A day to celebrate – firstborn kindy graduation

Today Noelle ‘graduates’ from her kindergarten after (less than) a year stint (but she still needs to attend kindy until end of next month🙄😂).

Her walk-in video <here>

Sending her to kindy is more for her to learn her social skills and adapting to a school life – rather than for academic performance. We are proud that she achieves those objectives. She did improve a lot too ‘academically’ – mainly reading and writing (which she started near ground zero late last year). We are also happy that she continues to be cheerful in most things. We hope this will start her in positive direction towards (the lonnnnngggg) school life!

Oh ya, she was awarded ‘The Best in Cleanliness’ in her class! 🤣

I can’t deny that I teared today seeing how much our eldest daughter has grown up (ok, kindy only la…😝)!

Showtime!!!

After weeks of practice and nights of her making us dance with her….

Before concert

Mama: You scared or not later go on stage!

Noelle: But 9 Oct I went on stage, I am not scared!

Mama: But today ALOT of people will be watching you dance! 🙄🙄🙄

Noelle: 🤔🤔🤔

Mama: Never mind, if you scared, you just think of mama, papa, mei mei and Norrah, k?

Noelle: I am NOT scared! 🙄🙄

And yes, she proves herself that she hasn’t got any stage fright! Well done, baby! <video>

Today, we ‘celebrated’ as one for our Noelle Jeh Jeh! 😘😘

>> Didn’t manage to get wefie! 😕

Transition to seasoned food

2018 is the year I slowly ‘graduate’ Noelle from ‘bland’ food! I introduced to her more cooking seasonings.* I am happy to say that she is accepting it well! (During my lazy days, she will just go with bland food – same food as her toddlers sisters 😝). Moving forward, as she enters to different phases of life – she will get to enjoy more kinds of food. I am still glad that I kept her diet ‘clean’ for her first 5 years of life. 😁😁😁

Today she wanted Yee mee. And I was a little ‘hardworking’ to ask her if she wants it soup (bland type) or those with sauces – and she choose the sauces one. So, she had ‘char Yee mee’ topped with sweet potato pork cutlets. I served her with chopsticks – so she was very ‘motivated’ and focused in her dinner! 🤣 <video>

Dessert after dinner and shower – strawberry banana ice cream

* YOU know ‘those’ days ‘people’ say if you don’t introduce seasonings early, it would be very difficult to introduce her next time and then she will be a picky eater. 🙄 😝🤭

Marble sponge cupcakes

Ingredients:

2 egg yolks

1 egg whole

2 tbsp caster sugar

35ml oil of choice

1 tsp vanilla essence

Pinch of salt

40g cake flour

Meringue – 2 egg whites and 2 tbsp caster sugar

Method:

1. Mix egg yolks, whole egg and caster sugar

2. Add in oil and vanilla essence. Mix.

3. Sift in flour and salt.

4. Fold in the prepared meringue (separate to three times).

5. Divide to two portion.

6. Add in one tsp cocoa powder to one portion.

7. Pour one tbsp of each portion to the cupcake sheets.

8. Bake under preheated oven of 170 degree celcius for 20 minutes. (To make sure it is cooked, I lowered the temperature to 130 degree celcius and bake it further for 10 minutes).

Air fried sweet potato puffs

Puff skin, approximately – 1.5 cups all purpose flour, 0.5 cup blended rice flour, pinch of salt, 1 tbsp raw cane sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, pinch of baking soda, 30g cubed cold unsalted butter and ice water

Mix all dry ingredients. Knead in cold butter and add ice water sparingly. Knead and add more water until it forms a dough. Let it rest about an hour.

Filling: steamed and mashed sweet potatoes

Video of moulding: here

Air fried under 180 degree celcius for 10-15 minutes or until it turns brownish!

Sweet potato pork cutlets

A good recipe to keep!

Marinate minced pork with pepper, egg and cornflour (for 10 minutes or while waiting for mashed sweet potatoes to cool down). Add in mashed sweet potatoes. Mix and shape them. Shallow fry or air fry.

Our first visit to Aves World Broga Petting Zoo

This is nearer to Broga town; but smaller than current Rabbit Fun Land at Lenggeng. The ‘owners’ are more involved in ‘caring’ for the animals – as in they ‘encourage’ kids to get nearer (but too stressful for our kids – sort of ‘forcing’ them when they are already timid with some of the hungry rabbits, chickens and ducks) and show the way to feed the animals (besides making sure the right kind of food are fed to the respective animals – they sell a pail of food for RM10 that include sheep, rabbits and chicken food).

They have normal range of animals include rabbits, sheep, chicken, duck, horse and cow.

Overall, I think they enjoy Rabbit Fun Land better than Aves World Broga Petting Zoo. Aves has less shade – and we have to be constantly under the hot sun.

Comparatively, Aves has more chicken and duck range (as in they even import chickens from different countries – mostly caged) while Rabbit Fun Land has more deer, sheep, horse and cow. 🤣

Aves also have fish pond for kids to ‘fish’ but Rabbit Fun Land has a bridge for them to climb over and over again. And it was first time for the kids to watch tadpoles swimming (I told them I used to catch tadpoles in longkang when I was a kid)! The entry price is the same, RM8 per person (adult/kid).

Giving without expecting

Surprise parcel

‘We’ have been decluttering and offering people things that we no longer need. As mentioned many times, it teaches my girls to be more open hearted to giving others. Now, whenever they see me pack something, they will automatically ask ‘is that for Aunty?’ Or ‘we don’t need that anymore, so we are giving it away.’

The early times we did receive some little things in return. Later on, I reminded recipients not to bring anything along during collection. I wanted my girls to learn about giving without expecting. So, there are many giveaways without anything in return. It has become a ‘norm’ and they understand that they get nothing in return for gifting.

But recently we gave away a set of two books. ‘That’ lady (*cough*) brought along some fruits and even activities sets for the girls despite the reminder to just ‘bring her banana hands’! 🙄

Ok la, I also wanted to learn to accept things with an open heart and without feeling guilt (something which is difficult to me) – reminder to self. On top of that, ‘that’ lady sent a parcel to us earlier on this week! 😒🤦🏻‍♀️🙄

We received it on Wednesday and I told Noelle (Nikki couldn’t be bothered with presents actually🤣) that she can only open it on weekend – after completing homework too. In addition to that, she was given a ‘homework’ to spell my name! 😝

So tadaaa…the time has finally arrived to open up the parcel! 😆

Thank you again to ‘that’ lady! 😘🤣

Sweet potato balls

Recipe adapted from rotinrice.com

Ingredients: about 400g steamed and mashed sweet potatoes, 50g glutinous rice flour, 70g blended rice flour, 30g brown sugar (can be omitted), 1 tsp baking powder

Mixed and shaped. Deep fry.

No cook play dough

It has been a while since we made no cook play dough. Let Nikki get an experience of making it – also non toxic for Norrah (but she wasn’t really interested).

Seeing the play doughs on the mat after returning from school, Noelle says she wants to play with it ‘for a while’ (while I put Norrah to nap) before their nap time. 😁

Recipe adapted from messylittlemonster.com, ingredients used:

2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup salt

2 tbsp cream of tar tar

Food colouring

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup hot boiling water

Our visit to 99 Wonderland, Selayang

Heard of this place months ago when they were giving free entry. And I actually read many bad reviews about it. They were initially opened only in the evening till night. With the new opening hours plus just an entrance fee of RM10 per adult (kids above 4 is RM5), we gave it a try.

Overall, a nice experience – a lot of chickens roaming around (that it scared the two elder ones 🤭🤣), different types of birds and animals; mostly caged. We are allowed to feed some animals (deers, ostrich) and fishes too – but we didn’t today. The animals there are already well fed by the care taker (can see a lot of food in their cages).

We walked the whole lake (nice landscape) and wanted to sit the free ‘unlimited’ buggy rides( but only to find out that it is unlimited for one stop – not the whole round, that was the only ‘dissatisfaction’ we had). The kids get free 10 minutes car ride. There are other rides too like cruise and boat ride – they charge about RM10 per person (if not mistaken).

With RM10 per entry (we paid a total of RM25), it was worth while for us (I can’t say for others). We spent about 2 hours there (longer if it wasn’t lunch time) – no food stall opened in the morning (though food carts sighted there).

Video <here>

Increasingly, we find Norrah enjoying our outings! Today she had a lot of fun chasing chickens 🐓 🤣 maybe because she is born in the year of chicken! 🤭😛

I tried putting her in the car ride which was controlled remotely by papa; I thought she would be afraid, unexpectedly, when everyone agrees to leave – Norrah was wailing when I carried her out! 🙄🙄🤣🤣