We took my parents out for dinner last week. After dinner, when we were walking them to the car park, I told Aaron to hold Gong Gong's hand and help him, and he did. He held Gong Gong's hand and walked very patiently with him. I think Gong Gong loved every moment of that!
We had a rare mega playdate with our church friends on Tuesday. Went ice-skating and bowling with our church friends. The last time we had such a humongous playdate was 2 years ago, when the same 5 families, with the dads, went to SEA Aquarium together! As usual, Aunty Lydia captured really lovely photos of the kids having fun.
Lunch after 2 tiring hours of skating .... and falling for some.
Watching their friends bowl
It was a double-first for Aaron: 1st time ice-skating, and 1st time bowling.
He was actually quite distressed initially, when he attempted to ice-skate without aid as all the skating support were taken up. But we managed to get some bigger kids to let him use theirs, and from then on, he started to enjoy himself.
Bowling wasn't so easy though. The ball was too heavy for him. But still, he tried, multiple times.
Nadine actually took pretty good care of him that day - helping him at the ice skating rink, and holding his hands while we walked to Burger King for lunch. She also helped him to type in his name for the bowling game. Proud of this big sister!
So very grateful that these kids can grow up together. Having come into contact with some of Nadine's school friends, I realise that not everybody has such a community. It's truly God's blessings for them! Hope they'll grow up to serve the Lord together in future!
2 nights ago, while getting ready for bed, Aaron decided to make a "science dream catcher".
Firstly, I have no idea where he learnt about a dream catcher. Probably tv. And they do learn quite a lot of good things from tv!
Secondly, it's so cute that he wants a "science dream catcher" because he only wanted science dreams! What does that even mean??? Dreams of him doing experiments?
Daddy says Aaron is like him - like Science and Math. Thankfully, Daddy is not a geek; and I certainly hope Aaron doesn't turn out to be a geek!
3 years after starting ballet class, Nadine gets to perform in her 1st ballet concert at University Cultural Centre. She loves ballet, and she loves to be on the stage. And she certainly put up a really good performance! So proud of her!
Aaron has enjoyed school enormously this year, and while he didn't seem to make much progress in the first half of the year, he sort of blossomed in the last quarter - knowing his addition, phonics and starting to write and draw a lot more.
For Nadine - so much for not having any exams in P1. She still had "checkpoints", and her results were even recorded in a record book!
She did well for her first year. What surprised us was that she scored better for her Chinese than her Math! But I guess P1 Chinese is still pretty manageable for her. I hope she can continue to do as well in P2!
First, on Tuesday, there was the Children's Fiesta, where only parent can attend, and watch performances put up by the girls in their classes, as well as enjoy recess time with them.
Daddy went for this event, because Nadine volunteered me for the class supermarket outing on Friday.
Daddy was one of very few fathers who went for the event. But he enjoyed himself, watching Nadine interact with her teachers and classmates, and bonding with her during her recess.
The supermarket outing on Friday was just as fun for me.
Every parent was assigned to a group of 4 or 5 girls, and we had to let them do all the work of finding the items they had listed in their breakfast shopping list, and making sure they were within their budget.
It was quite a brilliant and fun way of getting them to do math and work on their teamwork and inter-personal relations.
They then went back to school to prepare their breakfast and ate together.
Saw this note on the table when I got home last week. Tried so hard but couldn't figure out what Aaron's trying to say. Had to ask him, and it is .....
I want movie time please 💓
Well, ok, I guess that' not too bad, for a 5 year-old!
Nadine's school held a "Children Fiesta" (fancy name for year-end class performance) during the last week of school.
She asked me to make a tiger tail for her. Said it's needed for one of the items. As I was making it, very amateurishly, she took the ribbon that's for tying round the waist, put it around her waist, then said, "XX's waist is about the same size as mine."
Me: You mean you have to share the tail with her for the performance?
N: No, this tail is for her.
Me: Huh?
N: XX said she doesn't know how to make a tiger tail and her mum also doesn't know.
Me: So you volunteered to make for her?
N: Ya!
Me: 8-|
My daughter is so generous and helpful! Can't decide if I should be happy or angry.
Aaron tried on Cheh-Cheh's roller blades a couple of weeks ago, managed to roll around in the house, and since then, have been asking to get his own blades. So we did, and on Deepavali morning, brought them to Bishan Park to roll around.
Nadine has become quite good, even though she's completely self-taught. Only thing is, she doesn't move as gracefully as those roller-bladers we see at the park who were taking lessons. Maybe we should sign her up for a few lessons.
Aaron surprised us by being brave enough to move without anyone holding him. Kids are just kids - can pick up new things so easily!
This year, Nadine returns to LSK as an audience to watch the annual concert.
She was so happy to meet her LSK sweetheart, Yun Zhe.
At 5, Aaron has already been in 2 concerts. This year, at his 3rd concert, he's a seasoned performer. So confident - able to sing and dance at the same time. And he looked like he was totally enjoying himself! So much fun to watch!
The kids have been asking to go to Kidzania Singapore. So last week, during the PSLE marking when Nadine didn't have to go to school, I brought them. But we waited till Aaron finish school, which was actually a pretty good idea.
By the time we got there it was past noon. We skipped the long queue to buy tickets, and the school groups were about to leave. Still, the kids had to queue pretty long for their stations.
Getting their ATM card at the bank
As usual, Aaron wanted to be a police
And Nadine wanted to work in the nursery again
At the water plant, Aaron would rather be the delivery boy than lab technician
And he was a very competent solo delivery boy!
I wasn't with Nadine when she worked as a surgeon at the hospital, a courier and a deejay at Kiss92. But I caught her performing with the parade.
Aaron at the Paddle Pop lab, making his own ice cream
Overall, Kidzania Singapore is better and slightly bigger than Kidzania KL. The best thing for parents, there are more and better food outlets - Soup Spoon, Pizza Hut, KFC and Killiney. But this place is also more expensive than the one in KL. Can't come back too often!
Aaron loves his music classes, even though he can't concentrate for long most of the time. Between art class and music, he's chosen to drop art and do music. Sure hope this boy will persevere through with his music lessons.
1st solo piece - Going on a picnic
2nd piece - I'm a shoemaker
Class song item
And a photo with the super patient Teacher Bei Bei
Finally the long-awaited cruise! This is our very first cruise, so everybody's excited. Even more so when we saw how big the ship was.
We had a Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom on Deck 12, at the front end of the ship. Window view was magnificent!
Father and son enjoying the view together
On our first day, it was raining quite heavily. It was supposed to be the rainy season in Hong Kong, but the weather was fabulous during our 2 days of outing there, and only started pouring after we got on board the ship. So we took our own sweet time to settle down, check around the ship, and looked through the activities for the kids. And then it was dinner.
After dinner, there was the first Dreamworks parade, where we met King Julian and Po.
Besides them, during the 5 days that we were on board, we met many other characters too.
Skipper and Kowalski
Puss
Po again
and a Stormtrooper
2nd day, we went for galley tour. It was really interesting to walk through the galley and see how food, loads of them, is prepared, cooked and stored. Everything's on such large scale. And it was certainly nice to hear that uneaten food is thrown into the sea to feed the ocean life, so that no food is wasted.
After the tour, we had a sumptuous lunch. The food was way better than the buffet. Rightly so, since we paid for this tour-cum-lunch!
After lunch, it was off to the kids club the children, leaving Daddy and I to explore the ship ourselves.
The first show we watched was the ice-skating show, which was soooo good! The performers were all previous world ice-skating champions, and their performance was so inspiring that Nadine kept asking to go to the skating rink after that!
Nadine loved ice-skating. She was such a natural. Most people who skated at the rink were probably first-timers like her. There were only a few who knew who to ice-skate. For those who don't, all would start off by holding the railing at the side and moving extremely slowly and cautiously. Not Nadine. She moved right to the centre of the rink, and skated like she's done it a few times already. No fear at all!
3rd day was a port day - Nha Trang.
Nha Trang is a coastal city. The tours offered for the day were pagodas and temple visits, including a cable car ride. Or one could go to the beach. So we opted to stay on board, to relax and enjoy the facilities.
Well, actually, the real reason why we stayed on board was because this cruise was full of PRCs. While the ship is big enough for us to sort of avoid them, we had not gone to the pool area because throngs of them were there, soaking in all 3 pools and 5 jacuzzis all the time! So we stayed back to enjoy the pool!
It was indeed nice and peaceful, with few people on board. And we learnt something new about Aaron and Nadine. Aaron was just like Daddy and me - happy like bird that we had the whole ship to ourselves, almost. But Nadine was miserable. She didn't like the emptiness and not having anyone (besides her brother) to play with. Such a social butterfly!
4th day was another port of call - Danang. This time we disembarked and joined the city tour. I've been wanting to visit Danang. Well, actually I'm more interested to visit Hoi An but it takes 2 hours to reach Hoi An from the port and we didn't think the kids would be ok with the long bus ride. So we settled for Danang.
The Vietnamese restaurant that we went to for lunch, and the pagoda we visited after lunch both had lots of bonsai. Daddy and I were amazed that Aaron was s intrigued in the bonsai, particularly the little figurines, "mountains" and "caves" used to decorate the bonsai. He looked closely at every pot of bonsai we passed by!
The best part of the Danang tour was the trishaw ride around the city. The kids and I loved it while Daddy thought it was extremely dangerous.
Other than that, the rest of the Danang tour was quite boring actually. The Cham Museum was very small, and the kids were not interested at all; the market is a typical Vietnamese market, but do not have as much things as those in Ho Chi Minh City; and the marble village stopover was really one of those tourist traps, to get tourist to buy overpriced stuff. I was quite disappointed with the tour actually.
A family shot before we board the ship again.
Day 5, Daddy managed to wake up at 5am to take some sunrise shot!
Nadine went for a cupcake decorating class in the morning.
While Aaron and Daddy went round to explore the ship.
In the afternoon, Nadine went ice-skating again. This time, Daddy joined her. But he too, like most first-timers, was hanging on to the railing all the time, and marvelled at how Nadine could move around so freely and boldly.
Nadine's Korean friend, whom she got to know at the Kids Club, was at the rink too, and the 2 had fun skating together.
The kids loved the kids club, even though there were not a lot of kids. The activities were fun enough to engage them, and they, or rather, Nadine, enjoyed making playing with her multinational friends - from Dubai, Korea, and France.
Here's Aaron the Alien.
The one thing that amused us was the towel origami that our room attendant made for us every night. A different animal every night.
Doggie
Elephant
Monkey
On the last night, the cruise staff put up a small performance for the guests.
Overall, our maiden cruise had been a good experience, and we really enjoyed ourselves. It was relaxing, and certainly lovely to wake up in the middle of the sea, and to be able to read by our room window in that tranquility.
The kids enjoyed themselves so much that they've been asking to go on another cruise since we came back! Yep, we will!
"Hope" - that's what Nadine means in Russian. So this is a record of our journey with our little bundle of hope .... and her little brother, Aaron - "Enlightened".
