Best day of the week

Is Saturday. Well it's the first day of the weekend. We get to wake up late, have home made breakfast and lots of family time.

It's also the day where the kids have their activities. Ayden has his swimming class and at the same time, the twins has their football class. Seriously saves us fron running to different locations for their classes. Instead, all is done at The Club on a Saturday afternoon.

Ayden's been having classes with Advanced Aquatics and today he got upgraded to Yellow 2 group where he will learn front crawl with breathing. Yellow 1 was about front crawl with arms and legs and Red 2 was about just kicking. I love how they split the groups into skills so each child can progress at their own pace without having to wait for the class.

The twins are really enjoying their football class and today there are 2 more boys in their class making it even more fun for them. Aaron is doing extremely well and is really blossoming at it.

Really is so much fun doing all these activities with the kiddos and we are so blessed that we are able to provide for them to enjoy these things in their early life.

Ayden's first F1

Daddy took Ayden for his first F1 last weekend. Finally he is old enough to go!

Meanwhile mummy had a  blissful few hours with just the twins. Funny how much more calm the house is when Abang is not at home.

I asked him so what did you do at the races. All he remembered was eating haha! I said,  well were there any race cars... yea that too.

Apa daaa Abang. Next time Hannah and Aaron can come too.

Ayden turns 5! !

I've said it before and I'm saying it again,  time does fly. The little boy who changed our lives, gave us so much joy,  has turned 5 and is a little pre-schooler.

He's a little man with lots of opinions and way too much energy. Loves people and has loads of friends. Loves his siblings, drives them up the wall but at the same time gets bored when they are not around.

Generous at heart, always makes sure that other people is having as good a time as he is.

Has moved on from Thomas and Friends and Disney Jr to Transformers and Disney XD. There is a lot of shooting going on in the house where previously was lots of chugging and tooting.

He got his first admirer! Even got a beautiful handmade bookmark from her. I hope their friendship lasts until well... they grow up.

He's got lots of best friends. How cute is that.

He finally rides his scooter like a big boy. Even the handle bar has worn out. His grandmother gave him a bicycle for his birthday.

Still loves being read to. Reluctant to read by himself but when the moon is blue he actually volunteers to read.

Struggles with writing but he's getting better at it. Lots of exercises supervised by his nanny in the afternoons after school.

My dear little boy, if you only knew how much you mean to me. Hopefully one day you will find my blog and read about how much I love you and your siblings.

Ayden's 3rd swimming class

And he can do a superman! That is kick off the side of the pool ans float towards the coach!

He can already blow bubbles really well too. I must say the swimming classes that he is at now is really good!

And of course his poolside supporters are always there to cheer him on :)

*Just realised I didn't get a photo of him doing the superman. Took loads of videos but can't upload on mobile pffft*

Putting away the electronics

Unbelievable. Managed to keep them occupied for more than an hour.

It's the twin's first time playing with play doh. They seem to know how to use the moulds and press shapes out. Its because of all the play doh youtubes they've been watching.

The Hurom Juicer

It’s the in thing now! Juicing for good health.

While the social media and the web is filled with fanciful juicing recipes, mostly green in colour, I just go for the plane jane orange juice. Or just one or two fruit combo juices. Mostly not green in colour.

I bought my slow juicer from La Juiceria. It’s a Hurom juicer. It cost me RM1998 and came with a free sorbet maker. La Juiceria delivered it to me for free. Interested? Just go to their website and place and order.

But before investing this hefty amount I wanted to try their juice first. Recently La Juiceria opened their own shop in Hartamas. The same row as Podgy and the Banker. They had also opened a kiosk in Mid Valley. But before they opened their outlets they only sold their juice from their website and they were promoted in juice fast packages.

They had 2 day, 4 days and 6 days juice fast packages. Basically it involves only drinking their juice and not eat for that period of time. I could not heck not eating for so many days so I opted from the 2 days one.

The 2 day package comes with 12 bottles of juice. You are meant to drink 6 bottles of juice a day. Each bottle is labelled with numbers in the order that you are meant to drink it. Every bottle is meant to be drank 2 hours apart while you have to drink lots of water in between. Your package will also come with a free packet of cashew nuts which you can munch during your fast.

The juices were yummy with the recipe printed on the bottles. Though I successfully finished my juice according to the instructions… BUT… I had pizza for dinner on the first night. I can’t help it! Hubby ordered pizza and everyone was devouring it whole heartedly!

So with the juices tasting good and all I decided to make my purchase. I also youtubed some reviews and I had some friends who also bought the Hurom and all says it’s good. The main thing was that it was easy to clean apparently and that is the most important thing.

Other brands that are also popular is also the Coway and Primada. Coway being the most affordable (around RM1500) and the Primada being the priciest at around RM2400. I just went for the in between. My selection was just that simple. Ease of cleaning, price and popularity!

The other main reason for me to get this very expensive toy is because Ayden refuses to eat any greens or fruits. So I thought by juicing everything, he might just agree to down some. He likes Boost Juices and Juice Works.

So I get him involved in the juicing. He gets to feed in the fruits into the juicer. One of my simple favourite is just plain orange juice. Nowadays I add in pineapple and am so addicted to it!

Ayden’s favourite is strawberry and apple. Sometimes we throw in a banana. And he loves it! So we managed to get some fruits in him after all!

I also make Ayden a “Super Hero” juice. It contains beetroot, 2 apples, 2 carrots and a lemon. I tell him it makes him taller and stronger. I place my hand on top of his head and everytime he takes a sip I press down my hand on his head making him think that he is growing taller… and he totally believes it!! So he drinks that too! Sometimes I will sneak in some broccoli. Not celery though cause the fruits can’t camouflage the taste of celery.

Fruits can be expensive though. To get one liter of orange juice you need around 12 oranges. If you throw in one small pineapple you should be able to get almost 1.5 liters. 8 apples will get you hardly one liter of juice. So you need quite a lot of fruits if you need a lot of juice! Something to consider when you are thinking of investing in a slow juicer.

I’ve not tried any green juices yet. Will do after I get over my addiction of orange and pineapple juice!

So that’s our juicing adventure. Worth the investment in my books.

Company Sports Day

At my work place, we had a year long host of activities each competing houses had to accumulate points to win the Cup.

My department, the Commercial Dept’s house is named Blue Vikings. We started off last with the few activities. Then everyone suddenly caught the competitive bug and we decided to pull our weight and compete properly. I mean we really wanted to NOT be last in the very least.

Our first victory was the Master Chef competition. That pulled us from last place to second place. There are three houses in total competing. Over the months we managed to pull to first place with activities like treasure hunt, talent show, and bowling. We won first most of it, giving us very strong points for first place.

Last weekend was the grand finale. The sports day. The organizer planned out traditional games, like galah panjang, baling selipar, lastik getah… remember these?? We barely!

Unfortunately we did not fare too well. We won the three legged race and sepak bulu ayam. There was also a house decorating competition which we think we got the highest points. The thing was, everyone stayed until the end of the event but…. They did not want to announce the winner until the annual dinner! Arrgh! We stayed in the heat until noon only to find that our suspense is not quite over yet.

I brought all three kids as there was bouncy castle, face painting and activities planned for the kids. My kids held out well despite the heat and enjoyed themselves tremendously. Ayden spent the whole hot morning on the bouncy castle. Only stopping for water breaks. The twins had the pleasure of some bigger kid’s company, who apparently loved them and entertained them all morning. I was busy with galah panjang and supporting my team mates. Daddy took care of them most of it.

All red with heat but they did not fuss at all. I am surprised! So that was our weekend activity sorted. After that we went home and everyone pengsan. I however only managed to lie down and play Farmville 2 (have you tried this game? Its awesome!). I had a splitting headache from the heat and not to mention slightly burnt.

Here are some of the photos from the sports day. I had archived my photos on the weekend from my phone so these are the instagram photos which I managed to store on a separate folder.

Ayden read his first book by himself! !

We are super excited!

This book has very easy 3 letter words and rhymes for early readers to have confidence in blending and reading. I was really surprised that Ayden could read through this book quite easily.

The first round I would read it while encouraging him to do the phonic sounds for the simple 3 letter words. Then because of the rhymes he could make out words like eat, treat and beat!

Funny enough he struggled with "A" and "the".

Making a paper mache bowl for Teacher's Day

Ayden’s had many opportunities of activities at home. I like to enrich him (and eventually the twins) with non-academic activities such as arts and crafts, baking, gardening and simple chores.

So here’s a fun activity that we did quite some months back for Teacher’s Day. Instead of buying gifts we made a paper mache bowl for his teachers.

So its just a standard issue paper mache bowl.

Step 1

Get a plastic bowl, that is not too big or too small.

Step 2

Make paper mache glue. One cup of floor with 2 or 3 cups of water. Stir over a hot stove until you get a gluey consistency. If it is too thick, add more water. I personally like it quite runny so it is easier to soak the newspaper bits in it. Add a little bit of salt (one teaspoon) so the floor mix does not go bad too quickly.

Step 3

Cut strips of newspaper.

Step 4

Ok we are ready to start working on the bowl. For the first layer, soak the newspaper strips with water and lay one or two layers on an upside down bowl. Subsequent layers should be soaked in the glue mix that we made earlier. Ideally you should do two layers and then let it dry before working on the next layer. We usually do the next layer the next day. Yes it is a week long project. Keep going with a few layers until you reach the thickness that you like. You might want a very thin bowl or a very thick bowl. On the last layer, use a brush and spread a thin layer of glue and dry it in the sun.

Step 5

When the bowl is dry, gently remove the newspaper layers from the plastic bowl. Then work on a few layers with glue on the inside of the bowl and let it dry.

Step 6

Trim the edges of the bowl and tidy up the edges with one or two layers of newspaper strips with glue. You’re almost done!

Step 7

Dry the bowl completely before painting!

Hope you enjoy this project as much as we did. Ayden’s teachers certainly liked the present.

Swimming classes for Ayden

On our last holiday by the beach Ayden showed some signs of readiness for some structured swimming classes. He wanted to dive, hold his breath underwater, float. So I thought, maybe its a good idea to enroll him in a swimming class.

So I contacted Erika Perez, Whom most of us have heard off by now. she started off with football classes for toddlers and pre-schoolers. Ayden had attended some of her football classes when he was younger. Now she has her swimming classes where she runs them at various locations. she used to do some at The Club at Bandar Utama. Nowadays, most of her swimming classes are at Tropicana Golf and Country Club.

The classes costs rm 500 for 10 lessons where you have to complete them within 12 weeks.

So far Ayden is doing extremely well in his classes. He's had 4 or 5 classes so far and he is able to blow bubbles, kick while holding a "noodle" to almost halfway through the pool, dive and pick up rings from the bottom of the pool and dive into the pool from the side of the pool.

If you have been following my blog, I like introducing activities to Ayden, and I felt swimming, besides it being a great useful skill, is just one of the many things I like him to get exposed to. And to note, I do not have any kind of high achieving expectations out of this. Just purely to have fun and to have  varied experiences in life.

And after his classes are would have lunch atthe coffee house. And after that we would go home and take a nap.

Now isn't that a fun weekend?

An obsession with Thomas and Friends

He can play with them all day. He will watch them on youtube. He has tons of books on them and his schoolbag, water tumbler and lunch box is of the same theme.

Its amazing with a bunch of trains can do for a little boy.

He started his interest almost more than a year ago. My aunt gave him a book and a DVD as a gift and everything started from there. I decided to get him the Take and Play set and slowly we built his collection. Though he does not build proper tracks or anything, he just likes running the engines along them, even though they lead to nowhere.

He narrates while he plays, which does wonders for his imagination. Definitely much better than watching tv or playing with the ipad.

Aquaria KLCC

We brought Ayden to Aquaria for the first time when he was about 10 months old. At that time he had just started walking. He was also too young to understand what was going on around him, even though he was surrounded by amazing sea creatures!

This trip was different. He is more aware and he knows what he is looking at. He really enjoyed the trip this time and was busy pointing at all the fishes!

Entrance fees is a whopping RM35 per adult. Its free for babies and toddlers under 3. Because we are staff of the Green Giant, we get a staff discount and only pay RM28. I guess its worth it because its my third visit to Aquaria and I still enjoy it!

Looking at the otters. Besides fish, they have other small animals too.

There's the turtle!

They had crocodiles too!

And butterflies

And snakes!

I can't remember what this creature is called

It was fish feeding time and they were hand fed!

Fish food!

My most favourite part of Aquaria is the tunnel, where you walk into the aquarium and have fish swimming all around you and even above you!

Ayden was in awe

This is a little worm looking eel! It kept coming in and out of the sand!

They were that tiny!

Don't know what this is but sure looked scary!

These were beautiful