Happy 60th Birthday Chek Kong

We took the afternoon half off on Friday while you skipped art class so that we could make a trip back to Ipoh. We were going to join in his 60th birthday celebration. After Uncle Dennis stopped by to help pick up some of the stuff we were going to bring back, we all bundled into the City and headed to Ipoh.

We arrived quite early so we had time to sit around and chat then it was time to get ready for the party. When everyone was ready, off we went to Tong Hoi Restaurant in Menglembu. There was 3 tables for friends and family celebrating Chek Kong's big 6-0.

Here are some of the pictures taken that evening:

Birthday boy and his bride

Evan and Chek Kong

Grumpy being forced to take a picture with his 2 Kor-kors

Blowing out the candles after the birthday song

A Family Picture..

If you're wondering how come we went back in the Honda City, it was because of our "special passenger". Can you guess who it was?

Ok, to be correct it should have been "what" instead of "who". I took a few pictures of everyone enjoying the durians the next day (no durians on the day of the birthday dinner as everyone had alcohol that night). But those pictures cannot be shared here..

So what were you doing when everyone sat in the kitchen devouring the durians?

What else? Your friend, the iPad visited from KL so you felt obligated to "spend" some time with it *grin*.

Hi, Eason

Here's your little cousin, the latest addition to the Ban clan: Eason Ban.
I'd taken this photo which his daddy had posted on Facebook. Isn't he a cutie? You'll get to see him in Oct/Nov when he visits from Australia.

Meet Teddy

You've got loads of toys including stuffed toys which are sleeping on your bed while you sleep on a mattress in my room! Well recently you decided that you have a favourite toy:

When asked the name, you said "His name is Teddy". And when I said that that was the name of Mr. Bean's bear, you remembered and was happy about that. You never seemed to be attached to any toy in particular but Teddy (who became your favourite last week) got to go to KL with us and even slept in the bed with us. You even wanted to bring him to Ikea with us!!
Lucky teddy....

Green Fingers?

A friend of mine told me about showing our children how plants grow. Thinking it was a good idea I had planned to show you one of the simplest thing to grow... taugeh. Yup, growing bean sprouts from mung beans. First I had to get hold of some mung beans. Well it took me a while (few months to be exact.. ) before I finally got some beans for you. I had gone to a shop to buy some almond nibs and they had a sackful of mung beans. I asked for a few (took 4) but the lady was nice and gave me quite a bit.
We went home and I found a container (the cover of a jam bottle) and put cotton and a few seeds. Daddy said not to crowd the little container. Everyone has to remind you to water the beans everyday, also explaining that plants need fresh air, enough sunshine and water.

That was the same every night then a few days after we first planted the seed, I looked there were little roots growing out of the beans. Yay! Looks like I'm more excited than you.. wahaha...

P/S: By the time I got around to taking the pictures and publishing this post, the first batch of taugeh has already been replaced!!

In KL

Do you know that other than to visit Ashley Kor-kor's iPad I also got 2 things which i really really wanted from Kay-El? Well let me tell you all about the things from this Kay-El trip:
1. Play iPad: I played every waking hour I was at home. Sometimes Pepper also wanted to check out what I was playing. You see.. my daddy also has one, but Kor-kor's iPad has lots of cool games and she doesn't know how to play them. So don't you think it's a waste if I don't play with her iPad? I think her iPad misses me!
2. Go to Ikea: We had my favourite hot dog before heading in to look at the nice furniture. Mummy and I had a good time, deciding which things we liked. I wrote down what she wanted on my own shopping list too. The daddy and Ah Kong spent almost an hour looking for lights. Lucky mummy passed me the iPad as I was getting bored sitting in the trolley.
3. Buy my aeroplanes: The first thing we bought after having lunch on the first day was my aeroplanes. It's been so long since I painted aeroplanes. So mummy went in and bought me 2 boxes of foam planes and 1 pirate ship. Today mummy and I painted 1 plane each. What do you think of my paint job?

Somewhere To Go During The School Holidays

There was once when we were having dinner at home when you whispered to me "Mummy, we haven't been to Ikea for a long time". So during the long weekend (which was also the middle of your 2 week school holiday), we decided to visit Ashley Kor-kor's iPad.

So early on Saturday morning we woke up and were loaded into Ah Kong's car ready for the drive to KL by 9am! Surprise surprise... Traffic heading towards KL was heavier than usual, but not as bad as the traffic heading north! As Ah Kong was reading his Chinese papers, you also tried to read, pointing out words which you could recognise. After a while you started to get restless, asking if we were there yet. And we hadn't even passed Ipoh yet.

Soon, you were given something to keep you occupied and you were suddenly very quiet. At last we arrived in KL and the GPS brought us to Midvalley as we were meeting Ashley Kor-kor and Uncle Dennis in Crystal Jade in The Gardens for Dim Sum. Lunch was super yummy and you enjoyed it a lot. After lunch, Kor-kor and Uncle Dennis had to go off somewhere to a temple. We wandered around The Gardens for a few hours before deciding to head to Uncle Dennis' place.

Dinner was somewhere which daddy had wanted to go as he'd heard the steaks there were yummy. We headed to Jake's Charbroil Steaks for his steak fix. Everyone had yummy steak and you had yummy charbroiled fish.

On the second day, we could not sleep in as you had decided that being in KL means you'll need to spend more time with the iPad. We had another round of Dim Sum in Li Yen in Ritz-Carlton with Ariesse, Ah Pek, Ah Mm and Chek-chek. We walked around The Pavillion did a little shopping, stopped for a drink before our legs felt like they weren't ours anymore then we headed home to Pepper and the iPad. Yup, you refused to go swimming because you wanted to play on the iPad.

Yvonne Kor-kor and Uncle Peter joined us for dinner that evening. We had something different: Hakka food in Ying Ker Lou at The Curve. Ah Kong ordered the Poon Choy on top of some Hakka cuisine. It was yummy. We walked around after dinner for a while then called it a day.

On Monday, we said bye-bye to sick Kor-kor who still went to work despite having a cold. We "checked out of Hotel Kiara Designer Suites" and headed to our final destination (almost): Ikea. The main reason we're in KL. We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed in to look at furniture. I never knew furniture could be so interesting. We spent almost 4 hours there before loading the car to the brim and heading to the highway, back to Penang.... with 2 stops before that. 1. To Ipoh for Bak Zhang and 2. To BM to collect our "Sitiawan Gong Piah"

Phew.. that was the end of our short but fun (and food) filled holiday in KL.

To The Movies...

Saturday was the first day of your 2 week school holiday. Of course you knew that you were on holiday. You kept telling me "Mummy, I have no school for 14 days".

So on Monday, daddy checked his calendar and I checked the cinema for movie listing and found that there was ample seats for Kung Fu Panda 2. So I booked the 3 tickets and we took the afternoon half off to spend some time with you, especially since you seemed to be having separation anxiety (yup.. you cried when we left for work in the morning!)

You were grinning from ear to ear when we arrived home and after getting you dresses, we headed to Gurney Plaza. We had lunch in Chicago Rib House (it was a rather long wait, but good thing we had ample time before the movie started). Then we picked up the ticket and soon it was time to watch Kung Fu Panda 2.

Picture Source

You were quite well behaved throughout the movie, but as usual towards the end of the movie started to get fidgety and asked me what the time was and when the movie was going to end.

And the one part which you remember most from the movie this time was when Po caught the cannon and threw it back at Lord Shen's ship. Daddy even heard you going "Poom" when you knew the cannon was going to hit the ship. You even laughed gleefully when it really hit the ship!

We hoped that spending the day with you would make you not miss us so much when we went to work the next day. It didn't really work.. :( What next?