Pa (James’ dad) has many friends in China so we’ve been having meals after meals. Yesterday night we had two dinners! One of which was a wonderful home cooked meal. It was typical Chinese style entertaining – check out the number of dishes! 10!

This is the home of the son of an old family friend of my father in law. Now we have three generations of friendship. Sophie had so much fun playing with the two kids that she cried when we had to leave. I’m really glad that relationships are very important to her.

I feel a bit sad that in China, since the late 70s, each couple is only allowed to have one child. Must be so tough for some and yet most have gotten used to that and enjoy having only one precious child. On Sunday, I could see the fathers happily carrying their kids and holding hands with them, no matter girl or boy, and enjoying the time they had together. Very precious.

I loveeeee staying with my in laws. This was my lunch for today – garlic prawns, braised beef, stir fried veggies and cold crab!!!

I really miss the great outdoors. Sophie has been wanting to go to the playground but it’s really too hot. I think she misses running around. She’s really gotten a lot tougher… like almost muscular, something that we only realised when we got back and she seems heavier too. And her appetite has increased, always hungry. Oh and she’s very tanned too.

I really think children need to run and climb the whole day. Seriously. I’m not quite sure how to continue doing it here.

Anyways, the best we could do was to go swimming! So we did that today and hung out with our friends. Sorry no photos coz very lazy to take photos now that we’re home. I’ll try to do that more soon. Btw, this is a picture of us canoeing in Vanuatu, very shiok.

We’ve finished 3 months of school, 1 research paper, 7 hours of homework per week, 1 oral presentation and 1 exam! Woo hoo! We had our graduation last nite.

It’s been a great run. We really enjoyed the school and God has done tremendous things in our lives.

We have one more week of outreach preparation on the base and then we’re off to the lovely pacific island of Vanuatu on the 19th of April. We’ll be there for a whole month. We’ll be living on the YWAM base and working with the local churches to conduct marriage seminars and parenting courses. It’ll be quite an interesting outreach because our team has 3 couples and we have 6 children ranging from 1 – 12 years old between us! That really means 6 adults and 6 kids! Woo hoo! Sounds more like a family holiday than outreach. This is my very first time on a family outreach and I’m not very sure what to expect. But I’m sure it’ll be good.

Please do keep us in prayer.

Prayer requests

1. Effective teaching and outreach

2. Wisdom and Holy Spirit guidance

3. Sensitivity to the culture and ability to transend language (Languages: Bislama, English, French and over 100 local languages)

4. Love for the people

5. Health for all of us

I’m really looking forward to this. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a mission trip! The last one I did was a local outreach in Feb 06! It’s so cool to be able to do this with Sophie. I’m really really excited. I’m also looking forward to a bit of beach, sand and sea, without the cool chilly wind. Hiak hiak…

Over the weekend, our family was on weekend duty. What that meant was, we were part of a team to prepare dinner for the base as well as do all the clean up in the kitchen and main hall. There is a rotation for all the families and we only have to do it for two weekends throughout the lecture phase. It’s really not that frequent at all.

Last weekend, James and I decided that we would take the initiative to cook Chinese food! Most times it’s the school staff that will initiate the menu and we just help out in the preparation but this time, our school leader let us choose the menu. OF COURSE WE CHOSE RICE coz we only have rice once a week! Hahaha…

So together with 3 other girls, we cooked garlic oyster sauce chicken in the oven and stir-fried veggies served with rice. YUMS!

It was CRAZY! So stress! Never done it before. But my super husband is amazing. He never fails to surprise me with what he can do.

We followed a recipe book for the chicken. For the veggies, he just mixed a whole jar of black stuff that included oyster sauce and peanut butter (!). I had no idea what went into it because I was busy frying the veggies while he did the sauce. Oh… but so shiok to smell the fried garlic and onions, plus the smell of sesame oil that we took for granted back home. I loved doing the frying. I so miss that!

Well, it turned out to be a winner! We had great reviews, thank God! For us, we were just glad that it turned out edible! Hahaha…

P/s OH! Forgot to mention where Sophie was coz she is not allowed in the kitchen. We arranged with another family to babysit her and we would babysit their kids when it was their turn to cook. Worked out really well.

There’s a big problem that we have here – both of us don’t drive so we didn’t get a car. That makes us pretty much stuck on the base most of the time. There’s a weekly van run into town so we take turns to go. And on Sundays, the van also takes us to church.

What we’ve been doing sometimes is, we follow the van to town on Sun and instead of going to church, we spend some family time in town. It’s been really good for us. Last Sunday, we spent the morning at the cafe. Sophie had a little blueberry tart and her usual babycino with chocolate powder and a marshmallow by the side. That’s how they serve hot drinks here, with a little marshmallow by the side. Sweet.

She loved it and she’s been "upgraded" to sit on an adult chair, no need to sit on the high chair anymore.

We finally finished packing up the house last week and handed over the keys to our tenant today. I had mixed feelings the entire day – sad to say bye to people and our home that we’ve lived in for the past 4 years YET excited about our next step.

I was wondering how Sophie was feeling about the whole thing. She didn’t even ask about her missing cot as she went about in her room at Holland. She’s settled in very well in my in laws’ place btw. Then I realised she knew exactly what was going on! My MIL asked her if she knew where her things were and she said "It’s in your house!" a matter of factly! Nothing really fazzles this little one. She takes it in her stride. I really pray that she’ll be just a matter of factly about moving to NZ.

We really enjoy staying at our in laws the past few days. Everything is provided for – childcare, food, washing etc. So nice….. We could run our errands and not worry about Sophie. My MIL is back at school but Jean, their helper has been a GREAT help in caring for Sophie while we’re out.

So what did we do on our final weekend? James had a night out with the boys on Fri, I met Beks on Sat morning, my extended family came over to my parents’ for a gathering at lunch, my sis and I went shopping at Haji lane for her birthday outfit, I hung out with Serena, Chris n Nikki at night, came home to pack, went to church today, dropped by Joshua’s bday party to say bye to the cell, had lunch with my family, met tenant and handed over the house, dinner with my in laws and came home to complete our packing. Feel like this entire process has been very thereputic – helped me to flush out what is redundant and keep what is precious.

We have reduced what we need down to 2 large, I mean REALLY LARGE suitcases (1 for Sophie and I and the other for James and misc stuff), 1 cabin bag (mostly Sophie’s books), 2 backpacks (1 for James, 1 for me) and 1 play suitcase for Sophie. Ooooo and 1 box in case we are overweight, we have to junk that box. We’re praying that the SIA people will be kind. 

Day 7

It is our family tradition to have dinner as a family on Christmas eve. Things have not changed even after we got married. Tonight all three of us – Mum, Rach and I prepared dinner together. The only one missing was my bro and his family who lives in Brissy. I so look forward to the day that all of us can celebrate Christmas together again!

It’s starting to feel a bit more Christmasy around our home. I finally got down to planning a countdown for Sophie to help her understand the meaning of Christmas! Instead of a 24 days Advent calendar, I have the improvised quick fix one – 8 days! Hahaha! Better than nothing!

Day 1
We started Day 1 yesterday by fixing up our Christmas tree! Ok not we, just James and Sophie, I was busy taking pictures! Finally! Just 1 more week to Christmas! With all the boxes lying around, we had to dig out a space to put up the tree. One of our family traditions (er ok, we only have 1 so far… hiak!) is to buy a new Christmas ornament every year. We got this in Brisbane for this year.

Day 2
Today is Day 2. We got down to making Christmas cards, somewhat. All my grand plans of making different types of cards with Sophie turned into one big fingerpainting exercise. Oh wells!

 Prints for Christmas

The other thing we did was to set up a Nativity scene……….. er……… with our multi purpose Happyland Farm set! Wah hahahaha…. the Farmer is now Joseph and his wife is Mary. Pretty convenient huh? I handmade (Hahaha!) a star using origami paper and it really looks like a nativity scene. My original plan was to make the scene from scratch. Ya right. Maybe next year if I start now. But I love it. It sits next to the tree and it served as an excellent teaching tool for Sophie to learn about Christmas. She tried to put baby Jesus to bed.

Nativity scene next to Christmas tree

And finally, we try to read different versions of a Christmas story to Sophie every night – traditional, modern interpretations, the bible itself etc. Oh yes, and we’ve been playing Christmas songs all day. I bought a Veggie Tales Christmas soundtrack off iTunes yesterday – it’s ok, quite funny! She’s now able to sing Jingle Bells and Away in the Manger, sometimes she mixes up the lyrics from the different stanzas but it’s super nice to hear her sing them!

Join us for the countdown….

It’s been a while since I cooked for the family. On Monday I decided that I will attempt to cook again so we had chicken curry (thanks to Prima Taste!) and oyster sauce spinach with mushrooms. YUMS! Sophie had some curry too and she said "It’s not so spicy.".

Blowing out the candles. For more photos, look here.

We had a little lunch celebration at Sol Playground Cafe after church for Sophie and her church friends. Ally, Arya, Evan, Skyler, Summer, Kyla and even little Eli were all there! Even Minnie Mouse! I had an ideal in mind – that Sophie can invite one more friend with each increasing year for her birthday e.g. 2 friends when she turns 2. BUT as it turns out…….. nay, forget it, it’s so fun to have friends!

Having the party at the cafe was a great idea if I don’t say so myself! Hiak! Endless supply of great food (as opposed to catered buffet food), someone helping to pour the drinks, play area which I don’t have to clean up after!, super child friendly – no one bats an eye at kids running amok plus there’s a nursing room n changing room in the cafe itself!, free face/hand painting on Sundays (hee I planned it such that the timing coincided haha) etc… SUPER! Only problem was that they didn’t tell us earlier that there was a party after ours and we had to clear out by a certain time. But at least they were nice enough to offer us another table and helped us to move over.

This time round, Sophie was pretty much involved in the party planning. She choose the
- friends to invite
- theme (ok, truth? hee… i didn’t put Barney as a choice… HAHAHA. Sorry lah I’m growing fond of the purple guy BUT balloons, cake n party bags? That’s too much… Mickey still can.)
- goodies for the goody bag (I was really tempted to escape and run out to do a quick buying trip but decided in the end to bring Sophie along. She totally enjoyed the process. I strongly recommend this. She was so excited to pack the goody bags and kept saying "These are for my friends, right?". So cute lah)
- cake (Er…… also guided choice. It’s Mickey OR Mickey. Hahaha)

She was so hyped up about the party the night before, she even said "I LOVE to sleep!" coz we kept telling her that she needs to sleep so that tomorrow can come. Hiak!

I had a great time observing Sophie and how she has grown – the spontaneous hugs to her fav friends, the shyness, the joy when Evan her best friend walked thru the door, the willingness to dress up with a tiera, recognising and mouthing the words of the birthday song when the record was playing because she was too shy to sing it aloud, ability to sit alone with her friends and interact with them, willingness to sit and be painted coz it’s pretty……. yes all that….. My little girl is growing up

The adults also had a great time. James and I felt right at home, walking around playing host to our friends. I was SO thankful that my parents were around helping to keep an eye on Sophie. Sophie’s godparents also did such a great job watching out for her and Vic at one point was feeding Sophie the birthday cake!

We are really blessed to be surrounded by great friends. Thanks guys for being there and also for all the lovely thoughtful presents!

We had a great day today!!!

In the morning Sophie and I went to West Coast to have a bit of sandplay… gotta prepare her for the upcoming trip. I’ll be so sad if she refuses to walk on the beach!! It’ll be a disaster! I’m having dreams of us walking on the beach, building sandcastles… la di da…. can’t wait! She did well! She dug her head into sand and pour sand on her head. Ok pass, she’s not afraid of sand. I battled being the scardy cat Singaporean mum and wanted to stop her but she was having so much fun, I just had to sit back and just laugh with her. Sometimes when I relax, we do have so much more fun.

After that, we had lunch at Macs. Yes, also in preparation for the trip – to eat junk food! Ok like as if we need any training in that! Hahaha… She enjoyed her milk, corn and scraps of meat off my oily McWings and cheeseburger. Argh, so unhealthy! But so yummy! Oh ya, plus fries. Dipped in chilli! Argh, she’s taken to the chilli sauce! This time round she’s not so keen on fries, donno why, good thing I guess. We’re going to be away for a whole month so I really need to start relaxing on her food intake or else I’m really not going to enjoy the trip very much. She doesn’t eat a lot so I really need to be very strategic on what I give her – max nutrients on little food. Ok I guess one month of junk food won’t kill her, in fact, she might really start to enjoy food again! Avocado land here we come!

We spent the afternoon with Evan and then later popped over to Summer and Kyla’s place. The girls had a great time. Today’s lesson was on Good Friends. I really pray that these two girls will stick thru thick and thin together, just like Gin n I. We made them do hand prints – each girl has a hand print of her own n the other’s. So sweet. It’s going to be so memorable in time to come.

Ended the day with dinner downstairs with Daddy. Nice. Friends and family that’s what we need for the long run. I’m deeply appreciative of that tonight.