Dressing up is a big thing here. They sell kids' costumes like fairy, princess, batman, superman, nurse etc everywhere. It's pretty affordable as well.

Sophie LOVES dressing up. I've set aside a big bag for all her dress up things – scraps that I find everywhere e.g scarfs, bags, necklaces etc. When her friends come over, they have a ball! Sometimes the boys end up wearing her shoes too!

Sophie made a new friend on this school. Her name is Talya and she's 9. Talya came over last week and they took turns to dress up and perform to crazy songs that they make up. Super funny!

Here's Sophie in her Indian costume that her grandaunt bought for her, my new handbag and her Uggs. Totally her own creation. Doing an Indian dance.

Sophie stopped drawing for a bit and then all of a sudden started picking up the pens and drawing again. And I'm amazed that her ability to control and draw has just improved heaps over this time! Kids' drawings are amazing and I must make it a point to record this.

The picture on the left is of the A-frame (our communal dining hall. Here's a real picture of it.). She's drawn an apple tree on the left and orange tree on the right and someone on a ladder climbing the orange tree.

The picture on the right is the princess castle and she's drawn a princess on a horse with a golden ball. She was trying to copy the cover of a book called Princess Fairy.

Once a week, we try to go down to town for tea as a family. Just to chill and hang out.

Sophie's very happy with her fluffy/baby chino and her cookie at Robert Harris, a coffee joint in town.

James cooks lunch everyday for the base. Thought I'll get a picture of a normal lunch on the base. We had pizza bread last week.

One satisfied customer!

Sophie has two favorite soft toys that sleep with her – Windy, a teddy bear which we got from Auckland on the way back to Singapore the first time and Kitty Kitten, a really soft kitten that I got for her when we came back from Vanuatu the second time. I thought she did so well in Vanuatu that she deserved a present. They have been significant companions for her marking different milestones in her life.

But on our last trip home, we lost Kitty in Bintan! ARGH! She (Sophie, not Kitty ) fell asleep on the bus and we hurried down the bus, didn't realise that we left it on the bus until much later! She grieved for a night and was totally fine after that. She never really asked for another but James and I were distraught because it was such a nice stuff toy and we knew it meant so much to her.

My mum and dad wanted to buy her one but we were quite determined to get the same one back here in NZ.

When we returned, James looked EVERYWHERE. We got it from Warehouse the last time and we looked in every Warehouse around the area – Cambridge, Hamilton, Matamata etc… but couldn't find.

Until last Sat………………… James found it in a bin of stuff toys in another Warehouse at Hamilton! He dug and dug, almost gave up and then found a similar one (the colour is slightly different but everything else is the same)! Sophie was SO HAPPY!!!!!!!

To me, it just showed the love of the father…. how far he would go….. to find what his child loves.

The bible says in Luke 11:10-13

"For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

Ooo the love of the Father….

Sophie loves dancing so I signed her up for a weekly dance class in town.

It's held in the same venue as our church and her teacher is our pastor's wife, Stac! Her sister, Tammy, runs the dance school. It's a serious dance school for jazz and hip hop for the older kids and adults but they started a preschool class (mostly 4 yr olds) this term. The aim is for children to gain performance confidence and learn to listen and follow instructions. They learn things like expressing themselves (Sophie likes this coz she gets to make funny faces), movement and tempo. Very cool.

It's only for 1/2 an hr but it's so good for the kiddos coz they need to be fast, follow and learn to be independent. Parents can watch from a window that can only look in.

I'm really thankful for this outlet for our little entertainer.

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!

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!

Last week, we went to visit the much talked about NZ Fieldays (about an hr's drive from where we are) – it's Australasia's definitive agri-business exhibition! The exhibition is to the local farmers what the IT expo is to Singaporeans. Where everyone goes to, whether or not you're into IT and where the gadget lovers gather once a year.

Most of the expo would have been boring to city people like us e.g. tractors, milking machines, tools and stuff. But the atmosphere was amazing! I've never seen so many Kiwis gathered at one place before! It's like the whole of NZ was there! Most times when you drive along NZ roads, all you see are cows, horses or sheep so it was pretty unusual to see so many cars and people. Even got traffic jam!

Sophie got to ride on a real huge farm tractor, ride on kid sized tractors, see horses and other farm animals (we even saw a real highland cattle, not cut up in the supermarket! It was HUGE!), eat an ice cream, sample NZ's latest gourmet food and beverages (my fav part!) etc…

In a world where many are growing up without fathers or absent fathers, Sophie is most blessed to have James as her Daddy!!!!!!!!

Happy Father's Day dear one! You are so precious to the both of us and we're SO glad you've come home just in time so we can celebrate you!

Mama and Yeye, thank you for the Strawberry Shortcake books! Sophie likes them VERY MUCH. She's been reading them everyday.

Sophie is really into Strawberry Shortcake, princesses, dress ups, make up, jewellery and being Cinderella at the moment. I donno how many times we've had to act out the Cinderella scene where she drops her shoe and the prince asks if the shoe belongs to her and they live happily ever after. Btw, she's dropped her shoe on purpose in public many times so that we can reenact this scene! It's super funny!!

She's also been asking me to get her a ballerina outfit! I'm starting to get all influenced and attracted to fairy costumes and frilly frilly things I see on Trademe (an ebay equivalent here)!

Oh my! Oh my! Never thought we'll get here – the day when pink is the only colour on earth.

Thank God she's still wearing what I choose for her to some extent. (Love the tights that the Sept Mums got for Soph! Thanks girls!)