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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We had a super busy weekend, starting with clearing some stuff and furniture for new cabinets arriving next week.
On Saturday, after lunch at Square2, we bought new in-line skates at Novena Square / Velocity for Esther and David, as the second hand skates were getting small and Esther’s skates actually cracked (plastic was just too old). They are Bladerunner skates, adjustable from sizes 5-8.
David, Esther and Joseph also built their own Mindcraft Biomes with our bits and pieces of Lego.
We had dinner at Star Vista, using mostly vouchers we got in a lucky draw at this shopping centre.
A little update on Samuel, napping at the bouncer with the siblings’ gift, the penguin squeezy.
Then on Sunday, we had carolling practice after lunch, David was playing a drum, Esther the ukulele and YowCH on the electric guitar. On Christmas eve, we will be playing for either National University Hospital or Alexandra Hospital.
Unfortunately, the electric guitar was knocked early in the morning and the neck slightly dislodged, so we bought a new one after the carolling practice. We got a display unit Ibanez Gio GRX140BK for $299 (original price being $499) from Cristofori at Funan Centre.
This is heavier than the now limping Suzuki but plays better and sounds richer. It has 4 pick-ups, but only one tone dial.
The afternoon soccer practice was cut very short with a heavy afternoon pour.
Leaving soccer early, we picked Esther, Grace and Samuel from Funan and had dinner there. Esther got her ballet results, not too bad for Grade 3 getting “Commended”. She had 3 months less practice due to her bicycle fall last year!
After dinner, we drove over to Queensway and got David his basketball shoes (needed as the timber floor at the school hall is very slippery). It is rather difficult to find child-size basketball shoes, but much easier to get soccer boots.
A very busy weekend indeed.
His jaundice is getting low, should be cleared by this weekend. He feeds well, and turns his head by himself. He can also raise his head from prone position like a sphinx. He is generally active and likes attention.
This shirt is a gift from YowCH’s colleagues, very nice. We call it the minty-chocolate suit.
With David playing basketball in school as Co Curricular Activity, we got him a size-5 Mikasa black basketball, for his own practice. We tried it out at the playground last Saturday.
While we were playing basketball, some neighbourhood friends came by and they moved on to court soccer.
Joseph was at the playground climbing frame instead.
Our shoe cabinet was pretty beaten up, so on Sunday, we got ourselves 3 units of IKEA Stuva cupboards stacked up to be the new shoe cabinet. The minions were most helpful in putting up the cabinets. Not shown is YowCH handling the power-drill.
Old shoe cabinet (broken door):
Minions working:
New shoe cabinet (nice):
T.Y.Lin annual dinner was held on 3 Dec 2013 at Inter-Continental Hotel (Bugis Junction). Samuel had to attend, too, of course. The team was “Colours of the World”.
YowCH received his long service award for 15 years in T.Y.Lin.
