Sea-sta Day 2012

My husband has been with his company for the longest time but has never gone to Family Day until now.
I told him we should go this year. I thought it would be a fun activity for the brood plus it would be at Siloso Beach in Sentosa and if we got bored we could always just go to the beach.

Well, we did spend some time at the beach, but went back to the main pavilion in time to see a very entertaining magic show from a British magician called John who ate fire, did a bit where he kept on throwing balls into his hat and it would come out the other side, the usual tricks with disappearing items, and a man in ball (or balloon) bit (haven't seen that one before).

After that there were some games that required participants to act out scenes from a reworked script of Transformers and to dance to Michael Jackson and Bollywood songs which turned out really funny thanks to some side comments from the emcee who I'm sure had a side job as a stand-up comedian.

The emcee was so funny that he was even able to make the lucky draw exciting. At one point while announcing the top prizes for the lucky draws, he was toying with the crowd a bit and mentioned a specific number and a guy started running to the podium thinking he had won and the emcee told him 'No, sorry, that's not the winning number, I was just asking who had that number - actually the winning number is....' It's a bit mean but also a bit funny.      

It was actually quite a great morning and I'm looking forward to Family Day next year.

 Andi at the beach

 Lexi sitting still long enough to get her face painted, while I wait for my turn.

We get matching butterflies on our cheeks.

Lexi and Dada watching the games 

Happy 47th Birthday Singapore!

Ben and Jerry's Chunkfest 2012

It's time to hit the beach for this year's Ben and Jerry's Chunkfest 2012.

See you there!

Shoe Finds at Zara

It's that time of the year again. Sale season. And even though we're already in August there are still lots of bargains to be found. Just recently I stumbled upon some really good shoe finds at Zara. I think I'm pretty lucky as most of the last pairs I've seen are in my size. And they're 50-70% off. Thank goodness for large feet.

Peperoni Pizzeria

After Sunday mass, we usually have a couple of regular lunch places we go to already which saves us the trouble of racking our brains thinking of where to eat that's nearby, won't be horrendously crowded and would serve food quickly so the kids (and the adults) won't end up starving. 

There's Chili's at Tanglin Mall, Kenny Rogers at Great World City, Manhattan Fish Market at Plaza Singapura, this Japanese tonkatsu place at the basement food court of Ion and now we've also added Peperoni Pizzeria to the list. The one we go to is at Zion Road across Great World City.

Service is relatively quick, portions are good for sharing and the pizza and pasta are pretty good.

We've been there twice so far and never got to see the interior as the place 

is always full, luckily there's outdoor seating

Lexi playing with the cheese dispenser

Where's the pizza? 

Carbonara and deep fried beef balls

Weekend at Sentosa

We've been wanting to bring the kids to the beach for some time now and we finally got a chance to do that over the weekend. Lexi's first beach trip was actually to Bali but that was a dud since the beach we went to wasn't one of the main beaches and it was quite dirty. We wanted to make it up to her. It would also be my younger daughter Andi's first beach trip, so we wanted to do it right this time as well.

Woke up at 9am and got everyone ready, or rather, everyone was ready by the time I woke up at 9am. In fact, my daughter Lexi was so excited she slept in the clothes she was going to go out in.

Our first stop was Palawan Beach. We haven't really gone swimming there so it was our first time too. But I remember the water didn't look nice to swim in before. It's quite clean now. The weather was quite nice, not too cool and not too hot, and it wasn't too crowded either.

 Andi feels the sand for the first time

Andi spent 5 minutes in the water before she decided 

she had had enough and burst out crying  

 Brand new beach accessories for the bargain price of SGD4!

Pail, rake, shovel, watering can and sand castle molds

 Lexi mixing sand and water

Lexi getting water from the beach 

Father and daughter going back and forth for more water 

 Lexi at the beach tram stop

After about an hour, we decided to move onto our next destination which is the Port of Lost Wonder, touted as the first kids' beach club in Sentosa. We took the tram there and paid SGD15 for Lexi's entrance, everyone else, us adults, got in free. The place though was quite packed with tons of kids running around. The main attraction was this pirate ship with lots of water fountains and cannons and water slides. At first I just let Lexi go inside the water play area with her Dada since the rules said that only 1 adult allowed per 1 child, but later on I saw some other parents with their kids so I just stayed with them. Such a strange rule though, I understand there may be concerns with overcrowding but how can you expect parents to enjoy the attractions if they can't enjoy them as a family. In any case, our time there seemed so short. We didn't even have time to go to the bubble machine area. Lexi didn't even feel hungry come lunchtime. We had to drag her away from the water play area to have a quick pizza lunch before heading on home. All in all it was quite a fun trip and we can't wait to go back again.

Make Your Own Jewelry

I was reading about bead toys in one of the blogs I was following and it made me interested to buy some for my daughter.

I found this really nice bead toy above which you can use to make jewelry. The B.Pop-Arty has 500 beads of different sizes, forms and colors. The beads can be connected to each other and can form different jewelry - necklaces, rings, bracelets, you name it. It's funky-looking enough that it can suit both kids and mommies alike.

I couldn't find it in Singapore so I ordered it from Amazon in the US. When it arrived, I realized it might be a bit difficult to handle for my 2.5 year old daughter so I set it aside until she was ready to play with it.

When we did bring it out, she didn't immediately know what to do with it and she wouldn't let me demonstrate. So instead of a jewelry-making kit, it became a sorting toy at first. She would empty the contents and then carefully put back the beads in the canister. After some time, she figured out other uses for it - like she would lay out all the beads and would step on them, in the same way a firewalker would step on hot coals. Another time, she started throwing the beads up in the air and then would watch as they fell to the ground. Only recently did she really start to make her own jewelry. Here's Lexi with her jewelry creations. Notice she's got a tribal thing going on...