Mervyn Hoe: My Daily Happenings

Celebrating Reunion Dinner at our very own place is good news because we get to prepare our own food and also, do a massive clean up for our home too! This is what our place looked like after we have cleaned them up!    Picture of our living room. Neat?   Our new enlarged living room and the door way. In fact, this was the first time that we bought Yu Sheng! I asked my colleagues about their usual Yu Sheng orders and we chose the one from Sushi Tei! It was so delicious. My sister, Eileen, was able to guide the excited children in the pouring of the condiments into the Yu Sheng. We didn't add the raw food into the vegetables because it would not be suitable for the young ones. We ate the sashimi separately. Aunt Eileen with Josh and Kate. They were amazed by the number of ingredients to be added inside.   Group picture with our special guest dog, Steady!   Huat ah!   The sauce wasn't too sweet and the vegetables were fresh ...

Preparation for Chinese New Year involves lots of planning and all these are done by Eve! So proud of her. From clothings to food to timing to hong baos. All these need to be carefully thought of so as to have a smooth execution of the places to go to. Group picture of my relatives at my mum's side! Clothings We have three sets of Chinese New Year clothes for our children and also prepared the school bags for placing the red packets, so as not to get mixed up. Extra clothes were brought for emergency cases.   Kate in her Chinese New Year costume on her way to school before Chinese New Year Timing This is very important as it involves their meal times. A hungry child is an unhappy child. Hence we had our first planned visit to my parent's place at 12pm and the next one at 2pm. This is so as prevent late meals. Nap time was catered for in the planning, but it turned out to be later. However it was fine.    Gwen and I. Ain't she cute in ...

On the fourth day of CNY, no one can imagine this! Both Eve and I prepared food for 18 people - 9 adults and 9 children. How can a couple do these by 10.30am? We cooked 4 cups of fried rice, boil Japanese green peas, oven bake potato wedges and oven bake seaweed chicken and soup. This is certainly record breaking because we managed to do all these by 10.30am! And our two children awoke at 9.30am. For fried rice, we woke up to cook the white rice at 4am. And I cooked together with bacon and corn. Luckily the fried rice turned out ok! Woohoo. I'm actually quite amazed that this time, we didn't even use a single paper plate and plastic spoons. They used our house bowls, plates and spoons. And the rubbish collected is not a lot, only used corn-based forks and cups. Children ------------ These 18 people are from Josh's school. There are his classmates and fellow parents and siblings. Really glad that everyone had their fair share of fun and the parents are really amazed ...

Nowadays, when you have children, the topics conversed as well as activities revolving house visitation with relatives are kids, kids, kids... You play with kids, you eat with kids and you sit with kids. 24/7! It's fun and it's actually much easier when you have other kids with you because they will play with one another. And we leverage on it! Yes, we will need to supervise as well as see what other kids are playing! But I can see that Josh and Kate really enjoys playing with children slightly older than them! Best of all, they can learn from one another and SHARE! We went to Eve's aunt's place at Castle Green on second day of CNY and we enjoyed ourselves! Before that, I cooked about 50 pieces of nian gao! Who will ever done that!! Record breaking for myself and I'm glad that people love it! It's actually a pot-luck session and we brought nian gao, fruits and salad. Pot-luck is a fun way for gathering as we get to taste different people's cooking and ...