Christmas celebrations

Since my parents and my sister are around for Christmas this year, we have had quite a lot of different celebrations, starting and ending with plenty of delicious food! Plenty of photos taken, so I will just let the photos do the talking :)

Hannah followed my parents and sister to Suffolk House for lunch one day. It was her first "fine-dining" experience :)

As can be expected, the highlight of her meal was the dessert!

My aunt (my mother's sister) and her husband who live in the Philippines joined us for early Christmas lunch on one of the days.

Look at the amount of presents they brought!

My mother really outdid herself in the lunch we had. Lots of yummy food on the table, and we managed to finish almost all of it!

Hannah with all her presents!

On another night, my father's sisters and their children/grandchildren came over to my parents' place for dinner. Hannah found some friends to play with.

Heidi also had a really good time. Look at how excited she was, taking pictures with her 3 grandaunts.

The kids had a ball doing the craziest things :p

On Sunday (the day before Christmas eve), after church we had lunch at our favourite restaurant, Mario's at Batu Ferringhi. It was Heidi's first time there and she was her happy usual self after a nice long nap all the way up to Batu Ferringhi.

Christmas decorations were everywhere so we took the opportunity for a nice family photo.

I love this one of my father and Heidi - pure joy in her face.

The highlight of our meal was the lobster thermidor - my sister was waiting to eat this for the longest time as it is so very expensive in Australia. It definitely did not disappoint and was worth every cent!

I seldom get to take pictures with my big girl so this is one of me and her.

We also had their specialty dessert which is not on the menu - crepes suzette. The waiter prepared it right by our table.

On Christmas eve, after work, we had a small dinner at home together with Hubby's family. We did a gift exchange, and even little Heidi got a gift too!

The girls loved opening their gifts.

And the rest of the evening was spent wearing party hats and silly "ears" :)

On Christmas morning, we had breakfast at my parents' place. Look how nicely my mother decorated the table.

And then took more family photos beside the Christmas tree (which Hannah helped to decorate).

After that, we headed for a fun day out at Queensbay Mall :) Hannah now zooms down the big slides like a pro and we don't have to accompany her inside anymore. They charge now per adult RM6.00 - it used to be free of charge for one adult with one paying child.

Lunch at TGIF - this was the cajun chicken salad and it was very good.

Lunch was followed by ice cream at Haagen-Dazs. We had this creation called "Seventh Heaven" which was "smoking" due to the liquid nitrogen in the centre of the plate. Hannah was quite amazed when she saw it.

Thereafter, there was a show in the concourse area - Garfield and friends! For days, Hannah had been telling us that she wanted a Garfield something for Christmas, but we never caught on exactly what she wanted. We  managed to get her everything else but not that Garfield something. So on Christmas day, her wish came true!

After dinner that night, it was time to open the rest of the presents! Heidi wore a new bib which said "My first Christmas" given by my mother. Hannah had a similar one which she wore during her first Christmas. In fact she was wearing it also in the picture below (can see in the background).

After so many Christmas lunch/dinner with presents, Heidi is quite a expert when it comes to opening presents!

Hannah got her long awaited water gun :)

Full of concentration when opening presents :p

From our home to yours, have a blessed Christmas and a happy 2013!

Heidi @ 8 months

We had always thought that Heidi was somewhat of a "late bloomer" compared to Hannah. However she has surprised all of us as she has managed to catch up with everything all in this month! She can now sit up steadily, pull herself up from a sleeping to a sitting position and then to a standing position, clap hands and even crawl, amongst others.

I also managed to get some videos of her crawling - actually more of wriggling on her tummy :p She sort of uses her tummy to push herself forward. Usually I put something in front of her so she will wriggle forward to reach for it.

Two more weeks to Christmas

It's only another 2 more weeks to Christmas and we have finally put up our tree, with some "help" from an excited 3 year old and even more excited 8 month old, even though she probably does not know what's going on yet!

Ornament courtesy of Nanna from Australia

And so the countdown begins..now to get the presents under the tree! *Mummy is excited too!*

Clapping Heidi

Happy little baby!

Steamboat at home

Hi, I am Heidi and this will be my first post here. Previously all other posts were by Mummy, Daddy and Jie Jie. I am 7 months plus now (will be 8 months on 8 December) but people still say that I am small for my age. When we go out and Mummy and Daddy ask for a baby chair for me, the people will always ask in surprise if I can sit already. Well, just to let you know, I can sit very steadily and am now trying to stand up and crawl as well. Anyway, the doctor says that my weight is "superb" so I suppose there is nothing to worry about. Mummy and Daddy are only a bit concerned because my Jie-Jie was much bigger than me when she was my age.

So anyway, last Friday Mummy and Daddy hosted a steamboat dinner at home for some of their friends. Jie Jie stayed at Ah Mah's house because she had a flu and cough (which later I got too!) so that she didn't pass the flu bug to Jie Jie Isabelle who was also coming to our house. Daddy is on a break from work as he is changing jobs starting in December so he did all this by himself. Isn't my Daddy good at decorating such a nice table? :)

He even cooked the soup himself, with some guidance from Ah Mah over the phone on what ingredients to put in. I was quite happy to be carried by all the Uncles and Aunties. This is me with Aunty Jacintha.

Look at all the yummy goodies cooking inside the pot. Too bad I couldn't have any. I can eat little bits of food nowadays though like porridge, bread and biscuits. I can even eat rice as I have 4 little teeth already, but Ah Mah doesn't want to give me too much in case I cannot digest it.

When everyone was eating, I sat in my room and played with my toys. I wasn't too happy about it though as I wanted to join in the fun outside!

So later on Mummy put me in my walker. At least I got to see what was happening ;)

Stay tuned for more updates by me!

Hannah and Heidi go to KL

Due to the public holidays last week, I took some days off so that I would have a nice long break. So for half of that long break, we decided to pack up the kids and head to KL for some shopping and R&R. I booked us into Seri Pacific Hotel which was formerly Pan Pacific Hotel next to Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) as there was quite a good deal on Booking.com - RM390++ for 3 nights.

We set off on Saturday morning around 10 am. The day before, Hubby took our Exora for servicing and also a general check before going on a long journey. The mechanic did not notice anything amiss with the car. As we were driving out the main gate next to the guardhouse, I told Hubby to stop the car and throw away Hannah's milk box which she had finished drinking at the main garbage disposal so as not to accumulate rubbish in the car. When he went down, he just turned to have a look at the tyres and discovered that the front tyres were goners with a big slash in each of them (slash due to wear and tear and not done by purpose). So we drove to the car workshop just down the road and they replaced the two front tyres for us. Thank God that He gave us the foresight to stop the car, otherwise the tyres would have gone unnoticed and they may have exploded in the middle of the highway. Thank God for his protection over us too.

Here we are ready to start off our journey. This was Heidi's first long distance trip by car and also her first time in KL. See Hannah's Dutch Lady milk - this was what I asked Hubby to throw away.

And here is our driver :p

We directly checked in the hotel when we reached KL around 3 pm. The room was big and spacious, very worth the price we paid.

We also had a very nice view of the Petronas Twin Towers at night. I specifically requested for a room with this view.

The first two days we went to Mid Valley/The Gardens and One Utama. Unlike previous times, we didn't "shop till we drop" since we had the 2 kids with us, so more of the time was spent with looking at their stuff and their toys, and doing things like this:

They also enjoyed swimming (even though the hotel pool is nothing to shout about) and for Heidi it was her first time in the swimming pool. She only had a 5 minute dip in the pool though as we were afraid the water would be too cold for her. She had to make do with the bath tub in the room after that :) She really enjoyed both the pool and bath tub though, splashing away until her face was all wet. I did not take any pictures of them in the pool as all of us were in the pool together, but here are some of Heidi in her swimming suit.

Hannah brought some of her art supplies so she managed to keep herself entertained in the room. I told Hubby that I didn't know if driving ourselves was a good thing or a bad thing. When we went to Langkawi, we travelled really light so that we would not have to pay for extra baggage. But this trip, driving ourselves gave us an excuse to pack a whole of things which we didn't really use. Oh well, as long as the kids are happy!

We bought some little gifts for their cousins back home. Hannah was quite interested to see how they made the candy - one outlet will be opening at Gurney Paragon in the near future.

Hannah got one too!

After the 3rd night, we decided to extend our stay one more night so the next day, we wanted to bring Hannah to the Petronas Science Centre in KLCC but we couldn't get in. The queue was massive despite it being a weekday - must have been the school holidays and people would have taken extended leave due to the public holidays. So to curb her disappointment of not being able to go in, on the 4th day, we went to Zoo Negara. I haven't been there since I was a little girl and now I am taking my two little girls there.

We arrived just in time to catch the animal show, but it wasn't much to talk about, with the exception of the sea lions.

Heidi got understandably bored after a while, so it was up to Daddy to entertain her :)

Later on, we decided to take the tram ride around the zoo as it would be too hot for us to walk. We managed to see the giraffes and elephants up close.

All in all, it was a good holiday. The girls were very good and behaved themselves, especially Heidi. Looking forward to the next road trip!