Here’s a better picture of the jello aquarium "cake" I made for Sophie. Real simple and quite a winner with the kids!

Here’s a picture of the party goodies.

We want to thank all our friends who came to the party and for all the lovely cards and presents. We feel so blessed by you. We also want to thank Mama, Yeye, Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie Brenda, Auntie Steph for all the presents that you sent all the way to the ends of the earth here in NZ. Thank you everyone else for all your birthday greetings. We miss all those at home very much and wished we could have celebrated with you too. We thank God for all of you and thank you for thinking of us.

Con’t….

We uploaded more pictures… This was Sophie’s birthday morning. We slipped her present into her room the night before after she slept so that she could see the huge present in the morning!

She was so happy!

We got her an ELC sizzling kitchen set. Brand new. I attempted to get a second hand kitchen set on Trademe (NZ’s ebay equivalent) but didn’t find one that we liked. All the Little Tikes and their likes still cost quite a bit even second hand. We needed a set that can survive many friends coming over regularly. Anyways, after some research, I then found out that ELC sells online in NZ! Cool beans. Hee hee… very happy… next time can just buy toys online from ELC!

Sophie turns 3 today!

We had a party for her and invited all our friends from the school. It was a bit tight in the house but that’s what we love most, having a tight party! It kinda reminded us of our home back in Singapore and how we used to have parties and squeeze everyone in.

For the first time ever, I attempted to bake and make stuff for a party! Gin n I made muffins with Sophie and Evan yesterday. Turned out really well and so simple! I also made a jello "cake" using instant jello and made it look like an aquarium with gummies and marshmallows!

Sophie is at the age where she can help out in so many ways. She was quite happy packing all the goody bags for her friends. We put a pack of crisps, a gummy pack, a bubble bottle and a fruit bar. Turned out the bubble bottles were a hit! After dinner, the kids were running around blowing bubbles.

Oh yes! As of tonight, Sophie is now sleeping on a single bed on her own. We transited her from her travelling cot into the bed. Got her new girly bedsheets with flowers and butterflies. Big girl now!

I really like this picture.

Sophie’s really into being a doctor/nurse these days. She’s got this book called Nurse Nancy (one of the Golden books) and she loves it! She’s been making us read it every day! I’ve had to hide the book so that we can read other books. Anyway that explains the bandages on her head. I got her a box of kiddy plasters from the $2 shop in town. She loves them! Gin got her a medical kit for her birthday. I think she’s gonna have so much fun.

I also love the way she hugs Eli. Reminds me of how I used to put my arm around my bro when we were kids when we had to take pictures. Always looked like I was strangling him.

Sophie’s really into making things. All she needs is paper, glue, a pair of kid’s scissors and she’s off!

I gave her an idea of making flowers, tore up the paper for her and she pasted it all by herself. She even drew the flowers on another piece of paper and stuck it on by herself. I didn’t even know she can draw flowers! Anyways, she refused to let me pull the collage apart from the drawing (I mean, it looks so funny stuck onto each other right?!?!). Oh wells…. do not hinder their creativity right? Yep yep, note to self.

Past few days she’s been making kites to play with and for her friends. I love the way she’s always thinking of giving things to her friends. Nice. She makes these kites on her own. I don’t even know where she gets the ideas from but it’s always so surprising to me when she announces what she’s making.

Yesterday she made a house for me. She tore up a triangle and joint it with a somewhat rectangle. She said, "Mummy, this is for your birthday because after my birthday is Evan’s birthday (true) and after Evan’s birthday is your birthday (TRUE!)." Aiyo so cute lah. I must have told her the sequence of our birthdays before but I didn’t expect her to remember! So sweet lah………..

The great thing about this particular YWAM base is that we try our best to involve the kids in all that we do. I’m finding myself leading quite a bit of the family events e.g games, intercession, worship etc. I’ve not really done these things before with children coz I used to work with youths more. It’s really quite different working with young children and some don’t even speak English well. But I’m really enjoying it – singing Who’s the King of the Jungle?, pretending to be able to play the guitar (hiak!) and being silly… secretly loving it!

Last week, we had class intercession and we made prayer posters (making collages of prayer items) for our outreach locations and had a time of popcorn prayer (one sentence prayer).

If anyone has more ideas of how to involve the families in prayer and worship, I’d really like to learn more! Pls email me!

We had quite a crazy day today.

In the morning, James caught an eel using a self-made eel trap and he made unagi! Check out the process on our flickr site. I’ve uploaded the pictures of the trap and stuff!

Later at night, he found a calf stranded by the river (later we found out that the calf was two days old and it had slipped down the slope towards the river when the mother cow gave birth to it. poor thing!). After dinner (we had a massive Chinese food feast at our home and invited some friends over), he went back with our friend Stuart to rescue the calf and brought it back! We got the farm next door to come over to collect the poor calf. The kids were kinda sad that they couldn’t keep it as a pet. Hiak!

What a day, what a day!

One of the things that God’s been working on us throughout this year has been our unity as a couple.

James and I have been raised pretty individualistic – he being the only child and me the dictator oldest child. What that really means is – almost always, we get our way! The past 5 years of marriage has been such a pruning process. Somehow I never realised how selfish and headstrong I was until I got married and the realization just got more apparent when I had Sophie!

But but… thanks to the grace of God, we’ve had pretty major breakthroughs this year.

One of the breakthroughs is that we produced our first newsletter together. We’ll be leading a team to Vanuatu on outreach in Oct and we really need our friends to pray for us.

If you’ll like a copy of the newsletter to know how you can keep us in prayer, pls let us know ya?