YowCH & Grace

We got Esther a second hand iPhone4 for $200. She is now responsible for her own phone and control of communications.

We also got a nice purple silicone cover, just as she likes.

YowCH checked the Isis as the aircon is not getting cold and found a hose that was just floating about! After checking with a friend’s Wish, he got it connected back again. Will see if the aircon improves.

Here are some family photos, the children at the “O”:

YowCH with Samuel:

Tags: Esther, Family, General by yowch
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Here are some photos of Samuel at 12 weeks old. He is still underweight but certainly fleshy and active.

Nice smile and developing bad habit of thumb sucking.

He is also into mixed-martial arts, starting with boxing-while-lying-down.

We got Esther a relatively cheap ($135) Aria STG Mini electric guitar (travel-size, but just the right size for her). Sound reasonably OK for the price. In the photo, the Aria is the smaller sun-burst coloured one standing next to the full-sized Ibanez that YowCH uses.

Some details:

And here’s the rocker girl.

Tags: Esther, Samuel by yowch
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Another terrapin died, this is the one from the very first two that we bought.

There were signs of unhealthiness from quite a few weeks back, with the shell curving, and the terrapin basking all day long and not getting into the water and eating.

Now we are back to two terrapins.

Today, marks the start that we attend Saturday service in Church, as Esther joins the youths in the Teenacity service on Saturday afternoons.

The car air-con was suddenly not cooling, so we topped up the gas yesterday, while we replaced the HID bulbs as one was found blown in the morning.

Tags: Church, Family, General by yowch
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Greetings of a happy and blessed new year ahead from the Yow minions.

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph, Samuel by yowch
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We celebrated dad’s birthday on Monday night with a nice Western dinner at Morton’s of Chicago. Very heavy on the beef!

Dad’s cousins from Nibong Tebal visited over the year-end holiday period, and we met them for dim-sum lunch at Tunglok Signatures Vivocity today.

Tags: Family by yowch
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The soccer training group decided to have a Year-end BBQ party. YowCH was tasked with ordering food. Grace helped make the selections and we had a great time with the families of the soccer boys and girls.

Training was held 4:00pm to 6:00pm as usual, and the BBQ food came at about 4:15pm. YowCH then set-up the fire with some help from friends and Esther, and by 6:00pm, we were going full swing and eating. Esther most excited and helpful in cooking the food.

Ben was sorting out and preparing the new jerseys for next year.



We had a really great time, as this also marked the last training at this field, as the field will be closed by 2014.

Tags: Family, Friends by yowch
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We decided to improve the shelving of toys, stationeries and other stuff over this long holiday. So we did the works over several weeks so as to be not over-stressed.

Starting around 10 Dec, we unloaded the pine-wood open shelves (from IKEA, old ones) and decommissioned the shelves over several days.

David was very good at taking down the shelves, while Esther helped with the unloading.

On 17 Dec, the first batch of IKEA Stuva cabinets and shelves arrived. We asked for delivery and assembly of the cabinets only, while we loaded the shelf planks and wire-baskets ourselves.

We then reloaded all the stuff into the new shelves, throwing away things that we don’t need. It is good to get this done before the doors as the doors would have gotten in the way of loading.

On 28 Dec (after all the Christmas celebrations) and taking advantage of IKEA’s 35th anniversary discounts, YowCH went to Tampines and drove home the doors and other parts. Esther and David set-up the door hinges, while Joseph helped YowCH put in the brackets. Joseph was also the runner to get parts and collect rubbish. We got the doors done up (together with one more unit of cabinet) and shifted a light switch by 10mm, all in 3.5 hours. Esther and David shared the battery-power screwdriver (from IKEA, $14.90).

This is the final product, effort of the family (well, except Samuel, of course).


The smaller doors at the lower part of the boys room are missing as IKEA ran out of stock, we’ll have to get them some other day.

Tags: Family by yowch
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Praise the Lord for a very exciting Christmas day.

We went to Church and YowCH sang with the Hospital Carolling team at the 2 English services and the Chinese service (one song each).

Then we had some fellowship time with church friends over the Christmas kenduri.

We then drove over to Marina Square and met up the Yongs and the Loos for shopping and lunch at Jia Xiang Sarawak Mee Kolok.

After lunch and shopping, we all returned to our home for fellowship time. These gingerbread stuff is from Yan (IKEA things, of course) and the Loos.

We then ordered pizza from Peperoni for dinner, very nice.

Here are some photos of the children playing (these are the closest relatives)

Interesting side news: we are indeed thankful that we salvaged from the garbage that someone at our block threw out, a box of Junior Engineer and lots of Lego and Duplo pieces, including the box and 2 base plates.

Yan had also returned the Aprica, Samuel can now ride a pram when going out from home (the Graco stays with the car). We planned the Aprica for 6 children, and Samuel is the 6th (after Esther, David, Joseph and Yan’s 2 children). Here is the very old page we made for the pram.

Tags: Church, Family, YowCH by yowch
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The day started with the 13th servicing for the Isis.

After lunch, YowCH went to church with Esther and David for carolling to Alexandra and National University Hospitals.


As with past years, it was a joy to see the patients happy with the Christmas songs and the package that church gave to them.

For dinner, we met up with the Yongs and the Loos. We ate Western food at Canopy (Bishan Park) and all the children ate nicely and behaved well.

Joseph completed his Lego Advent set as soon as we got home. Opening only 1 item a day for the past 24 days, Joseph patiently put the set together with some help from Esther and David.

Tags: Church, David, Esther, Family, Joseph, YowCH by yowch
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On Thursday, Esther and David made some cornflakes cookies. Ingredients includes cornflakes, butter, raisins, cashew nuts and honey.


Feedback from a friend: better than Garrett’s pop-corn!

On Saturday, we had eFG Christmas gathering over lunch. Yows brought roasted pork (thanks to Grace’s mum), cornflake cookies, tomato juice (for Bloody Mary) and 5L of Golden Ale from Brewerkz (the last unopened keg from Samuel’s parties).

Lots of very nice food.

Fellowship was great, we sang Christmas songs with piano and violin accompaniment.

After the lunch, we went to church for the final rehearsal, followed by Esther’s performance with the Church Juniors choir at West Coast Plaza, singing Christmas songs.

Esther was also playing the ukulele for the final medley of songs.

Updated 23 Dec 2013:
On Sunday, we got to church in the morning, then stayed on for the carolling practice from 12:30pm to 3:30pm, and then continued to the children choir practice at 4:00pm ending with the West Coast Plaza performance from 6:00pm to 6:30pm (similar to Saturday).

We then drove over to W-Singapore hotel at Sentosa Cove and met up with YowCH’s cousin, the Loos. We had dinner at the one of the eateries there, where we had Belgium food at “Brussels Sprouts”. After dinner, we spent a little time in the hotel room and got home at 11:00pm.

Tags: Church, Esther, Family, Friends by yowch
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