Last Funtopia outing

Three days left of CNY school holiday... where to go?  We'd already stayed at home when the weather was terribly hot and kids were irritable.  It was a toss-up between the museum and Funtopia and the latter won. Which was a fortuitous choice as when we reached the counter, we were told it was their last day!  Phew if we had delayed just a day, the kids would have been so disappointed.

Up went the little monkeys...

Up I go!

SE has come so far from when she was first introduced to this place.

Watch me climb!

All the way up this easier climb....

Reached the top!

As well as this much harder climb, which even JE had never conquered...

Top again!

JE was also enjoying herself.

This is fun!

Went for a nice lunch after the hour was up and headed home. Where they went like this...

Zzzzz

Zzzzz

Hehehe. Too bad this place is closing.

CNY Days 1 and 2

We continued our yearly practice of hitting the mall on CNY Day 1.  Decided on Midvalley where the deco of origami was unique and pretty.

Happy new year from us!

One more photo

Day2 dinner with my side of the family.  Love this photo of little SE looking up at me during loh sang. Time flies and she won't be little for very long.

Huat ah!

A pic of the food for future reference. This one is my cheeky youngest nephew.

I'll have this one first

Grandparents and grandkids

All together now!

CNY 2020

What, CNY already?!  It IS very early this year!

Made peanut cookies as usual with JE's help.

Right you guys are all done. Later you go into jars.

Munchies, check

Hubby planned reunion dinner and did everything again this year hehe. With the maid's help of course.  Well he does gets overly 'kancheong'/anxious about everything so I'd rather stay out of his way anyway.  

Ready to loh sang

Steamboat

Mini steamboat at the kids' table

Food was pretty good.  Especially with hubby pouring a ton of Chinese wine into the soup, the way he likes it.

Kids looked forward more to the fireworks than food. What better way for safety than...

Let's fire up this sparkler

This is the way hubby's family plays with this type of fireworks. Gave me a turn the first time I saw it.... in my family we always put these into a bottle on the floor, and run away quick after lighting the fuse.

Shoot this into the sky

JE tired of her mask after some time haha.

1,2,3,4 kids

Happy new year everyone! May this year bring prosperity and good health!

Ipoh trip FOOD

Besides the family bonding, and letting the kids have a good time, what the adults were after was the FOOD.  First was Restoran Hooray.  This was good!  Especially liked the signature pork dish with pickled onions. I did wish the fish wasn't so huge though as I spent a lot of time that night eating that fish. :p  Will be back to try other dishes.
 

Still a lot of fish

Breakfast was dimsum at Sun Kim Aik. Hmm while this was recommended by many, I didn't find it too special.  Another place next time.

One dish is here

And a dinner at BBQ Lamb. Lamb soup is good, other food not bad.  And kids get to run around a bit.

Let me try this potato

We make a love sign

I try to plan new eating places plus old, and a new one was Durbar at FMS.  It was definitely around when I was still living in Ipoh and my parents know it, but I had never been there before.  Anyway since it recently reopened and there was some hype about it, check it out lah.

Had Hainanese chicken chop (OK), inche kabin (undersalted), banana fritters with ice-cream (quite good), crepe suzette. It was my first time trying the last. Hmm rather an acquired taste with the alcohol.  Overall... nah, don't plan to be back here.

This is a whole fried chicken!

Oo. Fire

Another new place to us... tong sui kai of "dessert street".  Found our meal so-so only and thought we didn't choose the correct stalls to order.  Then found out from my sis and BIL that we DID order from their fav beef noodle stall.  The dessert was nice though.

Final place with photo... dai shee geok.  Now this place I always like.  Had the assam laksa, various liew and hubby bought tons of roast pork.  JE scored a aiyu jelly ice - this girl always asks for drinks instead of food and I usually decline her request on the grounds that if she has a drink she'll be too full for food.  Allow once in a while if the drink is special a bit.

This dessert came larger than expected and of course she couldn't finish it.

Mmm dessert for me!

Hmm overall guess we did have a few 'will not returns". Nothing was bad, just sometimes not so great. Must do some more homework for the next trip.

Goodbye Gymrama

(Post on something else as I haven't finished compiling Ipoh food photos)

After 3 years of attending gymrama classes, the girls are stopping.

No more Saturday mornings for me of scenes like this:

I had been asking them for a month whether they wanted to continue and every time the answer was NO.  Final answer was... maybe but MOSTLY NO.

So oklah, close this chapter.  Hopefully they did reap some benefits - stronger and more flexible bodies, the ability to face a panel of adult judges (they had 5 rounds of grading competitions) without much batting of eyelids.

Ipoh trip 2019

Our last trip for the year-end holidays was Ipoh.  Tried a new apartment this time - Manhattan Condominium.  The pictures tell why hehe.

This is our water playground!

And this is our giant slide

Kids asked to stay here next time we visit Ipoh, :)  It's 15 mins to town which isn't near, but by KL standards that isn't far either.  Only thing I found ourselves making the 15min journey for practically every meal!  I need to plan eating places around this place next time.  Besides eating what did we do... well the kids like Sam Poh Tong for the turtles and fish. As before they aimed tomatoes at the smaller, cuter turtles.  SE formulated a new strategy:  She used part of her tomatoes to create 'distractions' - i.e. aim at the larger turtles nearby so that they would be busy eating and not trying to snatch from the small ones.  She proudly reported that many small ones thus had a chance to finish their share of tomato. 

We are busy feeding selected turtles

I'd previously noticed the stairs up were blocked.  This time they weren't so up we went.  Ahh... I hadn't been up there for many years and it was the first time for the kiddos.

Mummy says the rocks behind will be a good background

Dawdled since we had plenty of time.  Then we hit Concubine Lane.  Had a good time dawdling here too.

Pretty area in front of shop

So many snacks to buy.

JE: I want this durian candy

SE: YUCK!

Had a look at Platform 9 1/2, the new Harry Potter-themed cafe.  It was crowded. Maybe will visit next time once the girls start reading Harry Potter.

This Harry's owl

Snapped some photos for fun.

Do you see anything yet? 

And that was the extent of our sight-seeing in Ipoh. The weather was hot and the girls turned down a visit to the park. Next post on the food.

Sekinchan 2019

Drove over to Sekinchan for a day trip.  First up was lunch at Cha Po Tion.  Reached the town without noticing any makan places so quickly punched this into Waze (it was the most catchy name!) and headed there.  Crabs and lala were especially good and it was cheap.

Us and food. Too much food

While I had visions of taking photos in the middle of golden paddy fields, the paddy had just been cut.  AGAIN.  Of the three times I have been to Sekinchan, I have NEVER ever seen paddy!  The plants ALWAYS had just been cut or just reached the stage of resembling young lalang/weeds.  Grrr.

Tried a new destination for us, Ah Ma's house.  It was ok lah since we didn't have much to do.  But probably won't visit again.  Small place only.

Us with lollipops

And a keropok tree behind us

Next it was the Paddy gallery.  I had a few targets in this place - banana chips, fish cake, keropok, ambra juice.

We like driving this thing!

Final destination was the beach.  First a customary photo at the Wishing Tree.

Hello from Sekinchan!

It was still too hot.  Not that it deterred the kids.  JE was keen to fly a kite and got it up in the sky in minutes.

Check out my kite!

Also had a go at blowing giant bubbles... The good thing is, you don't need to blow at it.  The brisk sea breeze will do that part of the work.

See how big this can go

Little girl at the beach

Actually a day trip is rather tiring.  The journey is a good 1.5 hours.  Maybe next time we will plan an overnight stay.