When Daddy bought Estee last year, the gadget was more like a toy for Daddy and Cheryl: Daddy loves the games that he could download, well, C too. And Cheryl loves the movies: Charlie and Lola being one of them amongst others.

So I was on a mission literally to hunt for a proper cover. I got this in the mail this evening!

The covers I previously were using didn't come with a stand and every time C wanted to watch her movies, she had to hold the gadget in her hands. Now, she can have the phone on the desk top. :) Nice!

妈妈每天都准备我们喜欢吃的食物。

有我喜欢吃的三文治也有我喜欢喝的牛奶。

有爸爸喜欢吃的炒饭也有他喜欢喝的咖啡。

有姐姐 喜欢吃的香肠也有她欢喝的橙汁。

我们都喜欢吃妈妈 准备 的食物。

C is definitely more fluent. :)

On very good nights, where C does not have to worry about homework, we try to do something different. 

C received this junior Scrabble set on her birthday and it was put to good use when Daddy and her played a game or two.

We should do this more often. :)

After like a wait of 2 weeks, C's backpack arrived in the mail today! She has been complaining that her messenger bag hurt her shoulders hence I decided to get her something more friendly. The good thing is, it is large and spacious enough for her A4 folder and her sweater and snack box.

C did her chores today!

Apparently, Ms Novelle had hurt her back and is now walking with a limp. C was concerned and agreed with Daddy that she should make her teacher a Get Well card.

She made use of her paper-cutting skills and got the card done in no time.

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When we were kids, Grand Mummy made these for each of us and there were four of us. :)

When C was born, Grand Mummy made it a point to ask me for measurements to C's cot mattress and she handed me several cot sheets. She has also included pillow and bolster cases. Then she made a quilt blanket for her grandchild.

Grand Mummy insisted that C got her own quilt blanket because she said it was tradition. When C was older, she made another piece of quilt blanket for her and C uses the handmade blanket till this day. :)

The colourful square pieces stitched together brought back fond memories of the blanket I used to own when I was younger. I can still recall how worn out the blanket was and even though it was torn in many places, I still wouldn't bear to throw it away. Some how, just holding the blanket made sleep come a little easier.

Several days ago, I received an email and thought we should be a part of the "Make it Green" initiative.

This German team's primary aim is to reduce our carbon footprint. The Internet is so widely used these days, it is not surprising that a blog with as many as 15 000 visits a month has a carbon dioxide emission of 8LB yearly.

To neutralise this, the team has created buttons "My blog is carbon neutral" so that we can show that we care for our Mother Earth. Just how do they plan to carry out this task? Well, they are planting trees incooperation with the Arbor Day Foundation in Plumas National Forest in Northern California. And we can do our part by supporting this cause. They will plant a tree for every participating blog.

So don't hesitate any longer. Do our part. We only have 1 Earth and it's up to us to do all that we can. 

Just some of the buttons you can choose from to include on your blog:

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Today is Earth Day and we are all decked out in green. :)

Okay, on a more serious note. I learned something shocking last week and though a week has past, the message hadn't been forgotten.



We always thought that we could save Gaia by simply "Reusing", "Reducing" and "Recycling" and that Mother Earth's greatest enemies were the automobiles and the factories we have on the roads and in our countries. How wrong we were!

I am seriously considering going meatless (at least once a week) to do my part. :)

A great piece of craft from school!

It was very nicely done!Cheryl knows her continents now and as I was uploading the picture, she was pointing to the different continents and telling me what they are.

I almost forgot that C has this set of worksheets. I printed them so long ago, I had clearly forgotten about them until I was doing some packing this evening.

Didn't know C would be so enthusiastic about revising her short vowels. 

Or doing reading of simple and short sentences. :)

Our princess eats this now.

C isn't fond of greens. In the past, it was just broccoli and carrots. Then she moved on to corn and spinach and chai xin. She tried this bitter fruit before but didn't fancy it. I reintroduced the dish to her on several occasion with little success as well. However, I have this habit of cutting up her food into small pieces and I guess, eating new food in small amounts does help.

Way to go, Spark! Now we need to get Daddy to eat this as well. Hee.

About once a month, my workplace gets us to do some interesting stuff in the afternoon. The last time, I signed up for a handicraft session and this time, yes, I passed the sweating-outdoors for smoothies making. 

This was organised by the vegetarian society committee and the guests who came to conduct the workshop were rather reputable fellows. They had the President of the Singapore Vegetarian Society come down and they brought with them a lot of ingredients.

After a short briefing about how inefficient eating meat is: I learned to my horror that to produce 1 kg of beef, we need to feed the cows 10 kg of food! Amongst others, more than 50% of the corn and oats grown in the US is fed to livestock, not to people. Then there is all the "hidden" energy that we exhaust just to get the meat on our table. So the question is, why don't we just skip all the many steps and just eat the food directly from the earth? Of course, the larger and definitely more important message is "Save the Earth!" as we are really killing Mother Earth.

Pretty scary stuff.

Anyways, the briefing was soon over and we headed into the kitchen where there were several stations, each with different ingredients.

I picked a vegetable smoothies recipe.

 After a quick demo, we had ourselves a passion fruit smoothies.

Nice stuff! Then we went to our stations and started with the cutting and blending. It was just that simple. really ripe fruits, vegetables, nuts if you want to add them and a blender.

There! 

I am going to list some recipes:

1) Passion (Delicious!)

- 1 large mango

- 3 passion fruits

- 2 limes (whole with skin and seeds)

- 1 tablespoon of pre-soaked almonds

- 1 tablespoon of cashew 

- 1 tablespoon of wolf berries

2) Pineapple (Delicious)

- 1 large mango

- 1/4 or more pineapple

- 2 limes (whole with skin and seeds)

- 1 tablespoon of pre-soaked almonds

- 1 tablespoon of cashew 

- some mint leaves

- 3 bananas

3) Sour plump (Super delicious)

- 1/4 large papaya

- 1/4 or more pineapple

- 2 limes (whole with skin and seeds)

- 1 tablespoon of pre-soaked flaxseed

- 1 tablespoon of wolf berries

- 1 sour plum

- 3 bananas

4) Flower (Nice)

- 1 large mango

- 1/4 or more pineapple 

- 1/4 large papaya

- some mint leaves

- 2 ginger chopped flowers

- 3 bananas

5) Dragon (Not too bad)

- 1 large mango

- 1/2 dragon fruit

- 2 limes (whole with skin and seeds)

- 1 tablespoon of pre-soaked almonds

- 1 tablespoon of cashew

- 3 bananas

6) Broccoli (Delicious)

- 1 large mango

- 2 limes (whole with skin and seeds)

- 2 large oranges

- 1 apple

7) Kale (Acquired taste)

- 1/4 or more pineapple

- 2 limes (whole with skin and seeds)

- 1 cubic ginger

- 4 leaves of kale

8) Romaine (Nice)

- 1 large mango

- 1 apple

- 1/4 large papaya

- 5 soaked dates (seeds removed)

- 2 limes (whole with skin and seeds)

- 2 head romaine lettuce

9) Chocolate-mint milkshake (Nice)

- 1/4 coconut

- 2 tablespoons pre-soaked almonds

- 2 tablespoons of cashew

- 8 soaked dates (seeds removed)

- 3 tablespoons brown rice powder

- 1 tablespoon soy powder

- 3 or more tablespoons carob

- some mint leaves

- banana and mangoes if necessary

10) Berries milkshake (Delicious)

- 1 mango

- 1 avocado

- 4 tablespoons pre-soaked almonds

- 4 tablespoons of cashew

- 5 soaked dates (seeds removed)

- 3 tablespoons brown rice powder

- 1 box blue berries

- banana and mangoes if necessary

11) Vanilla milkshake (Delicious)

- 1/4 coconut

- 4 tablespoons pre-soaked almonds

- 4 tablespoons of cashew

- 5 soaked dates (seeds removed)

- 1 avocado

- 1 vanilla essence

Try it and share with me if you like them as much as I did! :)

Writing sentences in English and counting has become a daily thing for C.

This evening, as C did her English homework, we decided to do things a little differently. Previously, she had always read the sentences out aloud before writing them down in her exercise book. This time round after her reading, I removed her list of sentences and read out very slowly the words and C would spell the words she heard.

Phonics is great!

After her writing, we did Math. She easily picked out the largest number as instructed and I learned that this was how it was done.

First, she looked at the tens. If they were the same, she moved on to examine the ones and quite effortlessly, her Math homework was done. :)

C is usually reluctant to show us how she has progressed with her piano playing. We may coax but she hardly gives in to our requests. Lately, I have been reminding her to practise and since we started on our list of "dones", she has been more forthcoming with her playing.

This evening, we asked that she play a little something for us and she did.


See that shrug at the end? Ha ha!

Teacher Sophia, C's piano teacher, commented that she has improved tremendously and is ready now for a longer session with her. :) Excellent news actually!

Counting till 100 is a breeze for C now and her regular Math practices from school also reinforce these numbers. In the past, I tried to teach C to read time but the reading of the minutes on an analogue clock proved to be quite an uphill task because it was not easy to add in the multiples of 5.

So we got her a digital watch instead. 

She took forever to choose because there were so many different ones and then, initially, she was rather reluctant to get herself a digital watch and preferred an analogue one over this. But after she realised she could read the numbers off this one, she was very pleased.

These days, she has this watch on her all the time and is ever so often hurrying me with, "Mummy, it's ........ (Fill in the time)! We are late!" Well, she also went to Ms Novelle, her teacher in school and thanked her for teaching C numbers because now, "I can tell time."

C's latest art piece from her art class.

She was pleased with her efforts. Well, we liked it as well. :)

C did something new this evening!

She likes the scissors and cut out little pieces of paper so this evening, we decided to do a little something special. 

A little folding, some snipping...

Then...

Viola!

C returned from school with another Mandarin book she was reading. 

Two evenings ago, while we were doing some craft, she suddenly blurted out the sentence, "人人看了我的画，都讲我是一名小画家。" And I was rather amused because I thought she meant her art pieces.  

Then, when I saw the book, I realised why she said what she said. Daddy too, flashed a grin when he heard her. :)

Yes, we have signed ourselves up for the Cold Storage Kids' Run 2010!

Today was Easter Sunday and we were in church earlier than usual because the children had a performance coming up during the 9 and 11 am service. Since the beginning of the year, the girls were enrolled in the newly established Children's Choir and they had been training every Sunday for close to 3 months, all for today's performance. 

The children were doing their sound check at 830 in the morning and soon after that was done, the 9 am service commenced.

Part of their performance

After their performance, the children were given a little goodies bag. Really sweet of their teacher. :)