For this 1-week school holiday, we went to Melbourne arriving on 5 Sep and left on 12 Sep. We linked up and toured with our friends Samuel, Hwee Leng and their 6 children. That’s 4 adults and 10 children from 1 to 13 years of age (all born in different years!)
Please click on the photos below to visit the pages (3 total).
Our church cell group, eCG, had our lo-hei at the Leongs’ place on Friday night.
Esther and Grace made some really nice cupcakes and shared them.
On Saturday, at about lunch time, YowCH’s parents arrived with Loon, Daren and Yen Li. We had lunch at Goldhill Chicken Rice.
Then the Tans went to visit relatives, and the Yows had dinner at Great World City’s Crystal Jade. With the CNY crowd, the adults were seated away from the children, at two distant tables.
After dinner, we sent parents to Bishan.
On Sunday, we spent some time at home in the morning, and we took some photos of Samuel happily walking about. Here’s Samuel taking a fun-stroll outside home.
As usual, we went for our swim before lunch. The boys then went to the Community Football League friendly matches at Rainforest, Turf City.
David was rather tired after the swim, but he played very well.
Joseph was not very focused and didn’t play too well, but he tried.
For dinner, the whole family (parents, us, Yongs and Tans) met at Star Vista and had seafood at Boston Seafood Shack.
This morning (Monday) is the start of David’s 3-day camp with his school. Here’s David with his camping bag fully packed.
The Tans and parents returned to PJ after breakfast.
Thursday, first day of CNY, we had lunch at Cedele, Great World City. YowCH had traditional vegetarian meal, and Esther followed suit. The rest ate normally.
After lunch, we shopped a little, then went to Moh Guan for dinner, and that was after our little outing to Labrador Park.
Friday, second day, we went to the zoo from morning to afternoon. Then we visited the Lims for a nice home hot-plate dinner.
On Saturday, we invited YowCH’s colleague Andrew and his family to our place for hotpot and hotplate lunch.
Then we went to church, and after service, we had dinner at “Different Taste” with the Tans and the Ngs.
Esther was leading the juniors table, and David gave thanks for the food.
Saturday evening, after church, our friends called us over to share 2 VERY large pizzas that were wrongly ordered.
Very nice dinner and fellowship.
At home, you can see Samuel very interested in the terrapins.
Sunday morning, YowCH went with David and Joseph to the Football Fiesta at Mattar Road. Nice pitches, but pitches are small and the games management was poor.
Both David and Joseph played well.
Leaving football at 12:00 (the event finishes at 3:00pm), the boys joined Grace , Esther and Samuel at the Lees’ place to celebrate Elliot’s birthday. Nice food, drinks, cakes and a movie to go!
Grace left early for work starts at 12:30. After the party over lunch, Esther went for ballet while the boys went home to shower.
An update on the bedbugs, the double sided tape is very effective in stopping them from reaching us when we sleep. We will keep it up for a while more and hopefully solve the problem.
31 Dec was a busy day. Grace went with Esther and parents to renew their phone contracts, and got away with new phones.
Dad took an iPhone6+ (huge!), so Esther gets the older iPhone5 that dad was using.
Grace went for the Samsung Galaxy S5 4G+ (16GB) for $168 with contract.
The S5 comes with a free Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite (7.0″, Wi-Fi) tablet, which we will redeem later, and sell, probably about $150. Her old HTC One SV LTE went to David.
In addition, having gotten a new line for David, we got a ‘free’ blue HTC Desire 610. Nice. We will sell this phone.
After buying phone the phones at Singtel Com-Centre and setting them up at home, and after a day’s work for YowCH, we went to church for the year-end Thanksgiving Bi-lingual service. After service, we went for supper with the Leongs, the Lims and the Behs. We had great frog porridge at Sin Ma (Cheong Chin Nam Road, off Bukit Timah Road).
Thank God for a wonderful 2014.
Update 6 Jan 2015: Collected the free Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite (7.0″, Wi-Fi) and sold it to a friend.
The HTC Desire 610 is also sold to a buyer from internet.
The boys got to climb a tree after lunch. Tree climbing is good, overcomes fear of heights, builds physically, learns to grab and push, and fun.
After church, we had our church Care Group, eCG, Christmas and year-end dinner at the Leong’s place, fantastic food.
The desserts were great! The Wees made cake with salted-caramel sauce, and the Leongs made Rainbow Cake.
A little update on the terrapins, they have grown really large!
On Sunday, the children had some time to play at home.
Then we went to Vivocity for lunch at LeNu 樂牛 (of Paradise Group 樂天):
And after some shopping, we had dessert at Madam Kwan’s before heading home
We had dinner with the Lims on Sunday, at Fat Boy’s. We ate lots of burgers and onion rings.
Some updates on Samuel, he is still not yet standing and walking, but he eats biscuit by himself, and likes to read car magazine Torque.
Samuel is also very attracted to music, he will join the rest of the family when we practice our Christmas carols.
Today is Esther’s baptism. Total of 13 candidate on Saturday and another 13 more on Sunday. Esther’s the shortest one on the left.
That’s Asst Pastor Alan Tay and Lead Pastor Beh SY baptising Esther.
We took some family photos after baptism.
Esther’s friend Nadya came to witness, too.
After baptism, we went out with the Lims, the Tans and the younger Leongs to NUS Guild House for a fellowship dinner.
The food was good, but the fellowship was much better.
And you can see our young friend, Esher Leong, much larger than Samuel while only 3 weeks older, eating a huge pot of food while Samuel gets a measly tub.
We met up with Chee Kean and Ming Meng on Thursday night (11 Sept), 11:00am for supper at Tiong Shian Eating House, 265 New Bridge Road. This corner shop is famous for the porridge. CK and MM came to Singapore as CK has some work, and MM came along to meet some friends.
We had braised large intestines, raw fish and various porridges (fish, fish maw, pork slices and mixed pork). Nice, but better is the fellowship with friends.
Our church Care Group, eCG (previously eFG) had a BBQ at Alison’s parents’ place. Lots of good food and had a great time of fellowship. Unfortunately, it rained heavily and we had to BBQ and eat indoors.
There were many children around.
We brought drinks and dessert, and Esther was the bartender.
