Gong Xi Fa Chai

As this year, Chinese New Year falls on Monday which is a normal working day in Holland, the celebration here was held 2 days earlier, on Saturday, 24 January 2009. Stalls selling chinese costumes, products and foods were opened along the street in the Hague Centrum and there were also lion and dragon dances and a few other chinese performances. Not only the kids were entertained with all these performances but they were also given a free drinks and a fortune cookies !

Bowling

Few years back when I was still in Malaysia, I used to play bowling alot with my sisters and brothers and I was quite sure I was good at it. But, when we moved here, I only got to play once with a few family friends and since then, everybody was kinda busy and didn't get the chance to arrange for another game.

I think, the last time I played bowling was when I was in Langkawi, Malaysia during our 2007 summer holiday. All my siblings (6 of us) and our families were there and we specially dedicated 1 day out of our 4 days holiday there to play bowling! I had such a good time. Oh...I really missed that moment huhu...

On Wednesday, when a few ladies that I played badminton with, asked if I would like to join them for a bowling, without a second thought I said yes. I think it is about time...

See...I told you, now I suck !

Aidan's party at school

Some photos of Aidan celebrating his birthday at his school on 6th January 2009.

High School Musical

These photos were taken when we went for the HSM3 movie at the cinema. Natasha was so excited when she saw that huge poster and asked me to take a picture of her standing next to her idol from the movie, Gabriella Montez ! As for Alyiah, hhmmm who else but the ever so charming Troy Bolton.

Fun time on ice

For the past few weeks, the weather here has been below 0 degree and most lakes, ponds and canals were frozen. Though it was extremely cold, nearly everyone took this opportunity to skate on this "natural ice rink" and so did we. We went to the canal just at the back of our house. Being a typical mother that's always concern about the safety of her children, I was a little bit paranoid at first, of course, anything could happen isn't it ? but when more people came and after talking to some of them, I was more convinced and decided that it was safe to join them.

The girls brought their skating shoes and since Aidan does not have one, we thought sleigh would be nice for him. It was such a good experience coz since we came here 6 1/2 years ago, we have never encountered this and never imagined we could walk and play on "water"...

One For All

So many things happened last week but I was too busy (or lazy ?) to provide an update but here it is…..

Last week Mr Dear’s ex-colleague from Malaysia came over with his family and they stayed over our place for 4 nights. They were quite independent and we didn’t have to bring them around but since my 3 stooges (especially Aidan) have been asking to go to Madurodam (mini-Holland) every time we passed it, so we thought we might as well bring our guests there at the same time.

We also celebrated Aidan’s 3rd Birthday on 27 December. I remembered well how I made Mr Dear grinned ear to ear on that particular date, 3 years ago. His face was glowing with pride when he first held Aidan in his arms and 3 years have passed now yet whenever he looks and holds Aidan, his face glows. We didn’t have a big party whatsoever just a family dinner with a small cake for Aidan to blow his candles and of course presents from us all.

What else ? Oh ! Actually I’ve been asking Mr Dear to go to Germany (during winter) since the last few years coz I wanted very much to see their famous “Christmas Market”, in fact, we have planned to go this winter, but due to some “unforeseen circumstances” (my 3 stooges got sick and etc..etc..), once again it didn’t happen, perhaps next year…Instead we went to Maastricht for it’s “Winter Wonderland”. It was supposed to be a fun place for the kids but the weather was extremely cold that they didn’t seem to enjoy and keep on asking us to go home. Well, at least we did bring them out !

Since Mommy didn’t get to go to her Christmas Market, Daddy felt bad and one of his way to please Mommy was to bring her SHOPPING ! hehe…(sayang Daddy !) We went to Roermond, a factory outlet about 2 and ½ hours drive from our place. They were having their big end of the year sale and we managed to grab some good deals out of it.

We also brought the kids to watch movies i.e Madagascar 2 : Escape Africa and High School Musical 3.

Today, Mr Dear starts working and Aidan starts going back to school but the girls are starting school on Wednesday. Slowly things are getting back to the daily routine.

Anyways, I would also like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2009.