Hubby’s birthday

Two days after Yan Yan’s birthday, it was hubby’s birthday.  And while having a meeting at work, my department administrative assistant came in with this…

...coz it was also our 8^th wedding anniversary.

And we celebrated with a dinner at Grumps, with yet another voucher that I bought.

  

But Yan Yan wasn’t happy with the celebration, coz there wasn’t any candle for her (or papa) to blow…haha.

Yan Yan turned three

Yan Yan turned three on Sunday.  As I had been away for most of the past few weeks, I hadn’t given much thought to the birthday celebration.  I even managed to forget about pre-ordering any special cake!

Posing at the small patch of garden at our porch

And so, we had a simple family celebration with my clan, and babysitter and her sisters.  Hubby suggested nyonya food and we ended up at this inconspicuous and modestly furnished restaurant, recommended by hubby’s friend.

Sisterly love, when they are not fighting over the iPad, that is :-)

The restaurant turned out to be a gem – food was authentically nyonya, and superbly delicious, without making a huge dent in the pocket.  This restaurant is definitely a keeper.

  

Ju hu char, nasi kerabu, tau you gay, beef rendang, ikan gulai tumis, french beans with shrimps, kerabu lemak sayur paku, fried asam prawns, and popiah

The highlight for the children was undoubtedly singing the birthday song and cake cutting after dinner.  We had grabbed this chocolate cake from RT Pastry House earlier in the afternoon.

This was what jie-jie gave to mei-mei as her birthday present – a box of modeling clay which jie-jie bought from the school’s bookshop with her pocket money, coz mei-mei loves playing with play dough.

Happy birthday Yan Yan.  Mummy hopes you’ll grow up healthy and happy, and be the best that you can be.

Movie outing – Brave

The day after our trip to Putrajaya, we went for a movie outing.  It was a toss between Madagascar 3 and Brave, but for convenience and time, we chose to watch Brave at the nearby mall.

Before that, we went to this shop to redeem this nasi lemak voucher, and it was possibly one of the worst nasi lemak I’ve ever had – the rice was overcooked and too soft that they clumped together, and the fried egg was burnt at the edges.  Luckily the beef rendang and the inche kabin were not bad.

While waiting for the movie to start, we went into Toys ‘R Us and bumped into Teacher Kathleen, Yiu Yiu’s 5-year old kindergarten teacher.  Don’t know what came over her but she was so shy and hardly spoke to her teacher!

After the movie, we redeemed another voucher at Crazy Potato.  It came with one Crazy Sweet Potato Fries, Crazy Potato Fries with a choice of topping (we chose Crazy Meaty) and Tempura Chicken Nugget.  The fries were good, as expected, and so were the chicken nuggets.  The nuggests were so good that Yiu Yiu alone ate six pieces!  Didn’t quite like the Crazy Sweet Potato though.

It was a good day, and it felt like it's been such a looooongg time since I spent quality time with the girls :-(

Floria Putrajaya

I had been travelling a lot lately, and was hardly home during the weekends over the past 2 months.  One of the weekends that I was home, we made a trip to Putrajaya on Saturday night to watch the float parade.  The parade was supposed to start at 8.30pm but by the time we finished dinner and arrived in Putrajaya, it was close to 9pm.  And there was a massive jam going into Precinct 2, where the Putrajaya Lake is located.

We were lucky that we managed to park close by and quickly made our way to the lake side amidst the many stalls and floral exhibition, not to mention the massive crowd.  We went all the way down to the edge of the lake.

Colourful lights illuminating the lakeside

 A shot of the bridge over the lake

Soon after, the brightly illuminated and gaily decorated floats started floating by.  There were two international entries, one from Suzhou and the other from Kenya.  The rest were representating the various states in Malaysia, showcasing the tourist attractions in each state.

Suzhou

Kenya

Langkawi

Johor

Melaka - the least pretty float, in my opinion

Negeri Sembilan

Pahang

Perak, my hometown - not that nice

 Perlis

Sabah 

 Sarawak

Terengganu

 Putrajaya

 Tourism Malaysia

The night ended with a fireworks show at about 10.30pm.

  

 The finale

Random updates

After I came back from Beijing, I had to travel to Melaka for a 2-day meeting.  Since it was the school holiday, Yiu Yiu wanted to come along, and so hubby took leave and came along, together with the girls.  So while I was busy meeting whole day along, the girls…

…took their time to enjoy the buffet breakfast

…hung out at the pool

…had bubble bath and soaked themselves silly in the bathtub

…watched cartoons in bed with free flow of snacks and jasmine green tea

…and did some homework with jquery slideshow

It was a good start to the school holidays!  The girls were happy just hanging out at the hotel, and I was happy that I get to see them when the day was over.  This short trip was the prelude to a planned holiday trip, coming up in the next few posts.

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The week after school reopened, hubby went to collect YY's report card as I was away.  When it was his turn to see the teacher, he mentioned Yiu Yiu’s name, and her teacher simply said, "Oh! Yxx Yxx, nothing to comment about".  Hubby went "Huh??!" and the teacher quickly clarified that she's doing OK in school, above average and nothing outstandingly good or bad to comment about.  So is that good or bad?