Guess what we saw at the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve today?

What a treat!

Read more about them here.

It’s the last day of 2009! It’s been an awesome year of doing new things. There has been some difficult moments too but it has strengthened us and grown us. Thank you for being part of our journey.

Here’s a summary of our year in photos on flickr.

Have a wonderful new year ahead!!

Took a bus to visit Lyttelton, a historical harbour. It’s a really pretty town by the sea on a hill.

The best part of the trip was taking a cruise around the harbour to watch Hector Dolphins – world’s rarest and smallest dolphins. So cute!! I really like dolphins so it was such a treat! Sophie was squealing with joy when she spotted some too. Will put some videos up when I have time.

I saw a recipe in Women’s Weekly (NZ) and I thot it’ll be fun to make these cookies with Sophie. Well, ours didn’t turn out like the ones in the pictures, sigh, yet again. But but they tasted oh so good and the second batch was prettier than the first. That’s the thing about baking, it gets better and better!

It’s fun roping Sophie in to help.

First, we need to wash the cookie cutters! It’s so hard to find cookie cutters in these parts. Finally I found cheapo ones at the $2 shop and they are great! It’s plastic so I don’t have to worry about Sophie cutting her fingers.

Next make the dough. Soph helped to pour in the stuff but we didn’t take photos coz it’s always pretty messy and sticky to bring out the camera.

And then the fun part, cutting the cookies. Then adding the chocolate sprinkles. Of course she tried at every point to taste .

Finally we all eat the cookies and give some away to our favourite friends. I love that part about baking, giving away some. So, we’ve stopped buying store cookies and desserts for a while and are happy making our own. I even bought a little red cookie jar to store the cookies. No country kitchen is complete without a cookie jar!

These are really the moments to treasure.

Sophie is only 3 now but the past 3 years spent with her has been amazing. I’m truly glad that neither James or I have missed a lot of it at all. Her personality is blooming and very infectious. She’s more gregarious than ever and her emotions are so free (good n bad here ). She knows what she wants and it really take a lot to put her in her place without squashing her 101 ideas in her tiny little head. Ooo but what a joy to hear her thoughts.

I know I’m bias as every parent is, to say that I think that Soph is the most amazing 3 year old I know and she definitely has the most Krisflyer air miles.

P/s The year is coming to an end and I’m doing a lot of reflecting so I’m taking the opp to blog all I can before we return to expensive internet on the base!

We’ve been having a great time hanging out with the Chiangs. They just got married a few weeks ago and are here on their honeymoon!

Sophie really loves her godma and I think she’s really sad that godma and Uncle Jasper are leaving tomorrow.

We took a bus to New Brighton Pier for some fishing and play on the beach. The bus services in Christchurch are pretty sophisticated so we could get to where we wanted to pretty easily. The ride took about 20 mins.

Sophie loves watching her dad fish and checking out everyone else’s buckets of crabs. She gets real excited when someone reels in fish. But it wasn’t a great day for fishing so no one caught much, only crabs.

When we got bored of watching Daddy fish, we went to the beach to play with sand and checked out the surfer dudes. It’s a cool surf area.

We spent Christmas Day at the gardens.

Dearest Sophie,

Here’s you in Christchurch, NZ enjoying a fluffy (babycino – a cup of hot milk that is fluffed up and looks all grown up n fancy) at Robert Harris, living the life!

We really enjoy travelling and exploring with you little one. During this trip, we’ve really stretched your ability to just go with the flow – breakfast at 10, lunch at 3, nap at 6pm, dinner at 9pm…….. and to top it, bedtime at 12midnite after a movie in bed. Arghs!

Thank you for entertaining us with all your funny ideas and being the life of the family. We love you so much and we pray that joy will always bubble in you.

Love
Mummy

P/s: Sophie’s dropped her day nap a few weeks ago and is now sleeping 7.30pm – 7.30am. Instead of a nap, she has some quiet time on the bed. She finds that super exciting coz it’s something different. I take that opportunity to take a nap and she’s not allowed to disturb me! Ha! She tries lah, maybe for like 30 mins. However, we find that once a week or so, she still needs a day nap to get thru the day.

High St, Poplar St, Gethsemane Gardens, Noak’s Ark, beach at Sumner, dinner at The Boulevard on Oxford Terrace and finally, a church choir recital at Christchurch Cathedral kinda summed up our Christmas Eve.

"I want peas!"

"What peas?"

"Peas!"

……

Oh… peas. Edamame. They are boiled soya beans. She finished the entire packet on her own.

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for the longest time. Christmas is a great time to gift children with bibles.

I’ve been looking for a bible for Sophie. We started with The Rhyme Bible Storybook (For Toddlers). It served us really well. It has 4 lines per page and it rhymes! Really a joy to read. Many times Sophie memorized the stories and read it back to me. But funny how she doesn’t like some stories and she will choose her fav. Guess what are her favs? Her top three:The parable of the sower (can’t figure why), birth of Jesus (coz got baby), Jonah (always a good story to teach her about obedience! I think she likes it coz of big fish). Oh… and she likes the story about the boy with 5 loaves and 2 fish (coz got little boy who gave to Jesus).

But she’s now 3 and for non-biblical books, she’s into long stories so I figured she can do that for the bible too. My ideal children’s bible is the NIV in full form with pictures for every chapter but of course it’ll be too big a book! Sigh…

I finally found one that I like a lot. It’s the Read & Know Bible (Publisher – Lion UK). It’s meant for older kids I think. But it’s cool because it has lots of details that toddler bibles do not have and the illustrations is more realistic. Yet it is pretty readable for a 3-4 year old who like books. It’s got mini bible encyclopedia pages with pictures of crops in bible times, the temple, etc. It really helps to open Sophie’s eyes to biblical times. It’s a huge jump from The Rhyme Bible but so far she loves it coz she is really into details and asks far too many questions. But most times it’s too much to read so I skim and just let her look at the pictures. Sometimes when I’m lazy, I switch back to The Rhyme Bible and it is interesting to note how she can link the stories between the two books. Oh yes and how cool that the author’s name is also Sophie.

The best part about this bible is that I learn a lot too and it tells a lot about the character of God through the narration. It doesn’t just tell a story but it gives you an idea about how God feels too and it’s pretty accurate. We’ve had this book for about a month now and I think Sophie’s understanding of who God is is actually growing!

Her godparents gave her the Sprout Bible which coincidentally I bought her when she was a wee baby just coz I was at SKS and I can’t resist buying books at SKS. But I didn’t bring it with us to NZ coz we just had too many things. So it was great when it came thru the mail for her birthday! I really like this one too because the stories are short, illustrations are GREAT and it has reflection questions for the kids at the end of every story. Sophie is at the age where she does think about these things and I find the questions very effective to get her to think deeper. We brought it with us to Christchurch. (Thank you godpa n godma! Great buy!)