Graduation Party 2011

It has been a very distressing week, for reasons I shall not discuss here. But by Thursday, I felt better, and by Friday, I felt fine and ready to dive right into the festive mood of Jolie's graduation party.

Well, it wasn't exactly her graduation. She enrolled one year earlier then her classmates, so she would be doing another year in the playgroup while almost all of her classmates would be graduating.

I think Jo would be quite confused in the new school term as to where her best friends have gone.

MIL and SIL were there too, SIL took leave to come see Jolie perform!

It took a long while before they started. Everybody had to wait for students who were late. Hmph! So inconsiderate to make the whole school of children, parents and grandparents waiting! Anyway, there's two sessions in the playgroup. This was Jolie's group.

There were many performances, this is one of the shorter ones.

I wasn't bias, but Jolie's group was way better during the performance. The first group probably got stage fright and just stood there while only one or two sang and danced. Jolie's group sang and danced and recite poems with so much enthusiasm! It wasn't award winning performance, but it was loud, lively, joyous and carefree, it really puts a smile on the adult's face.

So after the song and dance, everybody rushed out to pig out on food prepared by the family members of the students. Look at the spread! Everybody was bringing stuff like cakes and bee hoon and fish ball. I thought it would be good for the kids to have something nutritious, so I made watermelon and honeydew balls. The honeydew was so small, it outnumbered the watermelon by too much! So I hollowed out the half watermelon and used it as a bowl to put the rest of the watermelon balls.

Everybody was like "wah, so cute! so much effort just to make the balls!". But seriously, I think I did the least work there. It was so quick and simple as compared to fried bee hoon! Heehee...

Because my dish was "disposable", I didn't even had to wait for everybody to finish before leaving. We're going Hong Kong early next morning, and I haven't finish packing yet, so we bade farewell and went home. Happy Graduation!

Kite Flying at Marina Barrage

I don't know why, but Cobby had a urge to go Marina Barrage to fly kite. Well, it was a very beautiful and sunny day, so went after Jolie woke up from her nap. The only kite we had was a crappy Winnie the pooh kite that won't fly, so we decided to buy a proper one at the store there. Everybody was buying kites with cool modern colours or with silly cartoon characters, but I spotted one in a corner with a big traditional print of a pink goldfish, and I knew that's the one. It's also the cheapest, I guess it wasn't very popular, which made me love it more.

Like I said, it was a very sunny and windy day, perfect conditions for flying kite, so as expected, the place was quite crowded. The wind was so strong that it didn't take much effort before our kite was airborne. But Jolie kept jumping up and down, wanting to fly the kite herself, so we locked the line and let her hold her kite. Look at her proud and happy face...

It wasn't difficult to fly the kite, the only challenge was to get it to go really high up. I keep working on it, but there was simply TOO MANY kites in that small area! So we ended up getting tangled with other kites quite often, so each time we had to start over again, frustrating!

Before we knew it, the sun was setting and it was time to go for dinner.

Just as we finished packing up the kite, Jolie found herself some new playmates. A bunch of teenagers were kicking a ball around and Jolie decided to join them in the game. I was worried that they may find her annoying, but surprisingly, they were very nice and let her kick the ball with them. So sweet! I'm so happy that my baby girl is so extrovert and sociable, and proud as can be as the teenagers exclaimed in surprise how well she can kick the ball.

As we sat and watch Jolie play, the setting sun was casting this brilliant colours over the horizon. At that moment I felt so at peace. I felt so proud and fortunate that my country is so beautiful, and that I was blessed with a loving husband and a wonderful daughter. At the moment in time, to me, the world was perfect.

Visit to Jacob Ballas Children's Garden

One time, while dining out, we spotted a road sign to the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden. I've heard a few friends bring their children there, so we decided to bring Jo there too.

In my defence, I didn't think that the Chinese top was appropriate for a trip to the gardens, but the Princess insisted on wearing it. What to do?

Anyway, at the carpark I was wondering why was most of the kids were in wet clothes and holding towels. Apparently, there's a play fountain and most of the parents and their kids would go straight there. There's also a playground right near the entrance of the park, which I thought was super stupid. After seeing the water fountains and the playground, which kid would want to move on to look at plants? Duh, so we were "stuck" there for quite awhile before we tore our screaming toddler away. We didn't drive all the way there to play in the playground only!

Anyways, after a mini tantrum session, we moved on and got to see quite alot of interesting parts of the garden.

I think it would be more educational with a guide, or more information about the plants other then just their scientific name. But Jolie had alot of fun with the tree house, mini draw-bridges and other kids friendly stuff.