We arrived at Melbourne early on Saturday morning and spent a great weekend with the Ngs on the hills East of Melbourne (Dandenongs and Yarra Valley). It’s Phillip Island penguin parade viewing today. It is quite cold here, 5°C to 20°C.
The Yows shall be off to Melbourne from 5 to 13 September for a holiday and to visit Paul and family. Woohoo, more than 1 week of fun in the 5° to 15° spring weather. And flying SQ!
The repair was faster than expected. After sending in for repairs on Tuesday 11 Aug late morning, the taxi driver went to Ricardo to pay the $900 repair cost. We had also asked him for a nominal $100 taxi fares for Grace over the loss-of-use of the car, which he gladly accepted and paid.
Ricardo informed that the car would be ready by afternoon of Friday 14 Aug, but the car was ready by afternoon of 13 Aug. Replaced cover, repaired bumper and door, and straightened out the bumper hooks which were bent. After the bonding and spray paiting, we noted no signs of the damage. Hopefully the bonding and paint job would last.
Grace is down with food poisoning, she’s on MC yesterday and today.
We managed to get the Skids and Mudflap Ice-cream Truck from Robinsons on 25 July 2009! YowCH noticed the saleslady clear a row of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen shelf, but paid no attention. Then, when Grace reached the toys section, YowCH went back to have another look and saw a few packs of the Ice-cream Trucks. He grabbed one, showed to Grace and confirmed the buy. Then, looking back to the shelf again, all the others were GONE! Wow! We couldn’t even get another for friends!
Here’s the blister pack:
Details of the words here:
Ice-cream Truck mode:
Skids (left) and Mudflap:
Really cute.
Joseph is now starting to cruise. He can readily pull himself to a standing position and starts to ‘walk’ while clinging onto a support. His meals has diversified to include chicken, fish, potatoes and he is as smiley as before.
Esther is doing well in school, but always a little too little sleep. David has started speaking in Mandarin and Cantonese, which is a good sign. He is also starting to read words.
24 July 2009: We add a photo taken on 23 July 2009 here:
We had another trip to PJ for Grace’s cousin Ai Ling’s wedding.
We left Singapore at 2:30pm on 26 June and reached home in Singapore at 10:10pm on 28 June 2009. YowCH’s colleague, Goh Wei Yon, hitched a ride with us on both ways.
Photos are here.
Joseph is now crawling very steadily, and he prefers cereals and biscuits for meals now.
Nothing much to update, but just within this past week, Joseph started sitting up by himself and creeping on the ground. Won’t be long before he really crawls and nothing on the floor will be safe from him.
We have moved the play-pen out of our room as he grew too big for it, and now the baby cot is in our room.
Earlier on, on Saturday afternoon 13 June, Esther and David was most helpful in cleaning the car. They each cleaned two rims. Esther cleaned the insides with the vacuum cleaner and David helped YowCH in the windows cleaning.
We’ll be heading North again to PJ this coming Friday for the weekend.
Yesterday was Esther’s seventh birthday, and that’s a seven-year-old girl:
We didn’t buy a cake, but we had Sakae Sushi the day before with grandparents and ah yee, and Fish ‘n’ Co yesterday with kookoo and koojiong.
We are now looking forward to yet another trip to PJ at the end of the month, over the weekend for Grace’s cousin’s wedding.
We drove up to PJ on Friday afternoon, 29 May, with Grace’s parents and sister for Harris’ wedding on 30 May morning. It was a pleasant drive, and the walkie-talkies we had was very good for communicating between the two cars. Esther and David finished two movies in the car!
Then we spent time shopping, and time with family. Esther then followed the grandparents to Port-Dickson for church camp, and they left for Seremban on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, we forgot to pack Esther’s passport with her, so we drove down to Seremban on Sunday afternoon to meet them.
On Monday morning, 1 June, we left PJ home at 9:15am and reached Singapore home at 3:30pm, with 3 breaks of 30 minutes each. It was a very pleasant but hot drive, and the NS highway was pretty much empty of cars. The two boys behaved very well, especially David who napped, sang songs and looked at cars along the road.
All-in-all, we travelled 1030km and burnt about 90L of petrol (11.5km/L). The Isis handled reasonably well, and had enough power and speed for the highway.
We will see Esther again when camp ends on 4 June 2009.
Details are here.
Today Joseph is 6 months old, and this is him eating his first solid food – plain rice cereal. He doesn’t really like it; maybe soya sauce will help improve the taste!
Yesterday, Esther and David helped YowCH wash the car. David and Esther cleaned the rims, Esther cleaned the insides with the vacuum cleaner, and David helped with the window washing.
The family will be back in PJ next weekend. Hopefully a nice road-trip on the North-South Highway.
