole cake for dessert and proclaimed their respective cakes the best they ever tasted.
The next morning, they promptly finished up the other half of their cakes. Thankfully for them, none of the rest of the family (grandparents and aunt included) wanted to snatch any portion from them. haha.
On Sunday, my first induction back to the Cradle Roll Sunday School class was a big surprise. The class size kind of tripled in the 3 yrs I was away. When it was ds1's time, it was just him, Mx and Clara. Later Celeste joined and it was just them for a long long time.
Now there is this huge group, plus my sis, Amy and Angelia's, all birthed in Oct itself. My, it is getting to be a really overcrowded class. I am slated to start teaching my first class there Nov 1st. I need some baby-class-management skills now... never handled so many babies at one go before...
Where else? Ikea is the only place that tolerates kids trying their every single fixture. My boys were never interested in the beds before. They usually go for the toys, the swings, ladders, wagons... Mx has introduced them to trying out the beds and acting more domestic. Angeling and I heard them pretending to be husband and wife lying in the same bed.
I was a little alarmed when I heard that, but as I stole a glance at Angeling, I noticed she didn't seem to mind, so I was a little more relaxed after that. If the girl's side didn't care, I guess I don't have to worry, haha.
Then, I suddenly was horrified at the thought that ds1 might act out whatever he sees real couples doing in bed (i.e. his parents), so I kept a very close watch on him after that, getting ready to stop him in his tracks should he try anything funny.
In the end, all they did was a lot of snoring and pretending to be asleep.
Then they included their younger siblings. But in typical older sibling fashion, they made Ml the MAID and ds2 the BABY. ds2 was forced to act as an irritating baby that kept crying in the middle of the night. And it was so funny to hear Mx say to ds1, "I'm very tired, it's your turn to carry the baby!".
Hmmm, I think they do observe us parents a lot!
At other times, I would bring the kids to the library near our house. We frequented the library a lot during the first weeks (like 3x per week), cos the kids had no toys, no books, nothing much to do. Now, as they start to find toys, get toys as gifts, and uncover their old books, as well as meet up with many more friends, we go less frequently.
We also unexpectedly got a treat from our American friend at Chilis. It used to be Spagheddies last time, before we left for Utah. Now it's Chilis. We took our friend there cos he loves eating Tex-Mex, but he ended up pulling the "go-to-restroom-and-settle-the-bill-first" stunt on us. It was such a delicious and fun meal, and we went for a night walk at the Botanic Gdns after that to get our stuffed stomachs to settle better.
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
____________________________________________________________
I treated Mx, Ml and Ch to a cake-decorating session each at Icing Room. I hadn't the chance to celebrate their bdays with them this year, and thought I should make up by having us all do something fun together. I myself loved the idea of playing with cakes, but doing it with my boys alone didn't seem worth it or that much fun (they do it very messily at home when I bake with them, so I kinda guess it would be more of a waste of money if I specially brought them to do this kind of thing).
Now, I've got several hilarious video clips of the boys having such a different approach to cake-decorating than girls. Really, their brains are so differently wired.
ds2 also had lots of fun. His idea of a pretty cake was choc fudge dripping here, there and everywhere. He spun the cake stand wildly with one hand, and held the cream with the other hand and squirted cream and fudge anywhere he liked. Not just on the top of the cake or at the sides, but onto the cake stand as well.
Now let's take a look at how the girls did theirs. And mind you, they are not older than my kids, they are the same age or younger. So it's really a difference in how they think.
Ch is dotting the top of the cake with pink cream. She also obviously has an idea of how cakes normally turn out in cake shop displays. She was very meticulous and detailed in her decorations.
Naturally, my boys were the first to finish, since their work didn't need that much skill. They happily got their cakes packed and boxed. At home that night, after dinner, they both ate up HALF of the whole cake for dessert and proclaimed their respective cakes the best they ever tasted.
On Sunday, my first induction back to the Cradle Roll Sunday School class was a big surprise. The class size kind of tripled in the 3 yrs I was away. When it was ds1's time, it was just him, Mx and Clara. Later Celeste joined and it was just them for a long long time.
In the end, all they did was a lot of snoring and pretending to be asleep.
