Happy 18 months!

It's been a couple of weeks since I've updated my blog, no thanks to the busiest time at work for me so far this year. Now that things have settled down a bit, I can finally find some time to write here and I realised that Helene turns 18 months old today!

She is well and truly a toddler now, practically running as fast as her little legs can carry her. We were unduly worried that she didn't walk as fast as her sisters!

Still as smiley as ever, she can say words such as "Please" "I want" "Open" "Some More" "Sit" "Put" "Dip". Hmm..actually thinking about it, it all relates to food! Haha. This little girl loves her food and recently she was taught to say grace before her meals. So now when she knows it's meal time and she's sitting on her high chair, she will immediately say "Amen!" before even grace is said. Maybe somehow she thinks that by doing that, she will get to eat sooner! Lol.

She can also say lots of other words now (besides calling almost everyone in our family - Mummy, Daddy, Jie Jie, Hannah, Heidi, Nanna, Gong Gong, Ah Poh, Chek Kong, Amah, Ah Gong, Ku Ku) For other adults they are all either Uncle or Aunty haha. She can also say "Wear clothes" "Hair" "Go" "Bird" and she can say words repeating after us, although she may not necessarily know what they mean.

Here are some smiley pictures of her:

Here, she is "helping" to do laundry. Seems quite convincing from the pictures!

She also loves vitagen, like her sisters. Looks like I will have to buy more than one packet when I go to the supermarket now.

Happy 18 months little one! Keep giving us those dimply lovable smiles! :)

Our trip to Koh Samui Part 3

For our last night in Koh Samui, we stayed at this hotel called Manathai Koh Samui. We actually only booked this hotel the night before we left for our trip so it was quite a last minute decision. I showed Hubby the hotel on Booking.com and he said "Okay, nice, book!" Haha.

Let me tell you how we got from Renaissance to Manathai. It was actually just down the road, but we couldn't walk with three little kids so we asked Renaissance to book us a taxi. They promptly did it and told us that it would cost 300 baht. For about 3 minutes drive! But we didn't have much of a choice so we booked it anyway. The morning that we were going to check out, Hubby asked me why not we try asking Manathai if they could pick us up from Renaissance. I had booked all the hotels through Booking.com so I quickly sent a request vide their website to see if it could be arranged. I didn't really think it was possible because usually they take 48 hours to process a request and this was super last minute.

Subsequently, we went out for breakfast and then to the beach. I didn't bring out my phone, so when we got back to the villa around 11 something, there was an email from Booking.com saying that they had forwarded our request to Manathai and Manathai had immediately responded to say that they could arrange complimentary pick up from Renaissance! We were really happy and I was quickly typing in the reply to arrange the pick up time. Before I could finish my email, the phone in our villa rang, and guess what? It was Manathai asking what time should they come to pick us up! They even knew how to get in contact with me without waiting for my reply. So it was all arranged, kudos to Booking.com and Manathai Koh Samui for the excellent service :) And this is why we did not spend a single cent on transportation the entire trip, so we were truly blessed :)

This was the facade of Manathai Koh Samui when we arrived. It's quite E&O-like, only the buildings are yellow haha.

The room was not very large, but the four poster bed was definitely the largest of the 3 hotels.

This was the swimming pool and beach which was across the road from the hotel.

And this was the pool in the main hotel building.

My girls really know how to pose haha.

And as always, before checking out, we took some family pictures. Lighting not so good in the room that's why the photos are a bit dark.

This was Koh Samui airport. It's mostly non-airconditioned areas so it got quite hot while we were waiting to board the plane.

However, the good thing was that the airport served complimentary food and beverages!

We finally got on the buggy to take us to our plane.

We did have a good time together, and hopefully there will be more family holidays to come!