Crestar Ballet Concert 2008

This year's Crestar year-end ballet concert, entitled "A Nutcracker Story", was held at the Victoria Theatre on 13 Dec 08. The performers went through many hours of practice and preparations and for the parents, many hours accompanying the kids to the school for practices. I could see the proud faces of all the parents at the concert.

Well done, Naomi, our angelic ballerina!

New Piano Teacher

Have been searching for Private piano teacher for some time since last Sept.Both Naomi and Nathan were attending a piano school. The challenge with schools is that they have a very high turnover in teachers. The teachers are not paid alot after splitting the fees thus they would prefer to teach on private basis.

We held back our plans to change to private one on one class for Nathan , thinking that he may be too young to go on individual coaching. The last straw came when the school lost another good teacher again. Again we have to change teacher ! Arrgh

After asking friends, searching on the internet, calling a few teachers, we finally settled on one. Recommended by my ex-church friend who gave her good comments. Her rates are really very competitive for private coaching. In fact, we are paying much lesser than in the music school which is a group lesson for Nathan.

We also wanted them to switch to a weekday afternoon class so as to free them on Saturdays for other things like swimming lessons or just relaxing or waking up later on a Saturday morning.

Had our 1st lesson with Teacher LL today..the kids likes her and I find her patient and approachable.

Thank God for leading us to this teacher through my friend.

Funny photos from sis' mobile

My sister just emailed me some photos taken using her mobile. Amazed at how interestingly the photos turned out to be using the picture frames esp for Nathan and Nicole..so cute with the judge wig.

Seeing Double ?

Quiz time : Are these two photos taken on the same baby ?

While flipping the old photo albums, we realised that Naomi's baby photo looked so much like Nicole's photo shot at 3 months. The smile, the mannerism looks so similar...alot people thought they were two photographs of the same person.

Answer : Top is Nicole at 3 months, Bottom is Naomi at 2.5 months.

Chinese New Year

Happy Children, Happy Memories - Photo with my niece's daughters (From Left : Michelle, Nathan, Baby Nicole, Naomi and Joelle)

Top: Photo taking on 1st day new yr at my mum's place .Bottom : Posing with Mr Gong Xi and Ms Fa Cai at PP

This year Chinese New Year is especially special to us for two reasons. 1) Staying nearer to my sibilings' and my mum's house means that reunion dinner, visitation by relatives and gathering of my family members are held in my home. This is good as it means more bonding time with my sibilings, nephews, niece.
2) New Addition to my family i.e Baby Nicole who brings joy to our family.

Staying near my mum's house also mean that we go visiting together in a group. Today we went to two of my relatives' homes for visitation , much to the delight of my 3 kids (yes, even baby Nicole is very excited too with her two chubby legs kicking away). The drinks and the new year goodies are just like a buffet spread to them..eating without any inhibitions.

Complimentary Photo Session

A week ago, I received a phone call from a photo studio offering us complimentary makeover and 2 digital shots to take home. We went ahead with the apppointment, though we expected some sort of sales speech following our shoot. Today being the 3rd day of the Lunar New Year, the studio was quite crowded..we were surprise that we dont have to wait too long for the makeup, photo-shoot as we were the 2nd family and there are plenty of studios and photographers.

Naomi and Nathan are especially excited with the hairdo and the dated Korean costumes which we wore for the 2nd round of photo shoot.

At the end of it, we took 50 shots but were disappointed that we couldn't buy just a few of the nice shots. The package price is way too expensive , so we just took the two complimentary digital photos. I must say that the photo shots are nice, and they dont really hard-sell...but we find that the package price is not value for money.

SANDtastic SUNday at Mcdonalds

Video of Ronald Mcdonald doing the dance

Naomi and Nathan had a fun time at their 1st Mcdonalds Red PEA at Kallang Mac. There is art and craft, drama by Lorna Whiston about family values and appearance of Ronald Mcdonalds. Both of them kept talking about it after the event and requested us to bring them there every month. Adding on to the fun, they also won themselves some stickers, magnet and goodie bags after answering some questions. I have enjoyed myself too..overall , is a good program and best of all is Free ! It wasnt full house yesterday, however, to avoid disappointment , is best to pre-register before going.

Learning Should be fun, not stressful.

Seb and Myself may have been too harsh to Naomi and Nathan while helping them to practise on the piano. We both felt quite bad after flaring up at them - always not taking the practise seriously.

After reflecting, both of us felt that we should not have reacted this way, they are still young after all and we should not kill their joy of learning. It is really my desire to want to create a fun learning environment for the kids be it in academic, music learning etc...cos that's what I have learnt from Mindchamps. Only when you have fun learning, u will be motivated and you will remember when u've learnt. Especially for theory, it is pretty hard to teach them in a fun manner. Have been searching for good resources or even thinking of creating one myself , so that the kids can learn the theory through fun and games. Got to know about this software,PianoIsFun. It has got very good reviews, will purchase and update all of you on the progress of the kids in this area.

A Teachable Moment

While fetching Naomi from Sunday School today, Seb realised that she was holding a green bangle that doesnt belong to her.

S : Where did you get this bangle ?
N : My friend gave this to me ?
S : Then where is your necklace ?
N : I gave to my friend because she gave me the bangle

Both myself, Seb and my family were angry and disappointed by Naomi's weakness in this area. Though she is only 5 and is a time for her to learn from her mistakes,we were however tired of constantly reminding and telling her not to accept things from people or to borrow or exchange things in school.

Naomi was crying all the way from church to home as she felt bad that she has given away the pearl necklace that grandma gave to her.

I hope that she will learn from this lesson and to have self-control over this area. For me, the lesson to learn is to have the patience to help her to understand why she is behaving this way and to discipline her in love rather than give her an earful of lectures.

Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, don't make your children angry. Instead, train them and teach them the ways of the Lord as you raise them.

Lord, please give me a strength and patience to make use of every teachable moment to train my children in the ways of the Lord so that they will not depart from the truths when they grow up. Amen !