Year End Dinner

A few days ago, I was chatting with one of the youths. My nephews were back from Australia and I thought maybe I should introduce them to the youths in my church. So I suggested dinner on Friday. It was just a thought and suggestion as I wasn't sure of my nephews' schedule.

Rachel and I were quite busy and I thought the dinner plans will fall off but surprisingly, it did came to pass.

We had badminton in the morning. Most of the youths were there too. After badminton, someone suggested swimming in the evening. We declined because we had dinner plans. After sending the kids back home, my sis and I went shopping in Tesco. 

At 6.30pm we picked up the 1st youth. Then we went over to S2 using the Mambau way to pick up the 2nd youth. The 3rd youth couldn't make it.

We went to the Kesington in S2. 

Our food was delicious. We had crispy mushroom soup, garlic bread and aromatic duck with cabbage for starters, lamb shank, spaghetti carbonara, chicken maryland (I think) & black pepper beef for the main course.

At about 9.30pm we thought of going somewhere else, somewhere different, somewhere like PD. Yeah, it's a 40-minute drive and we had a bit of time to spare. We went to Teluk Kemang, listen to the waves for a while before having a drink nearby and a deep discussion on how old the earth was. :S

We left PD almost 12 midnight and I reached home at 1am. It was quite an unusual day for me but definitely a fun and interesting one.

Celebrating Christmas - 2011

My mom decided to have a little party in her house this Christmas. We decided on simple food but guess what when I reached her house that evening???

Food was in abundance!! We even had 2 turkeys. I made some of the desserts and we ordered some noodles. My mom must have felt that there wasn't enough food for our guests and so she cooked a few more dishes.

The carollers from my church came and sang some meaningful Christmas songs.

Eh, I had tong yin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangyuan_(food)) too. I think my Auntie Terry made it. :) 

My mom's main Christmas tree, standing 8 feet tall.

This is the dining hall's Christmas tree. Not that tall, probably 5 feet.

And this tree was placed outside the house at the garden area.

My mom loves to decorate her house. She enjoys taking out the Christmas decorations from the storeroom every year, choosing which decor to take out & putting them on at the appropriate places. I, on the other hand, do not have the patience for it. :)

Something at Chili's

It has been a long time since we last had a get-together dinner in KL with all our climbing kakis, so this Christmas season someone suggested Chili's, preferably in KLCC. We suggested it to our KL climbing friends but they weren't too interested. :(

So anyway, last minute we had to change the venue to Mid Valley because Mctc had to fetch his sister and family from the airport after dinner.

There were 9 of us - Danny,my sis, RW, Mctc, Minch, Maddy, Matt, Wayne the boy & I.

We didn't know what to order so we asked Danny to order for us. The food was quite good, but service wasn't as good as I had expected. Probably because it was Christmas season not to mention, the place was quite pack too and maybe there weren't enough man power on that day. :)

Aspirers White Christmas Party 2011

Remember the gingerbread house trial run I blogged about last month? So, today's the day where I have to set up all my houses. I made 8 houses, but 1 wall broke, so I'm left with 7. 

My sis and I came early to church to set up the houses. I have 42 pieces of cutout walls and roofs waiting to be divided and matched. The day before I called Becky and Liz to come early today to help too.

Later, other youths like Shaphan, Sarah and Rebecca came to help too. 

The makan table laden with yummy food. :D

The Aspirers just shifted to this place and so far they haven't experienced having any programs at night. So when it was 7.30pm, everyone expected the lights to automatically on as they were told that the porch lights were on timer mode. Justin and Lynne were kind enough to shed some light with their iphones while Frankie helped set up a make-shift light using an old spotlight.

The youths were enjoying themselves decorating the gingerbread houses and gingerbread men/women.

There were other activities too which includes taking a pic with Mr Snowman and Nature Art.

My houses were destroyed by Jared and Martin. :(

Most of the houses ended up in the garbage bag.  All my hard work.. sigh...

The party ended slightly after 10pm. There were more than 100 youths who came for the party but by the end of the day, only a handful of them stayed back to help clean the place. 

My New FREE Toy

So yeah, this is my new toy - HTC Desire S. I got it free from my service provider. :)

 

I was asked to go to designated place to collect it. I thought maybe I'll go there early, collect it and get back to work again. I was probably an hour early, but after meeting up with people who were there much earlier, I didn't have hope of leaving the place any time soon. They were there 2 hours earlier and the was no sign of their names or any other names being called.

Finally, after more than 3 hours of waiting, I got my phone.It was awesome. My first touch screen phone.

It was 5pm when I left the collection place. I promised to go for a movie with Chee Hoe and we pulled Arnold and Rachel along too. Arnold was reluctant because he has already seen the movie, Puss In Boots, with his cousins. Anyway, we managed to persuade him to watch with us.:)

After the movie, we went for dinner in Johnny's Restaurant. We had steamboat and an a la carte fried rice. Arnold also got the same phone that day, and we played with the phones till it ran out of juice.

One thing about HTC Desire S phones... they run out of battery quite fast and you'll always need to have a backup battery or  a phone battery charger. I can't complain because the phone is free. :)
 

Gingerbread Houses - Trial Run

A few days ago, Anne (Aspirers Youth Leader) asked if I could make a gingerbread house for the Aspirers Christmas party next month. I hesitated because I haven't mastered the cement, also known as the royal icing to glue the pieces together to make it into a house.

I thought maybe I should have a trial run first, so yesterday I called Becky to see if she wanted to help and she was like YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I also asked if we could use her kitchen to set up the houses. It wasn't a problem, she said. 

So I made the house pieces and with the left overs, I made some gingerbread men.

Notice my plug? After baking, I tried to pull it out from the socket, but I couldn't. The next day, Mctc helped to pull it out and lo and behold...the plug was a goner. The socket was damaged too. We had to call an electrician to replace the socket and plug.

The next day, my sis and I arrived at Becky's house at 4pm. Liz was there too. Yay! The more the merrier. :D

I made the cement while the others set up the table and arrange the house pieces. I made 3 different houses.

My cement worked. The secret was, to beat it for at least 10 minutes!!!

The girls were having fun decorating the houses.

Here's Becky's masterpiece.

And here's Liz's.

The girls and their men. :D

Becky's doing an operation on one of the men.

Having fun mixing the colours.

It was nearly 8 pm when we were done.

We cleaned up the kitchen and and called Shaphan, another youth, to yam char with us. We passed the biggest gingerbread house to him because we don't know what to do with it. :D On the way to the shop, we called Jian to join us too.

Some random pictures of the youths at the makan shop.

It was certainly a fun evening. :D

Kidz 2011 Year-end Party

The Kidz year-end party was held yesterday AFTER the trip to the Taman Pertanian Bukit Cahaya in Shah Alam. This event was held basically for kids ages 5-12 years old.  All the kids were told to come in a costume and prizes will be given to the best 3 children who took extra effort to dress up.

The party started with singing.

Even the teachers were in their costumes!!!

Most of the children wore a costume. Lion King, Minne Mouse and Mulan were invited for the party too.

Heather's 4 children were all looking good in their costumes.

More interesting costumes. 2 erm.. transformers, I think, the THING, a vampire, PHUA CHU KANG, Cleopatra, and a ballet girl.

Playing games with their costumes on is quite difficult!!

The green bean game. The children had to collect green beans using the back of their hands and transport them to another place. At the end of the game, even the floor was filled with tiny green beans!!

The judges picked out 14 contestants.

The contestants will have to act out their roles.

The judges decision was final. The warrior, the fairy and the vampire were the winners. I'm sure many children were disappointed that they didn't win.

Food was abundant but it wasn't long before the food was gone because the children were so hungry.

Taman Pertanian Malaysia Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam

This was planned as an Aspirers outing and my sis and I were invited to join the Youths. :D I called Minch along too. So there were like 4 adults and 27 youths who went for this trip.We paid RM15 each for entrance fee and transport. I don't think 31 of us covered for the bus fees itself. :(

So, we were told to meet at church at 7am. Jian took attendance. The bus came about 7.15am and we left at 7.30am.

It was free seating and I sat in front with one of the Youths. :D

It was drizzling lightly when we arrived at the park.

Anne got us our tickets and we were ready to go in.

The park was huge but 'walkable''.

Some of us wanted to rent bicycles, but we were too late to rent the cheaper ones. We expected to a RM3 - RM5 per hour bike rental but they have only have the RM10 per hour bikes left.

There are 3 ways to get from one place to another -
1)cycle
2)catch a tram
3) walk

 We all walked and were envious of the cyclists cycling ahead of us.

Our first stop was the Animal Garden.

We spent some time looking at the animals and taking pictures of them.

I think all of us have not been to this place before, so most of the time we just kept walking ahead hoping to get to somewhere.. anywhere interesting.

We stopped for a break. Some of us brought food while others bought mee-in-my-cup and burgers.

The next taman - the Mushroom Garden.

A look-out point.

It was very steep. Those with big feet would have trouble descending.

A mini exercise spot.

A moving wooden platform.

Jared was being vain again. :D

It started to rain again and Anne hurried us to a shelter. We were running late. It was about 12.20pm and we told the bus driver that we should be out by 12noon.

It didn't rain for long though and we walked back to the entrance. By 1pm we were all safely in the bus going back to Seremban.