The new school (DTS) just started this week! All the families are here. They come from all over the world – Denmark, New Zealand, Holland, Singapore (YES! another couple from Singapore!) and Switzerland.

But, we're not staffing in the classrooms this term. Instead James is the main lunch cook and I'm staying home with Sophie until baby comes. He has to go in early in the morning to the kitchen at 8/9am to cook for 60 ppl everyday. He also does one dinner per week. I do odd jobs around like rearranging the library (which I LOVE!) and other random stuff.

During the break, James was on a roll and experimenting with different recipes. He made Nasi Lemak and made an amazing sambal sotong (squid) to go with it. Shiok!!!

He's been doing a great job for lunches the past few days and looks like he's gonna introduce more asian food and ingredients into the kitchen. He's been sneaking lotsa garlic into the soups too. YUMS, plus it keeps the colds away!

We’re finally doing something!

We’ve set up the cot in our bedroom and washed all of baby’s clothes.

I tried to pack the maternity bag for the hospital but realized that I still need most of the stuff now e.g. sweater, slippers, clothes so I think we’ll just dump that in later. We’re not far from the hospital anyway. It’s only a 10 mins drive from the base into town so if we forget anything we can always get someone on the base to bring it for us.

Almost there! Exactly one more month since Baby No. 2 is due on 25 August!! I really can't believe how time has passed. Our lives are going to change in a couple of weeks. I still cannot imagine having another baby! Sophie's such an amazing kid being who she is and I cannot imagine having another one!

I'm keeping well, thank God for that. A few sleepless nights, bit of backache, a bit more sleepy during the day but all part and parcel of the last stretch…

Happy Anniversary to us!

We’ve been married 6 years. It doesn’t seem that long but we’ve done SO MUCH the past 6 years! We’ve lived with James’ parents, got our own place, moved out, started two of our own businesses, had Sophie, traveled lots, shut down one business and sold another, came to NZ to do a school, stayed on as staff, became full time missionaries, rented out our home, stayed on to staff two more schools, and now we’re having baby No. 2.

It’s been exciting. James really pushes me to the edge sometimes but without him, I wouldn’t have moved! ? I’m really thankful to have him in my life. We’re SO different but yet because we love each other and like (SO IMPT!) each other so much that it actually works! Of course, there are times when we drive each other crazy (erm, not in a good way) but over 6 years, we’ve really learnt to appreciate each other’s idiosyncrasies and thank God that we’re not the same.

God has been good to us as a family and we’ve been tremendously blessed in SO MANY ways. We give thanks for 6 good years and are looking forward to many more ahead.

So what did we do on our anniversary?

Over the weekend, we traveled around the area. On Saturday, we drove 40 mins to Cambridge, a little quaint town nearby to check out the shops and have tea. On Sunday, we drove 30 mins to Tirau, a small little touristy town with little cafes and tourist shops to have brunch and visited the op shops and Sunday market. Yes, a little retail and café therapy for the city people. ? Turned out that Sophie LOVED the antique shops! Just like us. Was a bit terrifying trying to keep her hands off stuff but she learnt eventually to ask before touching…

P/s: Our hard disk just kaput on us. Actually a lot of our equipment have been kaputing on us. Seems like most things are only meant to last 1 year. These days it's so hard to get things that last forever! Everything is use and throw. Sigh. Anyways so my photos are hopefully still in there somewhere so no blogging with pictures for a while till James managed to get it back. So sad ah….

Since we returned, we've been going to a playgroup at church on Monday mornings. It's called Monsters! It's a bit like our church's mums group back home.

We are only a very small church with about 50-60 people on a regular Sunday plus 10-20 kids. So, our very creative Pastor's wife Stace plans most of these gatherings. The best part about this playgroup is that most of the people that come are not from the church! What amazing place for outreach and just hanging out with people from the community. It's not just for mums and kids, dads that are free also come along!

This week we had a special theme party called Rainbow Monday. Sophie won the best dressed award! Haha she looked most like a rainbow thanks to the top that Mama sent last week. She didn't even realise what was going on and why she got a prize. She was too busy decorating cookies, eating rainbow fruit and candy sticks and playing!

It was really great fun. I'm so thankful for the effort that Stace and the others put in to make it such a wonderful time for the kids!

Recently I've had many compliments on how good my skin looks. Seriously, I'm not really big on commenting on my own looks n stuff but I thought this might make a good post.

I think part of the reason is the glow that comes with pregnancy (YAY! More reason to have babies!) and part of it is just good genes (Dad's skin is great!). I've never had big problems with pimples and acne even though I'm terrible with all the cleansing, toning and moisturising.

However, I've always been plagued with eczema since I was a kid. I spent most of my teenage life with two patches on my face because I started wearing glasses and somehow it reacted with my face. Recently, it attacked the area around my eyes. Those who saw me back home probably saw how bad it got! Red, itchy and patchy!

I started to try all sorts of stuff, asked around a bit and realised there are so many Singapore kids that are plagued with eczema and allergies! Poor things, I can totally identify!

Then I chanced upon a Singaporean website selling organic products for eczema prone babies on Angie's website (Angie's website is my constant reference for homeschooling references and ideas) called Bellygoods. So, I decided to contact them and give it a try! They had products for adults as well. Val from Bellygoods was really sweet and posted me a sample of Sun*Si'Belle Organic Triple Action Moisturizer with SPF 30+. I needed a moisturizer and sunblock that did not react with my skin while allowing the eczema to heal.

The product is not as smooth as the Biotherm moisturiser that I normally use but it is also a sunblock so it kinda coats the skin and makes it look a little pale. Once I dust some face powder over it, it's great. Another plus factor is that it helps to even out my skin tone so my skin actually looks almost flawless without foundation! Woopee!

After using it for a month or so, the eczema died down. Of course in addition, I've used some eczema cream and Avene spray to reduce the itch before I put on the moisturizer.

I've not used the other products from Bellygoods but I'm sure it's just as good. I think I might get the baby products when baby arrives. The best part is that Val also sells samples so you can try it before you buy the actual product which can be rather costly. But totally worth it in my opinion!

The weather has been great the past few days. It's still cold at 4-15 degrees but lots of sunshine instead of rain!

We celebrated Jed's 6th birthday at the base playground and went to Hamilton with the Freestones over the weekend.

We've dried up all our PlayDoh stuff after frequent playing over the past year and I finally allowed Sophie to mix all the colours up and of course, it looks awful!

So I finally decided to junk all of them and MAKE OUR OWN!

The recipe looked really easy but it took a lot more time than I thought. But the results were AMAZING! The texture is even better than PlayDoh! We love it!

Got this recipe from the Freestones:
(To be cooked in microwave)

1 cup of water
1 cup of flour
2 tsp tartar
1 tbsp oil
1/2 cup salt

1. Cook for 1 min. Stir.
2. Cook for 30 seconds more, or until the dough rolls up into a ball nicely. (I found that it took at least 3-4 minutes more of cooking for our microwave)
3. Add food colouring (Sophie's fav part! It's fun!)

Now we've got 3 good blobs of playdough and it hardly cost us anything! PlayDoh is just too expensive to upkeep.

Sophie also inherited our tiny wooden chopping board (YA! Can't imagine how we used this tiny chopping board over the year. We finally got ourselves another bigger one for this year.) and I got her a rolling pin from Melissa and Doug (love their stuff).

Love how happy she is!