(23 Dec 14 Tues) Great Grandpa's birthday

 Ah, great grand pappy turned 90 years old on this exact day. So wai po and her siblings decided to celebrate it in style by having a dinner for the entire extended family at the Boon Lay Raja Restaurant at Jurong East.

We had nothing planned so we headed to Jurong East to play and shop. Met two ang moh kids at the playground and we even went to have yogurt and shopped at Cotton On together. oh and one fanciful pink tulle dress caught jiejie's fancy and she pleaded for mama to buy it...good thing we bought it, for her dress got really messy after the yogurt so she got this lovely dress to change into.

Jurong East had transformed radically. Used to be a quaint sleepy town, mama's favourite hangout aft school (when River Valley High School was at West Coast Road). Now it was all buzzing and had these huge spanking new malls...and this patch of grassland was changed into an activity area!

jie looked so beautiful in this little dress, she really resembled a princess...eh..actually, not all the time, she liked to sit with her legs sprawled wide apart and put her legs on the edge of tables and seats in front of her....Faint.

tong was so comical, he asked mama to say "jia you tong tong" when he was climbing the structure. I supposed, all kids wanted their parents to be their greatest cheerleaders.

orrr my little sweet angel. That was the current pet name for jie jie. Tong, we called him the cutie pie baby. He even had a cutie mark (a birth mark) on his thigh, not unlike what the little ponies had. ha. XUn asked how come she did not have a birthmark like tong. wai po, as usual, citing her old wives' myths, said tong got it coz I was hanging and pasting things on the wall at Maysprings when I was expecting tong.

good thing he did not have his cutie mark on his handsome face, it would mar his dashing veneer. ha.

Woah, looked at that longevity bun, wai po said it got many tiny buns inside. ha

We sang a raucous happy birthday to "ah pong" hahah coz that was grand pappy's name. 

Not too sure if he knew what was going on exactly coz he seemed to be a tad senile now. He could not recognize mama anymore.

Then lots of family photographs.

With his brother (sitting next to him) and sister in law, then all the children with their spouses..

 

Eh, no one helped take a decent front shot for us...alas...

While bei was most diligent and took really good photos of the rest of the families...bei had always been a superb executor...

big grand uncle and family

2nd grand uncle and his family...mama used to play with uncle haojie...haha, he was my "other half" when cousins paired up

third grand uncle and family

fourth grand uncle and family

third grand aunt and family

fifth grand aunt and family. mama called her hong hong ah yi coz she looked so radiant in her red traditional wedding dress on her wedding day. somehow, that name stuck and my sisters also called her that...hahaha

wai gong and his brother's family

Well, it was an extremely joyous and delicious dinner...glad to meet up with my cousins, we hardly ever gathered now, i really missed those times when we would play at the deep water canal, we actually climbed down into that dangerous canal and walked under the expressway to go to the other side of the road! missed those days of lighting candles along the corridors, playing catching at the playgrounds, making up ghostly stories about scary phone cards (ya once upon a time, we used phone cards to make calls at public phones ah... that was how papa and mama dated) sigh..those bygone days.

Pasar Malam

 

Another reminder of our childhood, the pasar malam! Came back from Marzuki on a Sat and it was up. The kids clamoured to go. And yeh, of course, we could not miss the carnival rides...

jie was big enough to try this paddle boat but not the little apple, Tong. Ha, i must say Jie was a rather decent paddler, though she could not tell her directions for nuts, a bit like mama...

Oh this swing ride was amazing...xun gushed that she loved it because she could feel the wind in her hair and she could sit on it for the entire night. ya...jie was rather poetic for her age. ha

the uncle was really nice and let the kids stay on the swings for an extended time! How blessed. 

well...enough of going down memory lane. 2015 was soon approaching! Had been a brilliant year, could not wait to see an even more glorious year ahead. 

(22 Dec 14) Gardens by the Bay - Christmas theme

Ah ha, the last time we took the public transport, it took us close to two hours to change from bus to train to train to walking a far way from MBS...eh...this time round, google map somehow showed us we could take a bus to town and changed to another that would let us alight at MBS, from MBS, we took the bridge to Gardens by the Bay...Viola, it was way faster.

Xun and her first concession card. Public transport was free for kids under 7, but mama had two nasty experiences at being whacked by the closing MRT handicapped gantries when we tried to cross together, so mama decided it would be better for xun to have a bus card herself.

Balmy day, no sun at all, really sooooooo pleasant. both of you had a nap on the bus, so all was good.

a fishbone christmas tree?

Lovely houses just outside the domes.

Flower Dome

Well, you asked to take photos with the gorgeous flowers...

There was even real snow!

Really chilly in the flower dome, poor mama was wearing a sleeveless dress...brrrrr

the landscaped areas were so delightful, like a quaint little town

complete with cathedral and houses with smoking chimneys...

Entirely fairy-tale like...wondering if we would ever get to spend a holiday in a frosty place and stay in such a cozy cottage with a real fire place?

tons of presents at this tree, not unlike what was happening in our house.

and you got to see breath-taking wintry flowers we never got to see in sunny Singapore

ooo, lighted up reindeers pulling a santa bear? hahaha...

Xun exclaimed that the snowman was made up of flowers after touching it...not too sure about that, perhaps some kind of dried up flower / plant?

And as usual, we took photos of the bird cage, which could be used in every theme

So pretty that they almost looked unreal...

and these looked like real butterflies, felt so feathery and soft to the touch...

and there was even a candy store, if only it sold real candies, how nice it would be to eat candies in the freezing dome...

as per our routine, we must go and play these interactive games...of cutting down trees and planting new seeds...

oh, it was evening so the column structure was lit up. The other time, we could go into the column and they had flowers all over it, this time, we could not go in, but the lights were surely dazzling.

more presents...and off we went to hunt for the "surprises" - the niches in the floor with electronic displays of bloosoming flowers...you knew there were three spots exactly and needed to find all three...

They displayed new stuff in this one, this was a different one, the "surprise" was a hole in the ground

Found flowers on the floor and requested for them to be put in your hair

oh wow, and they actually built a fake fire place, complete with stockings and mistletoe!

You two wanted to eat the cabonara pasta at Pollen again, mama decided it was tooooo expensive and we should just go for dinner with papa at some cheaper joint.

This time round, we went to the Cloud Forest too. Usually, we only went to FLower Dome. This time, mama got the free ticket from papa's company's family day. I simply bought one more ticket for jie jie, oh man, did not look forward to next year when tong had to pay for entry too...ahhhhhhh

yeh, after hotfooting it away from the scary waterfall, we saw the model of the village with its train, tong's fav.

THis place was even frigid than the flower dome. shudder shudder. 

Went to the top, xun said that this totem looked like a bunny with two erect ears. how imaginative. ha

then admired the boat ...went on down to the crystal mountain

Taking a picture of the lit up passageway, we never stayed late enough to see this in the past...

xun used to be really terrified of this dark room when she was young. having matured, she no longer was fearful. We stayed for the movie which showed how catastrophic things would be if global warming continued, many species would die, cities would be sunken...very dire consequences...

xun was very sensitive and talked about the message of the show after that, so mama said we were gonna do our part to conserve the environment by recycling and using less water...

oh wow, never saw the lit up trees before...rather dismal and disappointing that it was pouring so we could not enjoy a saunter in the open gardens...saw such beautiful pictures of the lit up gates and structures..

papa was supposed to run with uncle erwin but had to cancel it and we ended up eating sinful food at Satay by the bay. heh...papa said uncle erwin was an unlucky guy for he always brought rain when they arranged for runs. well, xun had a good time exchanging lame and corny jokes with uncle erwin...after a filling dinner, we headed home. 

Today was already past Christmas, it was boxing day. Papa lamented how unbelievable that a year was gonna be over soon. mama always thought that time seemed to fly...nowadays, we were just so caught up in a hive of activities...well...2014 had been good. looking forward to a even more wonderful year ahead, with expectation of a new family member : ) and...a more intimate relationship with God...especially for xun who had been pestering and asking everyday when Sunday would come so she could go for Sunday School.

Love you sweetie and cutie pie. love you so much.