Grandparents

Hubby and I took a couple days of leave over the March holidays so that my mum could take a well-deserved break from the Bees. I must really commend my mother's highly reliable and trustworthy caring of the Bees. Without her fundamental support, I will never be able to work and make sure my father and her would retire comfortably without having any financial woes at their age. 

Grandparental support is so crucial - and Hubby and I are already talking about providing all our help for our future grandchildren, so that the Bees are free to live their dreams! (Please note this down when you are reading this, Bees, hee!)

On the first day of the short break, we went to our regular jaunt in the Botanic Gardens with my mother, had a sumptuous breakfast and walked amidst the giants of nature. I love Botanic Gardens, especially during weekdays, with all its majestic peace and hushed dignity. My mother, who had always taught us about the importance of nature, loves it as well. As for the Bees, they simply treat the Gardens as their second home, loitering and playing on the verdant grass endlessly. 

The Bees with monkey faces and a smiling Popo

I am always amazed at how fast Big Bee has grown - all of a sudden! She is fast catching up with Popo! 

You can see how much the Bees had grown with her constant care over the years...from little babies of 3-4 days old to the big girls they now are. Having grown up not being close to any of my own grandparents, unlike Hubby, I am certainly thrilled that the Bees are close to all their grandparents - who are definitely consequential building blocks in their lives. 

Can you guess who is Big Bee and Little Bee? 

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The top photo is Big Bee at 3 days old. The lower photo is Little Bee at 4 days old. To me, it just seemed like last week since I took these photos! 

Tourists In Singapore

Hubby and I love traipsing around Singapore's attractions and behaving like we are tourists. It gives us a fresh perspective on the familiar landscapes we call home. We hope the Bees will grow to love the Singapore that we are both fond of, and be as attached to our country as we are. Both Hubby and I would love nothing more than to be immersed in Singapore's heat and humidity! It is home, after all. 

2 weekends ago, we brought the Bees to Esplanade again for some casual strolling and admiration of Singapore's skyline. I probably have umpteen photos of the Bees in front of the CBD skyline - but it does give me great joy to take them against a familiar backdrop over the years, tracking their growth and development. And once again, realising just how fast time flies. 

The Bees are attracted to places with any large bodies of water, and it was immensely gratifying to see them sprinting around in the hot sun, chasing each other and whooping with cheery joy. Nothing is more fulfilling than seeing our children happy and satisfied with their lives. 

It was high noon at the waterfront, sizzling hot, which explains why there were not many people around! 

Theatrical Fame

2 Fridays ago, Little Bee had her term performance in school. This was her second performance since starting school late last year, and her zeal confirmed the potential for flamboyant showmanship in her.

The moment she saw the whole family, her grin emanated like a burst of brilliant sunshine, and she waved non-stop to us, introducing us from afar to her friends, calling us loudly from a distance - oblivious to the crowds of other students and teachers in the audience. There was absolutely not a vestige of stage fright in her. 

Performing and waving merrily at us

When the performance started, she sang and danced with spirited and gutsy bravado, despite having had only 2 days to practise as she was out of school due to a nasty illness. She performed the main role of Cinderella for one of the acts and we can see her relishing the role of a lead protagonist. Throughout the performance, she was never without her trademark effervescent smile and infectious grin. 

Cinderella holding her purple "broom", busy sweeping the floor and dusting furniture while the rest chanted a little rhyme about the story. 

And the great thing about having the Bees in separate school sessions was that Big Bee could also be present, lending support to her little sister. Little Bee was thrilled by Big Bee's presence and kept pointing out her "jie jie" to all her friends. Big Bee, by this age, was also imbued with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia at going back to her old school, seeing all her former teachers, and claiming that preschool days were much simpler and funner. What wise insights of the past from a primary schooler indeed! 

With her beloved jie jie and her classmates after the performance

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole performance, and certainly looked forward to more performances to come!  

Blossoming Socialite

Big Bee's social life is now thriving with myriad parties thrown by her kindergarten and primary school pals - social functions that parents are not invited to, nor encouraged to attend :( She also has many exclusive playdates with her friends that parents are not allowed to be part of. 

With all her good friends in all manners of playdates and parties! 

Seeing her breeze into these parties and then picking her up thereafter left me feeling bittersweet that she now has this mysterious life with her friends that Mummy is not a part of. These gaping holes, these fissures in her life made me realise that parenthood is akin to a permanent job with temporary project management of our children. They are only fleeting gifts, precious as they may be. Soon, they will be independent and create building blocks of their own separate lives, whilst throwing a (hopefully) thick rope of connection to us old parents marooned in the boring wilderness. 

She would come back to us after the parties or playdates, giggling, with her mind full of the wonderful memories of friendship and camaraderie, sometimes not wanting to share too much of these activities with us. I also caught her hiding in some corner of the house, whispering to friends on the phone and scribbling little notes to friends furtively, hiding these messages of hurried writing. 

These are the early signs of gradual self-reliance. The signs that all of us parents are eagerly anticipating yet dreading with apprehensive trepidation. Signs that hint to us....what are the plans for ourselves - us as a longtime married couple, us as individuals - when the nest is empty? 

But for now, I still relish in seeing my darlings sub-consciously clasping my hand when sleeping next to me, yelling "Mummyyyyy!" at every inconsequential instance and clinging dutifully to us during every outing and holiday. 

Learning At Home: Fish

I decided to focus our homelearning activities last month on a very simple and straightforward theme - fish. This is a direct repercussion of the high level of interest and involvement in the proliferation of guppies within our rock pond in the balcony. Once we allow our children to select what they are interested to learn, the process becomes so much more engaging and transformative. 

Featured books

The Rainbow Fish series

(this series is much loved by Big Bee and now Little Bee for its vibrant visuals and captivating stories of peer influence and individualism)

The Wish Fish

(wonderful for early readers with a strong moral slant on greed)

Fish School

(fantastic book as a prelude for a trip to Sentosa's Underwater World - a heartwarming tale of a field trip to an aquarium with alluring visuals)

Fabulous Fishes

(highly versatile for both Big Bee and Little Bee to learn about 20 breeds of fish in different reading levels!) 

Freshwater Fish

(for responsible Big Bee, who had taken up the important role as the main caregiver of our community of highly fertile guppies!)

Key song

1-2-3-4-5 fish counting rhyme

Word/letter recognition and writing

Little Bee is beginning to demonstrate strong readiness in writing and reading, which comes together hand in hand, really. She can now recognise the word "fish" after we reinforce this word to her through all sorts of play (versus academic) activities. She is also able to associate "f" for fish, and to write out the word "fish" if I spell it out for her. I made it a point to let her write "fish" whenever she did any crafts related to fish to build up her word association. 

Word search: Recognising the lower-capped "f"

Early writing skills for "Ff". Notice she tried writing "fish" with an inverted "s" at the top!

This was taught entirely by jie jie - Little Bee somehow scribbled the fish shape and wrote out the word "fish" with jie jie spelling out the word verbally

Mandarin

I decided to incorporate formal Mandarin learning in these home activities after seeing how much she is progressing in school. So I introduced the concept of "opposites" and Mandarin word recognition with the words 小, 大 and 鱼. She is now able to recognise and combine all 3 words with the flashcards I created for her. 

Little Bee loves matching games, including this activity of matching the right phrase to the right fish! She was able to do this exercise after the activity (below) of reinforcing Mandarin word recognition through flash cards. She can now write her name with some assisted verbal spelling. 

Through her own initiation, she is happily scribbling down the words 小 and 大 as well! 

The bottom words are written by Little Bee (hmm, I think my Mandarin writing on the first row is no nicer than a preschooler's!)

Math and number recognition

Although Little Bee is now counting numbers up to 20, we still sing the fish counting rhyme to her, whilst simultaneously letting her create her own fishbowl of 5 little fishes with dotted numbers to encourage number writing. 

Little Bee sponge painting an empty fishbowl...

...then she cut 2 fishes herself (not difficult to guess which fishes are the ones she cut, isn't it!) and, together with my other 3 fishes, stuck them into the fishbowl. She also wrote the numbers through trace writing, and wrote the word "fish" with assisted spelling. 

What I really enjoyed most was a fishing game, made entirely from coloured paper, paper clips and an old wooden magnetic fishing rod. I cut and drew 20 fishes in 3 different sizes, so she was able to learn the concept of "small", "medium" and "big". We were also able to use this game to subtly reinforce other math concepts like sorting in sizes and colours, as well as number recognition up to 20. As for Big Bee, this is a really fun and enjoyable method for her to learn multiplication tables - which means I have to create even more fishes! We are still playing this game till now - almost daily :) 

An assortment of fishes - the Bees can "catch" the fishes by hooking the magnetic fishing rod to the paper clips on the fishes (below).

Crafts

We had immense fun making fish-related crafts this time, creating some really beautiful crafts inadvertently! 

Paper plate fish

This fish was entirely created by Little Bee with nothing but a paper plate. I guided her to cut the triangular piece out and helped her staple it as a tail, and thereafter, she decorated the entire fish herself. This is a really easy craft for children to make and is very useful for them to feel strong pride and ownership over!

Fish of hearts

Using ready made foam hearts, we created 2 love fishes just by assembling different sizes of heart shapes together. This is a parent-assisted activity but it is wonderful for reinforcing different sizes and colours of a similar shape, which is a heart in this instance. 

It was amusing to see Little Bee's eyes lit up as the fishes took shape. She drew other supplementary accompaniments like ripples in the sea, seaweed, a crab (can you decipher where!?), sandbed, bubbles from the fishes, eyes on the fishes as well as wrote "fish" when I spelt it out for her. 

Rainbow fish

We created our version of rainbow fish with translucent pink and purple tissue paper. Ideally, more colours should have been used but I did not have the necessary supplies then. The finished result was beautiful, especially when you put up the fish against the sun and witness the rays emanating through the translucent paper. 

Little Bee busy sticking alternate strips of pink and purple tissue paper over a hollow shape of a fish cut from blue construction paper. This is great to strengthen her awareness of patterns and sequential repetition. I let her select a strip of tissue paper and she always knew which alternate colour to select from. 

The back portion of the rainbow fish where strips were pasted on...

...flip it over, and voila! You get a wonderful, translucent fish where sunlight can trickle through! Stick on some long strips for a tail and use silver glitter glue to paint on the eyes and ripples, and you get a beautiful rainbow fish. 

3D aquarium

For Little Bee's age group, I helped her create a simple 3D aquarium from 2 paper plates, a clear cellophane and fishes cut from coloured paper, as well as some decorative bubbles and seaweed. The completed 3D aquarium could be given as a sweet gift to grandparents or used as a lovely hanging ornament by simply punching a hole on the top of the plates, and tying a colourful string as a loop. 

Oops...Mummy's rather bad at punching holes! 

Fine motor skills

I encouraged Little Bee to hone her fine motor skills through a precise cutting activity by creating twirly fishes from mere strips of papers - cutting 2 polarised slits and connecting the strip of paper into these 2 slits, thereby creating a loop that resembled a fish! 

When the Bees held these twirly fishes up in the air and dropped them, they whooped with exhilarated excitement when they twirled merrily to the floor! It was a really fun activity to zap excess energies from the Bees! 

Sunny yellow twirly fishes that the Bees created...

...let's see whose fish twirls the longest in the air! 

Painting

I whipped out my trusty, reliable paintbrushes one evening and asked them to paint anything related with fishes. These were what they created :) 

Dolphin Delight by Big Bee

S for Stingray by Little Bee

Field trip

Ideally, this homelearning theme should be supplemented by a trip to the Underwater World, but I was trying my best to avoid the crowds from Sentosa's IR. Hence, the best way to teach them the various parts of a fish as well as how fishes breed and swim was (and still is!) the daily observations perched by the side of our rock pond with a teeming community of resilient guppies! 

Fever Marathon

Motherhood is a journey infused with both euphoria and exhaustion. Exhilaration imbues us much of the time, but it is always mingled with bittersweet fatigue whenever the kids fell ill. 

Poor Little Bee had a very potent viral infection last week. We had to manage a raging fever for 6 whole days from last Sunday till yesterday evening. Despite her malaise, I am constantly amazed by her signature optimism, cheeriness and sunny grins. Though my dear girl probably lost a couple of kilograms off her already petite little frame. 

She would chatter ceaselessly until the fever rose near the 40 degree mark, during which all she did was to shrink herself into a tiny ball, legs and arms ensconced underneath her cold body. Her fortitude truly helped us to conquer our exhaustion indeed. 

I felt the psychological fatigue and mental stress of worrying over her illness more acutely. And as we segregated the Bees very distinctly during bouts of sicknesses (including the separation of the primary caregivers of the ill child from the healthy child), I also miss snuggling and spending quality time with Big Bee dearly. I am also very lucky to have my dear Mum to share my load, looking after Little Bee when I was at work or down earlier in the week with a nasty cold, and my dear Hubby who remained stalwartly beside Big Bee, ensuring that she never felt lonely. More importantly, Little Bee was the most courageous of all - her energy remains indomitable and now she is in the winning throes of vanquishing those evil viruses that invaded her body last week. 

She missed her friends and teachers in school, though, always asking me when she can go back to school. I don't think she is fit to go back for another week, and she gamely created cards for her little friends whom she missed so much.

Here are some of her creations :) It was such a joy listening to her explaining the rationale behind her drawings! 

These 2 cards above are for her best friend Alicia, whom she can never stop talking about. I notice how she always draws beautiful eyelashes for her best friend, and she always proclaims that Alicia is the most beautiful in class, whereas she is only "cute" in class! 

Er...this is ME. Notice the marked difference from beautiful Alicia? :<

This boy here is Dylan, her other good friend in class whom she said is "very handsome". Those ripple-looking scribbles are her way of writing messages to the cardholder. She would scribble and muttered those messages she was "writing".

This is Papa (left), Papa's friend (that grouchy person in the middle!) and herself with a hat, haha. 

Hm, this duck-looking thing is actually a HORSE, or so she told Hubby. That queer shape on top left is a house with a door and window (can you decipher it!?). She usually draws houses like these - much like the inhabited caves from Cappadocia in Turkey! 

Lazy Sunday Breakfasts

Sunday breakfasts are sacrosanct affairs for our family - and we hope to carry on this tradition of family togetherness for a lifetime, even when the Bees have their own families. 

We would relinquish all activities and keep this precious time free. Then we would concoct and plan all sorts of different breakfast activities. Our latest favourites since the beginning of this year include the hawker centre for the Bees' favourite "dou hua" (soft, smooth soya bean curd) and "chwee kueh", as well as Hubby's and my favourite "chai tau kueh". Mouthwatering indeed! 

We had also been descending onto the verdant arms of Botanic Gardens for breakfast, enjoying the spread of crusty croissants and a hearty, overwhelming American breakfast with eggs, bacon and sausages - complete with fruit juice and coffee! The Bees love this bustling alfresco setting because they felt like they were on dog planet - with dogs of all shapes and breeds accompanying their owners for morning walks! 

Late last year, we discovered an old English restaurant who serves up a scrumptious breakfast in majestic antiquated Tudor style - without the crowds. And we love that charming place! We always felt like we are on holiday in a small English town whenever we were there.

Recently, we had also begun to enjoy idyllic and lazy Sunday mornings at home, with me whipping up simple American breakfast fare like eggs, beans and pancakes to Hubby bringing home MacDonald's breakfast - eaten in the wondrous environs of our balcony, amidst the lush blooming plants around us, listening to chirping birds and witnessing scampering squirrels! 

Homecooked breakfast. I need to learn the Chinese alternatives, eg fried carrot cake and chwee kueh!

Whichever type of breakfast we indulge in, it is a mere delight just to be with each other, happy and chuckling as we chomped on our favourite foods! 

Intelligent Math

I welcome the attempt by MOE to make the primary school Math syllabus more visual and creative, with the emphasis on problem solving skills and logical thinking. This is definitely a commendable swerve away from our days of old, when Math is about rote learning and never-ending practice of similar sums. 

One Monday evening last month, Big Bee came home with the typical numerous pages of Math assignments (yes, unfortunately, Math teachers are still the same - they love to give homework!). She completed the usual drill practices by herself, but asked me for some help for these 2 interesting questions that I thought differ so widely from our rigid questions of yore! They are challenging, yes, and I had to take a few moments away from her to work out the solutions - but they are a refreshing reprieve to invite creative problem solving competencies in our children! Math had indeed turned more "intelligent" and visual these days, which is wonderful to hone logical life skills eventually. 

Question 1 - requires a wee bit of sleuthing! Big Bee was excited when she read "clues" but needed my help to guide her in a step-by-step logical way.

Read these clues and tell us your answer in this format: _____ tens ______ ones 
a) I am a number 
b) I am bigger than 29 but smaller than 50 
c) The digit in my ones is twice the digit in my tens (something like that) 
d) If you add up the digits in my number, it is an even number 

Question 2 (see picture below) - reinforces the visual methodology of Math, incorporating the concept of modelling, which, yes, Hubby and I became one of those parents who relearned the modern Math curriculum based on visual modelling. I thought this is a powerful foundation for future Math problems in secondary school where visualisation is much better than ceaseless practices of 10-year series books! 

Enjoy solving these sums! 

Learning Mandarin

We always call Little Bee the ang moh  in our family - despite the daily conversations with my mother in complete Mandarin, she would invariably reply my mother in English, and would never speak in Mandarin, unless we guide her word by word. And if she ever utters these Mandarin words, they are imbued with a thick accent. 

Which was why it came as a surprise to me when I sat with her one evening and flipped through her school's Mandarin phrase book, she was able to recognise some of the Mandarin words and read them aloud. It could be through the association of the scribbled picture with the word, of course, but learning to read Mandarin words is about character recognition and association anyway, so I think she is on the right track of learning in school. 

She was able to recognise 飞机 amongst other simple words, and I think the teacher's method of getting the children to draw an airplane in the same page helped with the recognition and association. 

It came as a bigger surprise when I casually did some Mandarin work with her, and she started scribbling words like 小, 大 and 工. I guess the interest in reading and writing is there - so I need to start honing the interest in speaking, which is even more fundamental. 

She diligently scribbled 小 and 工 by herself on this page when she saw the corresponding words on the sentence above. 

After many tries, I use MOE's latest Mandarin trend of bilingual teaching on her - and it works in cultivating an interest in her towards Mandarin books! So when I read Mandarin books with her these days, I casually switched between English and Mandarin when discussing the scenarios in the books, and I found that she would be more engaged. I guess she can understand the books more if I used English occasionally. She would sometimes respond in very simple Mandarin during our discussions as well. 

Her method of learning is totally in contrast with Big Bee, who prefers the total immersion way of learning Mandarin. Different children truly respond to totally polarised ways of learning. No child is difficult to teach - it is finding the right method of engaging and appealing to them that matters! And truly, patience from us parents is a true virtue indeed. I find that hard to cultivate sometimes, especially after a stressful workday! However, when I witness the results for myself, I start forcing myself to embrace patience when I am teaching the Bees - as best as I could, of course. It is always easier said than done. 

My Favourite Animal

The new MOE syllabus of teaching lesser and learning more, coupled with fewer examinations for primary one and two, is put into practice in most schools this year. Instead of focusing on 2 main examinations to determine the academic placement of our children, the new syllabus will use bite-sized and year-round assessments focusing on the understanding and reflection of the students. 

Hence, instead of the usual mid-year exams this year, Big Bee has to go through about 2-3 evaluations per subject this term which would be counted towards the final grade at the end of the year. The assessments are rather interesting, comprising of the usual academic topical tests and non-academic components like a journal reflection on "My Friends" for English, and show-and-tell activities for English and Chinese. 

I welcome the show-and-tell activities a lot, as it reinforces an emphasis on speech and drama, spotlighting on fostering strong communication skills, as well as nurturing articulate and confident students. Students are assessed on clarity of speech, strong eye contact and posture, volume of presentation and grammar/sentence structure, with bonus points for compelling interest factors in their topics. 

The topic given to Big Bee's school for show-and-tell is a nice and easy "My Favourite Animal". Parents were advised by the teacher last week to help the children craft out a script for the show-and-tell. Hubby and I gave Big Bee some guidelines on what to say, and let her create her own script using research done by herself, so that she truly feels for what she will be presenting. 

Here's her script penned by herself, and I thought she articulated it beautifully when we rehearsed tonight: 

"Hello everyone! My favourite animal is the horse. I like horses because they can gallop very fast. I also like to stroke their fur a lot. I love horses so much that I learned horseriding for 2 years. My favourite part of horseriding is to canter and feel the wind on my face. My favourite breed of horse is a Palomino. It is a very friendly and lovable breed. Let me tell you more about horses. A female horse is called a mare and a male horse is called a gender. The young of a horse is called a foal. Horses give birth during spring. Do you know that the longest horse tail is 22 feet long, which is the height of 6 Ms S (her form teacher's name!)?"

I thought her research done on the little idiosyncratic bits of trivia really shows off her personality - pointing us to facts that interest her. It is amazing how children unearth the most amazing facts when left to their own devices! 

Wish her luck. Her show-and-tell assessment is tomorrow :) 

Sisters

The Bees fight incessantly. Day in, day out. Their sibling rivalry, territorial and competitive personalities never fail to bring forth the tiny little monsters in them, and sometimes it is draining to tear them apart and break up their fights. 

Mostly, I feel very distressed that they seemed not to love each other as siblings. And I really want them to rely on each other for a lifetime. 

However, there are exceptional moments where I detect glimmers of love and sisterly affection between the 2 of them. Then I realise (and hope!) that petty squabbles are part of growing up (look at me and my brother!) as well as learning to cope with a variety of social situations. 

One day last month, I saw both of them giggling in a corner, doodling on a paper. I inched up to them and saw that they each drew a self portrait alongside each other. And I guess that would be their worldview forever - that wherever they are or whatever they do, they will always have each other, walking alongside each other and dwelling in the quiet confidence that they have a special sibling to rely on. Despite the fights, despite their quirks. 

I certainly hope they will be the best of friends when they grow up. 

Little Bee in purple at the top, drawn by herself, and Big Bee drew herself at the bottom. Don't they look like their self-drawn portraits?

Soccer Babes

Hubby is a huge soccer fan. So during his last trip to China, he bought 2 sets of Manchester United's Number 10 shirts for the Bees. And insisted that they had to wear these soccer jerseys for our regular weekend breakfast at Botanic Gardens. The Bees were both thrilled to be decked out in "adult" soccer wear!

Exhilarated Bees horsing around in their soccer gear and monkeying around with a tiny ball! 

The Bees attracted a lot of amused and interested gazes, mainly from other fathers! The Bees, being the typical super-active and energetic girls that they are, launched into their soccer personas like fishes in water. They ran endlessly at top speed around the lush greenery of the expansive meadow at the Shaw Foundation stage. They jostled with each other for the miniscule ball that Hubby brought for fun. They performed stunning football kicks, especially Big Bee, thanks to Hubby who was such a great coach to them. 

Little Bee's energy levels flagged first, ambling languidly to me and sat on my lap shortly. However, Big Bee had amazing endurance and outstanding sportswomanship - she continued kicking the ball with Hubby for a protracted period of time! 

Check out all the Bees' soccer kicks and flairs, especially Big Bee's professional-looking kicks! Click on the photo for a bigger version of this. 

I had such fun laughing and watching them play, and participating once in a while. Bringing the kids outdoors, basking them in the sun and indulging them in vigorous sports play is fundamental to instill a love for nature in our children, and to inculcate in them an innate passion for efficacious and active lifestyles in future. 

I am expecting more soccer play very soon!

Breakfast Of Love

On the rare mornings that I can wake up 15 minutes earlier than my usual time of 6.30am, I will try to make some special breakfast bentos for Big Bee. However, these occasions are highly infrequent! I really should try to make more of these personalised breakfast bentos for Big Bee, especially after seeing the ceaseless grin of delighted felicity on her face after I hurriedly created the breakfast set below. It is nothing fanciful, as I am not good with food in general, but I think she really appreciated that I put in some effort to make it special for her. 

Simple blackcurrant jam bread with a stick of green grapes, a box of mini Oreos and a tiny cup of yellow marshmellows - personalised with her name!

She proudly swayed the "My Melody" lunchbox all the way to school and told me after school that her breakfast bento attracted a lot of attention from her friends and form teacher! 

I guess that's the simple joy of motherhood - making a breakfast with affection and care, infusing everything we do for our children with tenderness and love. 

虎虎升威

The Year of The Tiger entered our lives with joyous cacophony, rambunctious merry-making and relentless feasting. Each year during Chinese New Year, familiar scenes since the genesis of my memories were re-enacted over and over again: entering a house full of beaming relatives, everyone dressed to their best, some of whom we only see once a year, shaking hands exuberantly and chanting blithe wishes for an auspicious year ahead. Dutifully dishing out angpows to all the children elatedly, while the Bees expressed wishes like "Happy New Year" or "恭喜发财" jubilantly, so that they could receive lots of angpows. They are beginning to appreciate the full pleasure of receiving angpows, especially Big Bee, who wants to keep her angpows for herself this year!

Then sitting down for a hearty homecooked meal of scrumptious food or settling down in the living room, listening to relatives catching up with each other cheerfully or engaging in small talk ourselves whilst nibbling on sweet sinful Chinese New Year delights. The scenes are always redolent with dense euphoria and mirthful cheeriness. 

Incessant visiting and feasting with all our close relatives :) 

This year, we visited 7 families in the first 2 days, and hosted 2 sets of paternal uncles and aunts for a boisterous lohei session as well as both of our parents and my brother with my sister-law for dinner on the 3rd day. 

With my paternal uncles and aunties as well as our immediate families. Hubby decided to serve his teppanyaki delights in pairs so that our parents can get romantic while feeding each other! Check out the karaoke kings and queens as well. 

The Bees gladly joined in the preparation by taking charge of the supermarket trolleys! Papa slaving away over the grill and teppanyaki station! 

Hubby set up an outdoor chef corner, rolling up his sleeves to prepare dinner for everyone, on top of the usual chicken curry and fried bee hoon to fill up our stomachs. In the balcony, he set up a teppanyaki station beside our outdoor grill, and set forth to cook up a storm - succulent and delicious satays which were all gobbled up before they could cool down, with verdant vegetables and juicy mushrooms stir-fried teppanyaki style! Followed by a second round of lohei! Hubby downloaded a list of lohei wishes from the internet and set forth to chant out the auspicious wishes during lohei.

Lohei after lohei! 

The Bees could not get enough of Chinese New Year - neither can I!