Thank God for watching over David from birth until now, he has just entered primary school today. We pray for him to be a good student at school and learn to be a useful person to society.
Here’s David and Esther after first day of school (yes, David’s bag is larger and red)
YowCH conducted a session of Outdoor cooking for the Kent Ridge Secondary School Boys Brigade on 28 Aug 2010. There was a briefing last week where the menu and technique was discussed.
The menu is simple, instant noodles in a soup made with minced meat, fish-balls and cabbages, and a side dish of eggs and sardines.
Here’s a photo at the start:
That’s our stove and pot of eggs and sardines:
Esther and David was very helpful in getting the stuff in place for the cooking.
Some of the boys moved on to boiling the soup already.
The photo of the day, burning oil!
The cooking was quite serious for some:
Here’s Esther, David and YowCH eating the food:
We started at about 10:30am and ended at about 12:15pm.
Joseph pulled the stool to the parapet of the balcony and climbed on the stool to see cars on the road; and he did that all by himself. Smart guy, but rather dangerous…
Nowadays, for the last feed at night, he can down 10 ounces of milk (full bottle).
David is enjoying some Lego time while Esther does her homework, with some help from Besta (the Chinese-English digital dictionary).
These last three photos were taken using our new Tamron 17-50 f2.8 lens bought two weekends ago. The lens has very good colour contrast and is very sharp, but the S5pro camera under-exposes by about 0.7 to 1.0 stop on this lens.
And today is Grace’s birthday! “Happy Birthday”.
Today, we spent the morning at Pulau Ubin under TYLin’s Staff Club activity. Grace was at work, and Joseph with in school, but dad joined us. As Esther and David are not yet cycling, they were carried on childseats.
Esther took a photo of YowCH:
Handlebar view, while cycling:
We left earlier than than the rest as we have some afternoon activities.
Thank God for a very cool and shady morning.
Esther, David and Joseph had a fun weekend with the Ngs (Nate, Hannah and Daniel) last saturday.
Some outdoors fun with all six children:
Here are the girls, Esther and Hannah:
The boys, Nate and David:
And the toddlers, Joseph and Daniel:
Today, we celebrated David’s 6th birthday at his school with his classmates:
Not what you are thinking.
We bought a second-hand spoiler from a Singapore Toyota Club forum member for the Isis on 31 Dec 2009 and installed it today (2 Jan 2010). Improves the back-end view of the car and provides a tiny little shade to the rear windscreen, helpful for the noon-day glare.
We decided that the matt black by the previous owner seems quite a contrast yet nicely compatible with the rest of the plastic parts, so we keep it this way for now. If there is any reason to spray any other parts of the car (and we pray not!) we will probably get this sprayed silver, too.
Currently not so permanently mounted with 3M car exterior mounting tape; the official way to mount this is to drill holes into the car to screw it on!
Today is also the last of Esther’s and David’s 18 sessions of swimming lessons. Esther can now swim without float for short distances in a beginner’s breast-stroke (3 kicks, 1 pull, breathe), and David is perhaps 2 days from that.
We bought the Advent Lego sets, City for Esther and Pirates for David, and they opened each of the the 24 individual windows from 1 Dec to 24 Dec, one a day (except the days they were not home). Each window contained a figure for assembly and play, and on the 24 DEc, they had the whole sets completed:
They had good discipline to open one at a time (never rushing to open the next) and also patiently waiting for the surprise item in the next window.
On 30 Nov morning, we brought Joseph to Delta Swimming Complex for a swim. Esther and David were having swimming lessons there at 9:00am. With our new underwater casing for the F200 camera, here are some photos:
After the swim, we had a fast breakfast at Moh Guan with Grace’s parents, then left for Pontian for a short 2-day holiday.
Esther and David started taking swimming lessons, being the school holidays now. The teacher is Jeffrey from Happy Fish and the lessons are conducted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 9:00am to 10:00am at Delta Swimming Complex (near our home, just a very short bus ride away).
Joseph (and family) had dinner with Yan and PQ at Lao Beijing, Novena Square for his 1st birthday. He’s happily holding on to the red-pack that he received as present.
We’ll be going back to Pontian coming Monday and Tuesday to visit Grace’s grandma, together with Grace’s parents. Before that, on Monday morning, Joseph will join E&D for a swim.
