Time flies and I tell you that a year ago on 9th July 2013, it was raining heavily in the wee hours of the night! Soon after, Gwen was born. And a year same time 9th July 2014, it was raining heavily too! This time, she turns 1! Amazing! The weather made me recall what both Eve and I had went through last year.
This time, we had two celebrations for both Gwen and Kate (as their birthdates are 9th July and 11th July respectively) and it was simply amazing to have relatives uniting and enjoy the meals together too! Both Eve and I even joked that we can aim for the 4th child to be on the 10th of July! Lol... That will be 2 years down the line.
Anyway, on that day, we planned and conducted a series of games for bonding too! I'm just so glad that I can be the host for the day... It's been quite a while since I host! Love hosting!
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| Picture of Eve's relatives |
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| 4th Grand Auntie and Gwen |
For the food catering, it's the first time that we engaged a Thai Food restaurant, named
Jai Thai. Their food tastes good! Especially their phad thai, and their tom yam soup. We had a good experience in dining in, however for catering, due to our catered size of 20, they didn't provide warmer. That caused the food to be cold very fast. Nevertheless, it still tasted good! We brought home the phad thai after the event, reheated it and it tasted so good!
Our Food List
1. Mixed Appetizers (Prawn Cakes, Fish Cakes, Thai Spring Rolls, Deep Fried Beancurd)
2. Deep Fried Fish Fillet with Sweet & Sour Sauce
3. Tom Yum Seafood (Clear Soup)
4. Fried Mixed Vegetables
5. Pineapple Rice
6. Phad Thai
The host of the place, Leanna, also cooked white rice for the children! We also brought some sides like Pandan cake from
PurePandan, which is quickly snapped up!
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| Picture of Kate eating! |
Swimming
We did some swimming with the children because they simply love the pool at Castle Green! I had to dip inside too with them.
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| Happy Kate with a spade! |
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| Josh and his bus |
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| Josh imagines his bus moving on the wet railway! He loves it! At home, he literally uses water and pour on the top of the bus toy! He imagines it to be moving through the rain...Imaginative! |
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| One adult with three children in a pool! Not safe! Ha! Luckily there are floats! |
There are some sports games ongoing too! We had a table tennis table opened up for play, as well as a badminton court! Leanna booked the basketball court, however we didn't get to play as everyone headed back home after 4 hours of party!
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| A simple game with the sisters! |
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| 4th Great aunt brought fresh, uncooked corn cob! Tasted so good! |
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| Badminton playing with Fangrui |
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| Ain't she cute! Kate asked her grandfather to take picture of her in this pose! |
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| Kate and cousin, Charlotte posing! |
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| Happily posing with the racket again! Looks like those H&M advertisements!! |
Game playing
We conducted a series of 4 interesting games which involves all ages! And because of the size of the function room and we didn't have any sound system available, we brought our own version of 'portable' microphone! The loud hailer was bought from Daiso! The reason why we wanted to conduct the games so as to promote interaction as well as making the whole atmosphere filled with fun and excitement as winners get to go home with vouchers!
Our first game is the Longest Breath. Initially we wanted to find the one with the longest breath. Later, since we had so many contestants, we made it into the Best Male and Female with the Longest Breath! Hence there were 2 winners.
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| 4th Aunt trying on her stamina on the Longest Breath! |
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| Charlotte's grandmother taking on the challenge |
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| Eve also joined! Gwen's curious! |
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| 4th Grand uncle's turn |
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| The eventual winner for the Best Male is 2nd Grand Uncle! He won $5 Bengawan voucher! His timing is 30 seconds! |
The second game event is Longest Stare! I managed to get 5 participants and they were excited as to what challenge were given to them!
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| The game of Longest Stare |
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| These are the two winners for the Longest Stare! Great effort! |
The third game tests on the gadget skills - Fastest person to type alphabets A to Z. We wanted 5 participants but only 3 were game to play!
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| They were nervous as to what they are going to be tested on! Even Eve didn't know. |
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| These are the 2 winners (Leanna and Veron) and presented by Ah-ma! |
The fourth game is the person who can do the longest yoga pose - Salutation Seal! Amongst Eve's relatives, there are a few who attends regularly for Yoga lessons!
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| It's such a nice yoga group picture! Love this so much! |
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| Eve's second uncle and his wife attends regularly for yoga classes. You can see the leg position is correct! Vertical! |
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| These are the 2 winners for the yoga masters! Great effort displayed! |
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2nd uncle even tried to do his signature pose of standing with one leg, and his another perpendicular to the ground! Tough!
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Phototaking time
How can a birthday party go without group photo taking? We took so many pictures! Snap, snap and snap! All thanks to my father in law!
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| Group picture with my in-laws and family |
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| Picture of the attendees for the party. Ah-ma's family is HUGE! |
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| Later we also added 2 more candles for Kate! |
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| Gwen's really excited with the cake! In fact, all the children were excited to blow the candle! |
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| We relighted the candles a few times because different children wanted to blow! So funny! |
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| Kate trying to cut the cake! |
The cake that we bought is from Cedele - Champagne Chocolate with Oatmeal! It tasted so delicious and everyone finished the cake! So happy that we made the choice for it. It's $48 nett off the shelves!
Eve cutting the cake and distributed to everyone
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I want to thank God for the great weather for this event! And glad that everyone enjoyed the event with the cash vouchers in the games! I really hope that we can hold more of such family events to bring everyone closer.
Hoe Family Celebration
For my own family side, we had our mini celebration at our place with dinner prepared by Ah ma, my dad and us! It's like a mini pot luck session!
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| Family picture of us! The chocolate cake from PurePandan! Love this original chiffon cake! |
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| Group photo of my Hoe family! |
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| Another candid picture |
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| We put Gwen on the table and she put her finger on the cake! |
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| And she ate it as a matter-of-fact! So funny! |
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| Kate's time for her birthday song |
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| Josh and Kate! |
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| Josh even had his share of blowing the candles! |
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| Munching the delicious chocolate chiffon cake! It's not so sweet and it's yummy! |
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| Love this family picture so much!! |
Honestly, I'm truly blessed to have three children and a supporting wife who still breastfeeds Gwen! Amazing and I have to thank God for it. And looking at the past few birthday celebrations, I'm so appreciative to be parent for these amazing children and that I have the capacity to manage both my family and work at the same time.
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