Our Joyalicious June Holiday
As a family, we love to take photos. Photos are the ways by which we remember our lives together. I used to print out 4R photos to keep, and once did two family photo-books, but I have never gotten round to doing them again.
If not for this blog, many of our family photos would languish in our computer hard-disk, never to see the light of day.
Or something worse could happen – I could lose all the photos. Incidentally, we did lose some photos. *Wail*
Nonetheless, this is a Joyalicious June holiday post, because we had a really fun and unusual June holiday. So here it is, for the sake of the family history 🙂
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I decided to put the house in order – with the children doing more housework, and I decided to cook!
The children and I had so much fun cooking together.
I decided that the children can learn to make
an omelette, vegetable soup and cook rice.
So Elkan and Elias took turns to do that,
for two dinners during the school holidays.
I fried luncheon meat with potato and onions.
I also made potato gratin.
It was delicious, but it took SO MUCH WORK!
Samuel did help.
He handed out kitchen napkins to anyone who needed one.
I learned how to roast a chicken.
This was my third try.
I also tried making steak.
Mummy liked it,
which was really important to me.
Samuel played his part by keeping me company.
Well, it might seem that Samuel hardly helped in the kitchen.
To be fair, I did not feel safe letting him cook.
But he was very enthusiastic about washing dishes.
He washed his own dishes for many nights.
The second time we cooked – Samuel did more – he helped to peel potatoes! I had a photo of him doing it next to Elias, who was washing the vegetables. Sadly, the photo was lost.
I also had a photo of Elkan watching a video to learn how to make an omelette. It did not help him much. The omelette tasted good, but looked NOTHING like an omelette.
We made desserts too!
I made durian pudding. That was good.
But mummy felt it was too sweet. : (
I made mango pudding.
But I did not put enough gelatin,
so I had to make them into ice popsicles
I also made fruit salad,
and Samuel helped me roast the almond flakes.
Lastly, I made brownies, and Elias stayed up with me to stir in the ingredients.
Alas, it turned out too soft.
(I lost photos for that…)
Friends made it easier for me to learn to cook/bake. They organised cooking sessions, and we started a cooking whatsapp group, encouraging and spurring each other on, with our photos and stories of success or disaster.
S taught us to roast chicken.
She also baked scones for us!
We ate and chatted while waiting
for our three chickens to roast.
I had a girl’s night out with some of them.
What fun girlfriends are!
I love dressing up,
and going to classy restaurants with them.
Friends also made it fun to cook/bake because they ate what I made 🙂
I made roasted chicken and fruit salad for this gathering.
The week after, I roasted chicken again,
and also brought durian pudding for another gathering.
Some days later, I brought durian pudding for yet another gathering.
It was the first time in my life, that I brought home-cooked food for a potluck,
not to mention three potlucks!
For the first time in my life, I could exchange notes about cooking with my friends.
One of them even asked me for the recipe!
It was such a new and thrilling experience for me.
I attended an Orton-Gillingham course, on teaching reading and writing.
The children helped me to laminate the hundreds of cards…
Thank you Mr Ron Yoshimoto!
You are an inspiration!
While I was away, Edmund took care of the children. However, many of the plans had to be changed due to the haze. He brought them to the Science Centre. He took ONE photo, so that is evidence that they went…
This must be one of the
smallest photo I have
ever posted…
We also did the usual things people do during holidays.
We watched two movies. Epic was part of a church event – Live Out Love, where the teens were supposed to save money to give their parents and siblings a movie treat. The teens could choose between Epic and Iron Man 3, and Elkan had wanted to watch Iron Man 3. However, we chose Epic because it was more suitable for Samuel. In order to appease Elkan, we separately brought him and Elias to watch Iron Man 3 the week before. (It was very good, we are glad we didn’t miss it).
We had a lovely lunch at Tony Romas after the event, but unfortunately, I lost those photos!
Here’s the family, advertising for Bosch! 😉
And here’s a special photo of Elkan with his leader 🙂
Since we lost our photos of Tony Romas,
I found one from Wikimedia Commons…
I brought Samuel to watch “The Enormous Turnip”.
I really enjoyed myself taking the MRT train and then walking
to Alliance Francaise with Samuel.
We had our favourite ice chocolate with ice cream before the show.
Although Samuel found many parts amusing,
we not like the show very much.
We felt it was a bit rude.
I brought Samuel to the Yakult factory.
It was a free tour, arranged by Yakult
as public education was part of their marketing strategy.
It was quite fun – Samuel enjoyed watching the machines work.
(We were not allowed to take any photos of them).
I caught Samuel making that funny gesture
during the presentation.
He even did it to his new friend sitting next to him.
Tsk, tsk. Now I know, that he is no angel.
We brought Elkan and Samuel to Adventure Cove at Sentosa. I lost all the photos for that!!! Sob sob.
It was part of the RC’s Father’s Day celebration (I got some photos of that, because I posted them on my FB page. Edmund also took some photos with his phone).
Happy Father’s Day Daddy!
Elias was at his Kluang mission trip, so he did not join us. The day before he went, I did a special day-out with him. I brought him cycling at the East Coast Parkway and to the church prayer tower (to commission him!). I lost photos of that too, except for one.
The haze DID affect us. We were supposed to spend a weekend at a chalet, but we cancelled it due to the haze.
This is a picture of the kids when we were on our way to the chalet.
The haze was so bad, that Aloha agreed to give us a full refund
if we wanted to cancel it. We were thankful for that chance,
and so we cancelled it.
Once the haze cleared, we were back with a vengeance.
We went to the West Coast Park (I lost most of the photos for that…)
Elkan and Samuel played with dad.
Elias mostly played at the sand pit.
I had a nice time reading at the pavilion.
I joined them for frisbee later.
We had lunch at Macs.
We enjoyed ourselves so much.
The haze made us appreciate the outdoors so much more.
We brought everyone to Gardens by the Bay – the Flower and Cloud Domes.
The flowers were beauuuuutiful…
I wish I could stay there the whole day,
reading a good book.
The children loved the waterfalls.
We had to force them to turn around so we could take photos of them,
when all they wanted to do was to watch the waterfalls.
We found the source of the waterfalls when we went to the Lost world.
Look how gentle and innocent the water streams looked.
We also found the foot of the waterfalls.
I must say the whole thing was very well done.
The Skywalk structure was beautiful architecturally.
It was really enjoyable walking through it.
The kids had so much fun.
It was very cold, and it was not too crowded.
There was even enough space for them to do a bit of running.
We also did many things around the house – fixing things, and having lazy and indulgent days of late breakfasts and ice-cream.
Yes, I said good-bye to my old piano. 🙁
We inherited another one, which had to be tuned.
The children enjoyed watching the piano tuner,
as I did when I was a child.
We had to repair the lights, and the boys had to help.
Elias did some soldering! But I lost that photo…
The school holiday allowed us some respite from our daily rush.
Daddy had breakfast with the kids.
The three boys had lunch together.
We enjoyed our ice-cream and played with trump cards
– something we have not done for a long time.
We made new spectacles, found new games,
and Edmund and I started an online course
which changed and is still changing our lives.
(Here, Samuel is the free-rider… hey, start them young!)
Finally, we did a Family Picnic at Bishan Park with some friends.
The picnic was put together at the last-minute.
I have so many things to be thankful for.
1) S told a story. She was really good.
2) Elias picked up some litter on his own accord.
I was so proud of him.
3) We met some old friends, and we had a good time
reminiscing and catching up.
4) We made our little red heart.
It represented our love for our family and country.
Thank you God, for making this happen.
This was the first June holiday in many years, that we did not go overseas. For the past 10 over years, we would go to Indonesia for at least a week, to visit my grandma. In some years, we would also go to Malaysia for a short getaway.
This time round, we stayed in Singapore for a few reasons, but we received much more than we had expected.
Thank you God, for a joyalicious June holiday!
Yes, Samuel, climb your mountain!
