Chinese Enrichment Class

After the Teacher / Parent Meeting Session, we realised that our Babe is relatively weak in her Chinese, especially Hanyu Pinyin. We had totally not exposed her to Mandarin at all, other than those lessons in Nursery and Kindergarten.....

And words of advice from her Chinese Teacher was..... "please communicate with her more in Mandarin".... We felt guilty, as we were partly responsible, as we always felt Chinese wasn't so important, especially if she may not be doing her Secondary School education in Singapore.... But again, she's still got 6 more years to go before PSLE, and we didn't want her to suffer and feel demoralised and handicapped because of her Mandarin.....

So, without much hesitation and after having done our surveys, we decided to enrol her for Chinese Enrichment class .... Let's hope we will see improvements in her Mandarin. Will update my blog on this a few months later.....

Babe's 1st Baking Lesson

Today my Babe went for her very 1st baking class.... she had been bugging me to send her for baking classes for 2 years, but somehow I didn't... couldn't remember for whatever reason though....

So this time she was extremely excited when I told her I had enrolled her for baking class at Bakerzin at UE Square.... this session, she learnt to bake chocolate chip butter cake.

Look at the sparkle in her eyes!!!


OOPS!!! Caught Amanda in action!!!

Amanda has graduated from the baking class.....

Amanda's sweet creation..... oh by the way, it tastes fantastic!

Did you notice she made 1 special cake with the word "I love MAMA"?... We were celebrating mum's birthday that night and she specially made 1 cake for her beloved grandma.... nothing for mummy though..... :(

Acting Like a Grown Up

Kids will always be KIDS......


Look at Amanda trying to imitate me.....


amanda carrying my handbags like a grown up....

amanda looking cool in my sunnies......

My Babe's Birthday Bash

How time flies! My babe has turned 7.... Last year, I promised her that we would be throwing her a party when she goes to Primary 1 and she will have a chance to invite all her friends.... anyway, kids parties are meant for kids, and most of the invitees should be her friends, except for our relatives and some close friends....

So here she is, having her BIRTHDAY BASH.... only girls were invited, except for her cousin Darren, and some of her friends who came with their brothers....

Daddy and I decided that we will engage a MAGICIAN for this event.... Danny the Magician, will be responsible for the entire party including entertaining all with magic shows, playing games, popping the pinata, cake cutting ceremony, making balloon decorations for the kids and last but not least, he will also provide with the "door gifts" for kids.... That saves me alot of trouble of cracking my head on how to organise games and activities for kids.... All I needed was to get a caterer for the food!!!

The kids had lots of fun and so did Amanda.... The kids were so excited about the magic shows that Danny performed and there was full participation from everyone present.

Amanda was extremely pleased as she received so many presents.... she spent a very long time unwrapping all her gifts and playing with them.... What a memorable BIRTHDAY BASH for my babe!!!

Chinese New Year 2009 in Hong Kong

Yippee!!! Another holiday!!! We have decided to make a trip to Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year. This time, it is not for work, but purely leisure... how nice :) It was such a short flight, merely 3.5 hours, yet my babe vomited in the plane while going and coming back....

Amanda enjoyed Hong Kong very very much. She enjoyed the weather, Hong Kong food, Hui Liu Shan dessert etc etc... In fact, we had Hui Liu Shan dessert almost everyday.... Also ate sumptuous tim sum at Fook Yuen and Foo Lum.... good food and good service....

Places of interest we visited included Avenue of Stars, Da Yu Shan and Ocean Park. Due to time constraint, we decided to give Hong Kong Disneyland a miss, as Amanda had already been to Tokyo Disneyland few years ago.... As it was during CNY period, we were also very lucky to be able to witness the FLOAT on 1st day of CNY and LOVELY FIREWORKS on 2nd day of CNY.... The fireworks were splendid and we had the luxury of watching the fireworks from the penthouse of our hotel....

This trip was totally relaxing for us... rest & relax.... own time own target..... imagine, we even had time to take short naps and then continue with our excursion... or even walking out of the hotel at 1 am past midnight to grab some bites..... a perfect short getaway for us!!!

Winter Wonderland in Europe - December 2008

Despite my very busy work schedule, I managed to get my leave approved for a 2 weeks Europe holiday to Paris, Brussels (Belgium), Amsterdam, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This trip was booked at the very last minute only after my annual leave was approved.... phew... but lucky enough, there were still seats available for us!!!

So here we are again.... the Sim family on another Winter holiday.... As usual, Amanda vomited in the plane.... this time, 3 times! Poor thing..... look at her expression before and after the flight....

upon arrival at charles de gaulle airport - look at her stained pants after vomitting 3 times....
First stop.... PARIS....
Look at the Eiffel Tower which Amanda drew immediately upon check in as she was sitting by the study table of the hotel room and staring out of the window and admiring Eiffel Tower at a distance.....

the drawing vs the actual...

.

Next stop.... BELGIUM

lovely belgian chocolates......

AMSTERDAM.....

VOLENDUM DUTCH FISHING VILLAGE A lovely quaint town.... awesome... a MUST to visit!!! The entire town was so peaceful & serene.....

COLONGE CHRISTMAS MARKET

HEIDELBERG......

MUNICH & ROTHENBERG NIGHT MARKET plus AUSTRIA - SALZBURG (the birth place of reknowned composer, MOZART)

It was freezing cold throughout the entire journey.... Salzburg was 1 deg celcius at noon... but all of us just loved the cold weather and we were savouring every moment of it....

AUSTRIA - INNSBRUCK Lovely place. Look at the Golden Roof!
We also visited the Swarovski Showroom in Austria. It was awesome! We stayed overnight at FUSSEN, a place well-liked by Japanese tourists..... Just before leaving FUSSEN, our guide brought us to visit the NEUSCHWANSTEIN CASTLE (at our own expense) but the trip was worth it! The castle was BEAUTIFUL!!! All of us paid to have the horse ride up the castle at the top of the hill. However, on the way down, all of them chose to walk since it wasn't too taxing to go downhill.... BUT.... we chose to pay for the horse carriage.... WHY?.... because I didn't have the energy to walk down (though daddy & babe were so keen to walk down.... hehe).

BLACKFOREST, GERMANY We loved the hotel that we stayed... Guess what we had for dinner in Blackforest? YES! Soup and Huge German Sausages as main course with Blackforest Cake for dessert.... The cake was delicious, but the sausages were a little salty to our liking and soup was just so so.....

TITISEE TOWN, SCHAUFFHAUSEN & LUCERNE..... We never expected Titisee town to be so beautiful. After a "CUCKOO CLOCK MAKING SESSION", we were left to explore the little town on our own.... This short moment was one of the most memorable moments of our life.... we made a gigantic snowman at the park!!! Lunch was sumptuous too (though at our own expense - ala carte meal). We tried their BEEF GOULASH whilst Amanda drank Potato Soup. The Potato Soup was yummy but our Beef Goulash was EXCELLENT!!! so much so that Amanda ended up drinking my share of Beef Goulash. We tried out various main courses... but what was worth mentioning was my dessert... APPLE STRUDEL WITH VANILLA ICE CREAM.... it was reallly YUMMY!!! I would definitely go for another serving of this if I still had some space in my stomach.... After lunch, we were treated to a free serving to ICEWINE after the ICEWINE Demonstration. The Icewine tasted fabulous, but we didn't buy back to Singapore for fear of breaking the bottle... We regretted not buying it though, as we couldn't find it at the airport....

The next stop was SCHAUFFHAUSEN's THUNDERING RHINE FALLS.... very majestic! We took lots of pictures there.... and Daddy & I kissed in front of the Thundering Rhine Falls whilst posing for a photo.... :) Our journey for that day ended in Lucerne.....

SWITZERLAND - LUCERNE We stayed 2 nights in Lucerne. A quiet town but we enjoyed every moment of peace there... especially the swans/birds feeding session with the entire tour group... we even took videos to capture those wonderful moments....

Places we visited in Lucerne included The Famous Chapel Bridge, Bucherer, Lion Monument etc etc... and we did lots of shopping there.... totally relaxed and recharged...

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves soooo much during the entire trip... visited many places, understood various cultures, histories, spent quality family time, built snowmen, shopping, savouring delicious food and last but not least, enjoyed the super cold weather with so much snow around including snowflakes falling on us.... lovely experience!

It was truly a memorable experience and we are so so looking forward to our next trip....