Ringing in the Rat...

It's officially the year of the rat. we enjoyed a 5 day break..day 1 in penang and the remaining 4 days in KL. Penang was HOT - nothing new there. Good food as usual and everyone looks the same with the exception of the 2 littles one - Adriel and Micheal. Jin's Ah Ma looked really frail - she has aged since her hip ops..kinda sad seeing her in her current state as she has always been lively in all our previous visits. Here's a snapshot of the family lo hei.

KL activities kept us on our feet and got me all sick again..the weather coupled with my growing tum tum meant less sleep..which automatically equates a cold :(. On day 2 of CNY, I suddenly felt that my tummy skin was being stretched a LOT..and it was extremely uncomfortable..I had to try several sleep positions but nothing worked...in the end, I think it was pure tiredness that helped me sleep a bit through the night.

Highlight of this CNY was mom's 60th bday - we held a party for 55 of her friends and relatives at a nyonya restaurant BiBi Chik. Played some bingo, had impromptu karoake sessions by Grandpa and Uncle Henry and the 60 mini cupcakes were a delight.

Another fun factor was the doggie Mom helped doggiesat..Bubbles the shih tzu - poor dog had her fur shaved off so she looked really weird..but adorable none the less :)

We also caught up with many groups of friends : Sean and Adeline, HP "old" group, LB & family, Lin and RY - everyone looked great and healthy :)

Relish for OK burgers..overpriced!

Jin's been really accommodative in my recent eating habits..it seems all i want to eat these days are soupy stuff..can be soupy tom yam, soupy pan mee, chinese soups etc..felt it was my turn to give him a treat so we checked out Relish at Cluny Court for saturday lunch. Jin ordered the Relish burger while I went for the Mexicano..I did not realise that the cheese for the burgers was an optional $3 so imagine my surprise to bite into my well done burger (cant eat medium well :p) and found only jalapenos, avocado spread with meat..sigh..what's a burger without the cheese indulgence? :p

Jin's house burger was good but not as good as marmalade's pantry. At least service was good and attentive..they allowed me to change my sides of chips to salad and on the attentive part, my poor hubby did not realise that there was a clear glass door blocking his way from stepping onto the balcony and smacked right onto the glass with a loud "bang"..ouch! and 2 kind lady servers came around to ask if he was okay ;). they should def tint the glass! I am sure lots of birds smack right into the glass too thinking it's a clear doorway.

Our weekend went quite well..we did the usual market stop on saturday morning for our weekly soup ingredients shopping. sunday morning, jin woke up extra early to cook sausages for our picnic at the botanical gardens..he even grilled a banana which added to the already nice gesture. we took some belly shots of me at 17 weeks..cant see much but i did elaborately extend my tum tum ;).

I invited the girls over for a pre CNY get together and we had a good laugh watching serene L and mad trying to break open the coconuts Mad brought as drinks. As it was raining, a lot of our planned outdoor activities could not be carried out so we amused ourselves by going for test drives..we visited both the nissan and lexus showroom and i test drove the murano and rx 350. guess which one i liked ;)))

dinner was with jimmy and RY and lin. we tried out curry garden at turf city..the masala tosai was yums! then it back to our place where i lost MJ 4 rounds in a row :P..give up!

2 more work days till CNY..cant wait!!

A baby for jin and me :)

We found out we were expecting in December! It's been quite hard trying to keep the news under wraps, especially since we met up with a lot of old friends who can't help but ask when we were having a kid..Jin and I just smile and reply : hopefully this year ..hehehe :D

It's been 16 weeks and we are slowly letting the news out...partly because I don't think I can hide the baby bump any longer and the vain me does not want ppl to think I am just getting fat due to all the holiday meals :p (pix on right - Union Sq in SF - 13 weeks)

Has been quite an uneventful pregnancy with an exception to the down syndrome scare I got last week from my triple test results. I chose to quickly do an amnio and thankfully, results from amnio gave us an ALL CLEAR :). Other than that, I did not get the morning sickness or major food cravings.. I did however get the occasional headaches when I was hungry and of course during the first few months I was pretty exhausted.

Sometimes, I even wonder if I am pregnant as I don't feel any different since the past month..that's why I really look fwd to the doc visits where an ultrasound of the baby always amazes me..I think the sound of the heartbeat is the coolest sound in the world at this point..hmm, if only I was rich enuff to own one of those machines..hehe..lucky katie holmes!

The cons of being pregnant is definitely the no-no to sashimi :(..it was really quite torturous to be in Tokyo during christmas and watch Jin from outside our fav stand up sushi shop enjoying himself. I also really miss my active lifestyle..no skiing, no golfing, no running, no massages..I could not even do the rides at Disney Sea! thankfully, I can still swim (i do dislike cold water though) and started pre-natal yoga yesterday. Need to find good prenatal massage place to pull me through the next 6 months :)

Next steps : have to find confinement nanny..have already booked cik fauziah for my post natal massages..leaving the stroller and car seat purchases to Jin. I love delegating!

32 but feeling 30 :D

Turned 32 exactly a week ago,..this year's bday celebration was rather muted as I was too lazy to plan anything and I think even Jin was a bit tired to plan - must be after effects of Perth trip planning :).

He was sweet enough to surprise me with cake the night before from Lana. We celebrated with Lin, RY and Eelin who was visiting. The strawberry cake was a real miss but the thought was worth a thousand kisses ;)

Actual day - we had brunch at Simply Bread as I was craving sausages. Then Jin suggested checking out the boardwalk at MacRitchie..I never knew they had a 2 km long boardwalk along the reservior..it was really quite fun to walk as there were not many people at 11am that morning. Jin saw a snake and heroicly yelled loud enough to send 10 snakes running - I myself jumped 2 feet back!

Afternoon, I planned a spa treat at The Ultimate Bukit Batok Civil service club. The spa couple rooms are quite nite as they are little standalone villas but the noise from the pool penetrated that otherwise zen atmosphere. We paid $128 (starhub's bday deal) and jin got a body scrub and balinese massage while i had a scrub and facial. I really enjoyed the sweet potato dessert we got after the treatment :)

Evening, we headed to Vivo to catch Enchanted..what a cute disney film and Patrick McDreamy was truly cute.

Bday celebrations followed throughout the week with lunches with Jun at Akashi, marcom mates at ShinKushiya, dinner at Ember with the bday ladies group - still have a couple more to go :)

Back in Msia a week later and celebrated with the usual folks at a seafood restaurant at selayang. We had crabs, mantis prawns, white prawns, garoupa fish and Keat bought me a yummy durian cake.

I made ONE cookie ;)

Seeing all the cute gingerbread men on recent Perth trip got me wanting to bake my own gingerbread men. Especially ones that would look just like the one in Shrek.

So last night I downloaded a recipe from allrecipes.com - it had 200+ reviews, mostly positive so figured I can go wrong. Searched Cold Storage for gingerbread men cookie cutters but all they had was a batch with a bear, hippo, star, flower, heart and turtle mould. At$2, one cant complain too much so I bought that.

Jin helped by setting up the mixer and washing up the used items. My dough was somehow wayy too wet (surprisingly the complaints from the reviews were that the dough was too dry :p) so I only managed to cut one cookie out. (stuffed the remaining dough back in the fridge where I hope it gets much dryer!)

My one perfect gingerbread bear :)..so cute...with 3 mini M&M's as the buttons. Jin ate it for breakfast.. and said it was yummy..hmm, could he say anything else? :p

Weekly treats :)

Finally launched my crazy project..never worked so hard in my past 4 years with HP..putting in 12 hours days on the average for the past 2 months. So very relief that campaign has launched and it's time to take a breather. Finally had time to even consider asking colleagues out for dinner..last wednesday, as jin was working late, i impromptuly asked angela and tricia if they wanted to do din and both surprisingly said yes. we headed to adam food centre for yummy prawn noodles and I tah paued a crab noodle for Jin. cost me $15 but it was a pretty big crab. anyway, when i reached home and while taking my notebook from the back seat, I noticed that Wally the resident car bear had something tied to his neck..Angela the sweet girl decided to give me an early bday pressie and it was a pair of lovely purple dangly earrings..was really touched and happily surprised :)

Back to the crazy work launch - HP decided to throw a party and we had a Gwen impersonator as well as a group of drummers to entertain us. Have to say Gwen and her dancing was rather cheesy but people seemed to be entertained which I guess the purpose was met. Here's prob my last pix with Jun in HP as he goes off to germany next month to start his work life there..very sad that my HB is taking off so soon , to some place where time zones differ..sigh sigh.

Anyway, am so happy today's Friday. And Jin actually got out of work by 6..Adrian my cubemate funnily asked me if Spore was snowing when I told him joyfully that Jin was getting out of work by 6. :p The best treat of the week was having Melaka chicken ball rice for dinner. Von somehow blurt out that she was heading to Melaka to tah pau chicky ball and out of politeness, she asked if I wanted and me being thick skin, of course I said YES! so here's me with my chicken ball rice, on our patio, on a friday evening at 7pm with jin home from work..if only everyday was today :)))

Pawtobello - where doggies roam free

Finally managed to meet up with William and Jenny for a catch up lunch. Decided to drag Gail and Jimmy out too since we have not seen them since Jin's bday. As Bailey the doggy was coming along, we decided to meet at Pawtobello (Mohd Sultan). It's a pet friendly cafe so the minute you walk in, you can choose to let the pet off their leash or tie the leash at your table while you eat. There's a whole doggy menu so we had to make sure we ordered from the right menu ;).

It was really fun to see Bailey's again..such a gorgeous dog - easily the biggest dog in the cafe. The more popular breeds were the schnauzers and surprise surprise, our fav breed, the every cute Westie. I was really excited to see 3 westies! and the last one being a 3 month old puppy who went around sniffing every dog's bum bum. Lol.

Earlier that morning, we woke up..well, i got up early so naturally Jin woke up not much later..since it was not even 8 yet on a saturday morning, we decided to do a picnic breakfast at the Botanical Gardens (BG). The pusher was that mom left behind a whole loaf of bread and seeing we hardly ever ate bread, I decided that the swans and tortoises at the gardens deserve a treat.

So we packed our picnic basket with milk, coffee, char siew pau and a huge pear from our Oz trip and did the 15 minutes walk to BG. Seemingly, every kid in the park had the same idea so there was wayy too much bread being given out and we ended up bringing back the whole loaf minus one slice which I managed to feed to a mutated looking fish in the pond. Here's a sleepy Jin trying to pose enthusiasticly for the camera wishing his wife was not such an early riser ;)