July posting before August comes

Whoa, I have left this blog space for far too long.  Here I will manage some quick posts before time flies away again, with "cheats" of backdated postings.
As usual I blame my heavy workload, but still no excuse, this is my gratitude diary and how can I have not been filling this up right?
So here's a quick post.  My dear hubby J, went to Sandakan with his mom and his 3 elderly aunties, to visit his cousin there.  So, left alone with 3 kids, I went to my mom's to spend a night.  And woke up in the morning to the kids requesting for an early morning playground session.
Here is Baby Xin in action (2.5 years old).

Baby Xin on the seesaw with Yuan, at Grandma's playground

Who was having the Happy Time?

Yuan and Wei's essay tuition teacher requested their class to be cancelled during the past school holidays, to be replaced later.  I forgot about this, and found out that there was a tuition class today, which was not the usual day.
Me: Why is there a tuition class today?
Yuan: Because during the school holidays, we were having a happy time. But, actually, I don't know who was having the happy time, us or the teacher.
Me: (speechless)

Starting Young

Dr Peter Yee created the SUCCESS boardgame, which is a game on financial management as well as the other aspects of life. It is different from Rich Dad's boardgame 101 by Kiyosaki, because Kiyosaki's only focuses on financial aspects.
Dr Peter Yee was generous to give away a boardgame each to his past students, and even organized a session to teach us how to play the boardgame.  I took Wei along to learn the game.  After an hour, we got the hang of it.  It will take many hours to play, to reach all the goals of the game.

Wei listening to Peter Yee, photo courtesy of Nadira Noor

Kuching Work Trip

This time work commitment has taken me to Kuching for 3 days.  I am grateful that part of my work involves volunteer work to help out a good cause, the Race Against Time 2012 which is a 5-km and 7-km run to raise awareness for organ donation.
We woke up at 5am today for preparations of the run, which would flag off at 6.45am.

Starting and Finish Line

Besides organizing the t-shirt and bibs hand out yesterday, this morning we were in charged of handing certificates of completion, caps and water bottles to all who completes.
Here's the cap we got as a souvenir.

An organ donation is a gift of life

Mother's Day 2012

While we didn't do anything special for Mother's Day,  Wei and Yuan wanted to cheer up a normal day through a little activity.  They created a Mother's Day Treasure Hunt for me.

I was very gratified to see that Yuan had created all the clue rhymes where I am supposed to hunt for paper eggs, and Wei just helped with the sign and graphics.

The Clues

1. To start, find a room wher you bake tarts.
2. Find a place where families sit together, and turn on a machine that can tell you the weather.
3. Find a place where a blue sofa is there, it's very unusual, and the egg is just there.
4. Find a place where there's lots of toys, the room has three beds, but there's only one boy.
5. Find egg #4 underneath the toys

Egg # 4 says: Find a place where there is an X, it's nice over there and the....
underneath the toys there was another strip of paper that says .....comfort is max.

So the last clue was "Find a place where there is an X, it's nice over there and the comfort is max.

And at the head of my bed, there was a paper sign:  "Happy Mother's Day!."

My carnations which Yuan got from school

A Haircut on Saturday

Baby Xin is a such an easy baby for the hairdresser to do his work.  She obliged to various instructions without question, like "Look down" or "Close your eyes".  The whole job took less than 10 minutes.

The Best Things in Life are In Contentment

This is a very common view from my own balcony and often we are just too busy, we failed to appreciate what is before our very own eyes.  In our quest for a better life in future, let us remember to show gratitude to what we have, for the best things in life, are very often already with us.