Winter solstice

Catching up on some posts now.  I have been clearing annual leave and as usual, having to work while on leave (which is harder to do than working WITHOUT being on leave hehe).

My mum makes it a point to make 'tong yuen'/glutinous rice balls with all the grandkids on winter solstice.  The kids treat it like a playdough session... making all kinds of 'non-balls'.

This year's was completely new to me - iced soya milk base with cincau.  Tasted pretty good actually.  Also a nice dessert for after dinner.

Check out the 'dice' tong yuens

JE made this 'rainbow hotdog'

A cute one with eye and ear

There were some cute ones with black sesame seeds for eyes.  But I ate those before thinking to take photos.  Could only find these misshapen creatures later...

Some kind of creatures

My mum says it was a disaster zone of flour after the kids were done!

Ipoh trip 2016 - in Concubine's lane

Last post on Ipoh.  This 'attraction' wasn't there when I was living in Ipoh 20 years ago.  The lane was super-crowded that day as it was both a school and public holiday.

What's that hubby is holding? (Ignore the grumpy face)

Who wants cotton candy? (There are 2 little stars on it)

JE: Me! Yayy!

I wanna eat!

Wow!

Ahmmmm. Share-share ok?

Cotton candy on hair, eyebrows, glasses, nose, mouth...

Almost finished...

JE asked for the cotton candy and I said no as it was already lunch-time.  So she asked the Papa who queued up for the thing, sigh.  Oh well, I suppose we're on holiday and rules can be relaxed.  The cotton candy was huge but the girls finished it all up.  Right then, NOW we can proceed to get lunch...

Who wants coconut ice-cream?

SE:  Me! Yayyy!

Sighh.  Haha.  No wonder the kids weren't interested in lunch.

Ipoh trip 2016 - Accommodation

To me, accommodation on holidays is basically just a place to sleep/rest.  So it was a first for me that this time, the accommodation was actually a main attraction!

Just take a look for the reasons...

Playground!

(SE is climbing on the contraption behind JE)

Get ready...

Love this 'zip-line'! (She went on this tons of times)

Pirate ship for me to climb!

Do some puzzles in the activity room...

Sand-pit!

The facilities in this new condo are well-designed.  That bucket of water at the top of this 'ship' fills up gradually from the tap overhead.

When is it going to pour....

And there she blows!  Are there any little mice who are scared of the water?

Yes, there is a mouse in each hole!

And sometimes 2 mice in one hole...

We are scared little mice!

There was also this shower-like contraption...

Just taking our shower

Sitting in the steam room... the blast of steam was loud and they didn't like this.

So noisy!

The sauna was better.  They fought over scooping of water onto the hot coals.

I'm making stone soup

Aahhhhh

SE played with this giant chess set a lot.

Checkmate!

Jacuzzi

See why we chose this place?  :)  There were also pool table, gym, courts for various games etc which we didn't bother with.  This is D Festivo apartments in Ipoh Garden East.  It's spanking new at the moment.

Ipoh Trip 2016 - Food

With the help of various Ipoh blogs (hi Nancy!), I plotted out our menu in Ipoh.  The touristy places were very crowded though and it was a challenge to park, get a table, order food, wait for orders to arrive.

Err realised I have no good pictures of food at all!  Any pictures I have are mostly of the waiting part. Once the food arrives, I'd be busy feeding the kids and eating.

Hong Xing dimsum at Bercham (ok lah)

Pork satay at Kong Heng (good as usual)

Hubby's wagyu beef set at Momo 

At 'Dai shu geok'/Big tree foot for yong tau foo (I liked this)

We also went to Gluts Square (good!) and tried to go to Ipoman (closed).  There were other places I would have liked to try, but there are only so many meals we can have in a day!  Until the next time.

Ipoh trip 2016 - Places

We were planning on going to Penang, then got lazy in the face of the longer drive and decided on Ipoh instead.

Managed to go various places.

First up was the caves.  The target was the one with a tortoise pond.  For some strange reason, I completely forgot the name of the cave and Waze-d for the wrong one.  It was okay actually - we saw monkeys and geese, and the cave formations are beautiful.

SE: Carry me, Papa!

JE:  Hmmff (she was in a bad mood)

The cave we actually wanted was nearby - SAM POH TONG.  Erm maybe this isn't the right name... it's the 3rd one on the inside.  Coz this one has turtles and fishes to feed!  Where there were baby tomatoes on sale, it's now cut big tomatoes.  Either it's more cost-friendly or there was a shortage of the baby ones.  Oh well, just have to wash hands after feeding the turtles.

Tomatoes for the turtles!

SE:  Can I have some more tomatoes?

Fish food for the fish!

Love feeding fish! (Notice her mood has improved)

This is something new to me... Concubine's lane.  Quite fun and such a happening place, will definitely come back!

Jelly! (RM5 for this stick arggh)

Take picture with this picture

I believe there are more than just this one lane, but I couldn't find any more.  It was very crowded as it was a public holiday.

We also went up to the Ho Yan Hor museum and the tours were packed, so we didn't bother to wait.

First KTM ride

This has been on my to-do list for the longest time.  As hubby isn't keen on such things, this was planned for one of his trips (with his buddies) out.  Finally made it last week when he went to HK.

Actually I was dithering around the whole morning whether to go.  Felt very lazy hehe.  Finally decided to just bite the bullet.

The kids were so excited!  Here we are waiting for the train...

Is the train coming?

It was a weekend so frequency was 45 mins.  We had to drive there, park, walk to the station, buy tickets etc, so I didn't bother to plan for timing.  It was a half hour wait eventually with the kids asking non-stop, Is the train coming yet?

Finally it came.  The kids were so thrilled to be in the train!

We're in the train!!

Actually the train was the whole purpose of the trip.  We went straight to Nu Sentral, had lunch there and hung around a bit.

Take photo!

For the return journey, I mistakenly queued up at the crowded LRT (we needed KTM) counter and wasted about half an hour.  Luckily after that we only had a 15min wait for the train.  But it didn't move for over 30mins after we got in.  Arggh.  Overall, it was such a long trip.  We set out just before lunch and got home only at 5pm with all the waiting and delay.  OK item crossed off the list, DONE and no more.

Kittens

JE has been rather busy these days.  Because... we have kittens!  Timing is convenient since it's the school holidays (gives me one less activity to plan to keep the kids busy!).

We used to have a dog and aren't actually cat-lovers.  These must have come from our neighbour's cat.  Which must have happily abandoned the kittens once it saw that they were being fed.

This one is called Yellowface

Take picture, Mummy!

SE is a bit of a scaredy-cat when it comes to these furry animals.  She shrieks and runs off when they come close.  And would only pet the kittens if there is someone holding the creature.  But here she is trying to hold a kitten (more like pinching a tiny bit of kitten fur between her thumb and forefinger hehe) and yelling for her picture to be taken!

Mummy!! Take photo!!

And here is JE "throttling" a kitten haha.  I'm glad to report she's all good at carrying kittens by now.  

Smile, kitten!

Kitten: Urggh... can please urghh.. stop squeezing my neck...

4-eye pictures

Hubby WOULD buy an ice-cream each for the kids... at RM10+ each sigh.  (*I* would buy a tub of imported ice-cream to take home at RM20+ only!).  JE chose chocolate while SE chose bubble-gum flavour (*I* wouldn't have let her choose this insane blue thing!)

Chocolate for me!

And who is that at the side... that's SE with her just-collected glasses.

Bubble-gum for me

(Note the blue-ish mouth!)

Yums

Could look worse I guess?  She doesn't wear them all the time at the moment.  But she seems fine with them and says that she can see things clearer.

Photoshoot 2016

I haven't taken the kids for a studio photoshoot for a while, apparently since year 2013.  (Unless I find another post later heh).

So here we go...  this studio was so-so.  The one in the previous post had someone to interact with the child while another person clicked away.  This studio was standard -  request the child to pose, then click.

Smile!

It's much harder with two kids.  JE would be smiling and ready, while SE would be fussing around with something.  By the time SE is ready, JE would have been holding the smile a long time already.

Nice?

(SE was in her 'eating hair' phase)

Looking at the photos now, they do look nice!