Freak accident

On thursday afternoon, PaPa got a call from his school and got to know that Caden has met with a collision during recess and got his eye hurt very badly. We didn't know what has happened but got his grandma to pick him up from the general office.

Caden explained that he was playing during recess time and one other boy ran into him and hit him on his eye. The other boy got away with a ba lu ku while my son ended up like this:

Day 1

Day 2

Thankfully, in today's xray, he was given a clearance from the doctor that his eye bone was not fractured. So we will need to wait patiently for this bruise to clear..

Boys will be boys...

LSK Sports Day 5th July 2012

On Thursday, we took leave to attend Ethan's sports day at LSK. This event has been postponed twice this year, due to the outbreak of HFMD. Although his kindergarten was not shut down from this outbreak, the principal wanted to be sure that the disease is at a controlled level before gathering a mass of people into the school for their annual sports day.

Ethan's segment was the third item of the day. The class is supposed to throw the bean bag into the air and catch it as they move to a station. My dear boy literally threw the beam bag real high up into the air and had alot of difficulty catching it..

Getting ready to go!

Station 2 : Hopscotch, after this, he's supposed to kick a ball

Done. Waiting for his classmates to complete their stations

 Caden and Kimi went to the sports day and represented the 'old boys, old girls' category. They gamely participated in a game which the K2 children had played.

1) Dribble the ball

2) a couple of exercises and 3) commando crawl

 Caden's old friend was catching up with him

The sports day event ended earlier this year as the school has included a fund raising event. Parents are encouraged to support this event by buying the craft works which the children have made.

Ethan got our money and happily put them into his box..while other children are selling their products.

Although it is not cheap - we contributed $40 as the proceeds are meant to go to St Luke's hospital.

So it's considered for charity.

Universal Studio SG - 21st June 2012

We took leave to bring the boys out to Universal Studio this June as I managed to get the tickets which were sold at corporate rates. The last time we visited USS was last year March and there were still some sites not opened at that point in time.

At 10am, I asked ah lou to check out the Transformers ride as our first ride before the crowd gets bigger. To Ethan's disappointment, he missed the minimum height requirement and was rejected entry for that ride. I had to bring him out to take other rides which were more suited to his height while Caden and ah lou go ahead and experience the Transformer ride.

I found this Tresure Hunter car ride which is automated.

We next tried the Dino Soaring ride

We watched the Shrek's 4-D movie and saw Puss the boots after the show

Ethan was dehydrated and asked for a bottle of soda

His contented face for getting the drink

We spent the longest time queuing for this Madagascar boat ride - which was so-so only... Actually by 11am, it was a period when the crowd level was the highest (between 11-3pm) so every station's queue requires 40 minutes at the minimum.

Ah lou offered to bring the boys to watch the live show at Waterworld while I went to try out the Transformer's ride alone. It was so exciting!

I was assigned the first row of in the car cabin in the Transformer's ride which is the most strategic spot. The decepticons turned alive and our car cabin were sent into a 3-D journey ride battling them together with Bumble Bee and Optimus Prime.

The boys took the car ride at Treasure Hunters again..

 Then we watched a performance by the characters of Sesame Street

 At the Madagascar, Ethan took the Carousel while PaPa took Caden to take a roller coaster ride. We took this 3 times in consecutive.

We then watched a performance by the Madagascar team and got a picture taken with Gloria..

Caden and PaPa went on to take more roller coaster rides, transformer rides while I accompany Ethan with the least mild versions (cos I have a faint heart)

By 6plus, the rapid river queue was very short and I asked ah lou to try this out (I had my experience last year).. They got drenched!

 Wet bodies ..

 Last picture before the studio is closed for the day (at 7pm)

It was quite fulfilling because this time round, the queuing time wasn't as bad as last year, on the average, we spent about 15-20 minutes for each station and had taken many rounds for some of our favourites (3 times of transformer ride for Caden/Ah lou, 2 times of transformer ride for me; 4 times of roller coaster rides for Caden, 5 times of dino soaring rides for Ethan).

We will probably come again in another 2 years time. And this outing also marked the near end of their term holidays..

Day 11 - 7th June 2012 - Hong Kong - SG

Finally, today is our final day of holiday before we take a flight back to our home. While we were doing our final packing in the hotel, the boys kept themselves occupied with their beyblades. (Brian's family had extended their trip with an additional day)

As I wanted to go back to Miramar Shopping Centre (near Mira Hotel) to buy the shoes which I had eyed on the night before, we made our way towards Granville road for breakfast in the morning.. and ended up in Tsui Wah again!

Ethan gobbled up this macaroni

Unfortunately, the shop's opening hours are at 12noon and we had to leave our hotel to the airport by 1pm so we couldn't stay around the mall to wait for the store to open. Although it's quite a pity but on the flip side, this situation turned out to be a cost saving to my wallet..

Generally we enjoyed HK more than Taiwan primarily because of the shopping experience (plus point is tax-free) and dining choices. It's cleaner and more city-based, possibly because we only spent time in TST and Causeway Bay this time round.. In Taiwan, we went through a lot of train rides, seen a lot of old streets, mountains, suspension bridges, walked a whole lot of stairs, braved through numerous rainy days and got suffocated with stinky toufu.. Actually it's not too bad because of the cultural experience coupled with lots of natural landscape. So this trip is turned out to be quite a good break and bonding time for us.

Day 10 - 6th June 2012 - Hong Kong

We started off our 2nd day in Hong Kong to have Dim Sum breakfast. Winnie has this food guide with her and Luk Yu Tea House was highly recommended for Dim Sum. We tried to avoid the morning working crowd and reached the restuarant at abt 930am. This is located in Central Station (Stanley street) and it's actually 3-storey high. As we needed a eight seater table, we had to climb to the 3rd storey via stairs to get to our table. This place is has an authentic ambience for yum cha.. and very HK feel... the service is good too..

The boys asked to play phones while waiting for food

The Dim Sum house works on a push-cart concept so we had to wait for the right Dim Sum to come before we can start eating.

Some of the nicer ones..

Fish dumpling - really big ones

Ha Kao and Siew Mai

Crab filling ones

The breakfast was nice, but came with a hefty price-tag. Despite sharing the Dim Sum (but we ordered a wide variety), each family had to pay about SGD80 (so the whole bill comes about SGD160+).

After breakfast, we checked out the H&M store in Central (one of the neatest stacked ones) and ah lou got himself something while I stocked up my boys' t-shirts and pants.

We moved on to Causeway Bay from Central and regrouped for lunch after about 1 hour of free shopping. We ended up in Tsui Wah resturant again and the food didn't disappoint our stomachs. Brian's family ordered the curry chicken and turned out to be very nice.. actually their ice lemon tea is also very addictive..

Our mushroom and chicken fried noodles

The mummies went ahead to do our shopping when the men and boys headed back to the hotel to play and swim..

The Swim Hunks

After their swim, we went to Chi Ji 池記雲吞麵家 for our dinner. Chi Ji is located in Tsim Sha Tsui (near Haiphong road). We ordered 1 congee set and 1 wanton noodles set to share.. Their other speciality is crab porridge which we didn't order

The set meal allows you to customise the side dishes

The porridge is very smooth and  yummy

One of the nicest Wanton Mee we had so far

these fried chicken wings are good too

 After dinner, we moved on a dessert store nearby and ordered mango custard balls and mixed fruits mango pudding

mango pudding

The food in HK is so satisfying.. needless to say, the shopping never disappoint me. What a way to end this holiday (thankfully, we had a stopover in HK!)

Our loot from the 10 day trip (including the boys and ah lou's)

We spent the night packing up again for the afternoon flight departure (back to SG!)