Kecil's 6th Birthday

With the sheer amount of things to update here, this Mama thought Kecil's birthday was a good starting point. Before plunging into the story, however, this Mama has a confession. You would notice a very dire lack of pics in this post. 4 measly pictures! And no collages! Well... yeah.... actually, the other day, in a burst of 'housekeeping' fervour (of the digital kind, not physical), this Mama managed to delete quite a batch of not-yet-saved pics. Very much to Mama's chagrin and annoyance. Doh.

Thank goodness for social media, but so the pics here are 'salvaged' from Mama's feed rather than the originals. Looooonggg siiiiggghhh....

Well, it's a learning experience. Let's do better next time, like... check before deleting anything. Sigh.

For her 6th birthday, Kecil requested a celebration in school, where she was going to buy lunch for all her classmates (namely from McDonald's), plus a carrot cake by Mama.
This tied in perfectly with Mama's plans. You see, due to many factors, we had decided to give birth at Daddy's hometown, which will require Kecil to follow Mama there for at least 2 months or so. Her birthday celebration would then be a sort of farewell party before her prolonged absence from school.

All's well and good, so Mama made the reservation with the food delivery guy, and Kecil actually helped to make the carrot cake. (Actually she helped peeling ONE carrot and grated another, just half, then call it a day and went off to play. But that's OK, especially since Mama got the picture above. Hihi...)

We celebrated in school on Friday (her last day of school since we left the following Monday), a day early from her real birthday. It was a pretty low key celebration, just some 'special' food during lunch time, followed with the candle blowing, some candies and presents, but everyone seems to have fun. This Mama is very glad that the pregnancy was such that I still could manage hosting (and even cleaning after!) the whole thing.

Kecil was very happy with the whole thing, even if she forgot to change to her 'Princess dress' like what some of her friends did for their birthday parties. She was also very touched with all the presents her classmates gave her. (Hint: If you want any presents, do give out invitations, haha!)

Kecil followed me buying her present from us that very evening. It was a Lego set. So... on Saturday morning, the D-day, she woke up early to bug her Daddy to help her set up the whole thing.

Closer to lunch time, we had another low key 'celebration' with Kecil's two best friend (both of whom are in different school nowadays). Basically we just played some games with the balloon, then a game of put the patch on the pirate (using a picture Mama literally just printed out on the spot. I love our printer. It's my hero!), followed with a few hits on the pinata. Both the pirate patch and the pinata are Kecil's own request, but the balloon games were totally impromptu. This Mama is just glad the kids enjoyed themselves.

We finished early, quite a bit before lunch time, so Mama had time to run out to buy pizza for the kids (and something else for the adults). There was yet another candle blowing before lunch, but no picture means... it got deleted. Sigh. Well... at least there was that one of the pirate after the last round, with the pirate sporting additional 3 patches: 1 to match his existing eyepatch, 1 on the hat, and 1 as a cod piece. Guess who put the cod piece? Huh.

We flew to Surabaya 2 days later, getting ready to meet Kecil's little sister, not to mention for Kecil's first gig as a flower girl AND her first trip with neither Mama nor Daddy. Didn't I mention we have loads of update? We'll continue later. Until then!

Outing for Three: Dinner

Remember the mountain of pics and update I mentioned before? This is one of them, from sometime December last year, right before our holiday trip.

After all the mangrove tripping and horsing around with 'additional offspring', you'd think we laid the 'additional offspring' at rest.
On the contrary, this Mama & Daddy (and Kecil, of course, usually the instigator, what with all the announcing of our plans to the whole world....) seems to develop a taste for it.
So, we took the three girls out again for dinner by the bay. (The top picture was the scenery we enjoyed from our seats. So cool, right?)

Here's the three of them chatting while enjoying their appetiser.

The best part? When we asked the girls what it was that they were eating, the piped in: "Chicken!"

Ahem.... ow well.. I guess calamari caaaan taste a bit like chicken, despite the giveaway shape. Huh.

As for the rest of the food, let's just say by the time they arrived, the camera was already packed away in preparation for the rush for food. We did find out through the dinner about each girl's degree of selectiveness for food. Haha... am happy to report that Kecil was quite... 'normal', being neither the easiest nor the hardest to feed. The rest? Let's just keep that a state secret. Ha!

Once done with dinner, we made another stop, this time by the lagoon for some drinks. Nothing alcoholic, mind you, but definitely sugary enough to keep the kids pretty hyper.

It was a cute, enjoyable outing with three lovely little girls. This Mama is just wondering if they would be amiable to such outings when they are a bit bigger. Haha....
It remains to be seen if we were to do this kind of thing again in the future. I suppose I'll keep you posted for any other outings. Cheers!

Excuses ...

Just in case you were wondering about the haphazard updating schedule.... here's Mama's excuse:

This Mama is kind of busy with the makeshift school/activity centre/canteen at home. We still do go for our daily walkies with participants numbering from zero, two, three, up to even five (!) kids. Combine that with the same swarm of hungry kids attacking once they finish school.... this Mama is not getting her space for twiddling with her computer.

We need to make a better schedule soon. Ha! Until then...

Outing for three: horsing around

As mentioned before, despite the many pictures, our sojourn at the mangrove park was pretty short. Why, it was not even lunch time by the time we finished there!
And since Little Girls can be quite stubborn, here was where we ended up: checking out our ranch.

Haha... kidding.... it was the horse stable nearby. We've been here before (and again!), but never with Kecil's friends.

It was kind of cool to be back there with Kecil's friends, especially since Jessica had never ridden a horse before. Still, despite their 'prior experience' with horses, Ami & Kecil were just as excited as Jess. I guess there is something special about horses for little girls.

Especially when you get to feed them...

Still, up close, the horses did feel kind of big.... I think Jess just realised that:

Thank God for friends. They served as source of encouragements, not to mention fellow model-to-be:

Anyway, it was soon time to gear up and ride! So.. with a bit of boost... off they went:

Ow... not before Daddy strike a proud-daddy pose, though.

The ride was only half hour long, but me thinks the girls had fun. We sent the girls to their respective homes for lunch then. It was a fun morning, but Mama and Daddy had something to do for the afternoon: a shopping trip out of town.

Bonus point from the long drive? Kecil got on to another 'horsey' ride:

Bahahaha.... anyway, thanks to all Kecil's friends for a lovely weekend morning. This Mama can still see more outings together in the future, what with Kecil and her tendencies to announce every single outing plan to the neighbourhood. (*not complaining, not complaining. She's happy, that's the most important thing)

Until then!

Outing for Three: Mangrove Park

Why don't we start our painful way overdue catching up with this story? This outing happened way before the Christmas holidays, but at least the picture stack had been 'organised', unlike the rest. Ha!

The holiday mood must had been upon us very early last year, for even during the weeks before Christmas, weekends would find us on yet another location, outing or bent on some activity or another. Like that Sunday when we visited the mangrove park.

We had intended to visit this place since the beginning of time, but the last time we tried, it was closed still. Then apparently the park changed hands into the current management, and it was again ready to receive visitors. When we told Kecil about the plan, she was very excited! Soooo excited that she had to tell everyone. Just guess who ended up going there:

Ha! Daddy, the guide (in green), three (THREE!) little girls and Mama (behind the camera, of course).
Well, it so happened that the other two girls did not have any plans for the day, so when Kecil shouted: "Who wants to go to the mangrove park?"
... we suddenly acquired two more participants.
Instakids, you said? I'd say.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the view was pretty breathtaking. There was a wooden walkway for visitors to walk on so we can view the mangrove without getting wet. The girls picked their steps very carefully at first to avoid the gaps between the planks, but soon they were confident enough to be on their usual pace (read: running around).

There were like two huts along the path which I suppose served as rest stops or observation points. We enjoyed the view while our guided pointed out objects of interest around the hut.

Further up the beach, the wooden pathway opened up to let visitors go down on the ground to get closer to the mangrove trees. This Mama asked the girls if they thought there were witches buried under the sand on the account of the 'fingers'. They were smarter than that, though. Haha.... And they were pretty excited to touch those 'fingers'.

The wooden walkway was not too long. It simply curved into a little part of the bay before meeting solid ground once again, and right after that green metal bridge, we found ourselves back on the path we were on earlier. So the girls decided to retraced our steps through the walkway again. This time with more confidence.

Then we got lost.

Haha! Kidding. We went off the path to take a closer look at the mangrove nursery before going back to the walkway.

Running around and finding their own way around, you see what I meant by more confidence? Which, of course, was good, since it gave time for Mama and Daddy to take some beauty shots:

Then finally it was time to go. Jessica got hold of Mama's big camera, and she managed to get a good shot of our guide for the day:

It was a good time at the Mangrove park, even if it was pretty short. The girls had a great time. But you don't really think that that was the end of it, right? The adventures continued, but perhaps it will be another post. In the meantime, here's our little adventurers:

Cheers!

Carnival!

Although these structures had occupied the same space for well over 3 years, they are only open to public around this time of the year, approaching Christmas time.
I think we mentioned going here last year, but as it turned out, this Mama never really write that post.
The photos had been languishing in Mama's computer through the year, until the carnival opened again sometime back.

So... although we have been going to (and taking picture at) the carnival 'faithfully' for the past 2 years (this year being the 3rd), it's only this year that Mama finally post it here.
But then again, I guess this year is kind of different.

As exciting as they were, the past years' trips had always been just us: Mama, Daddy and Kecil. It was kind of fun, then Mama had to stop taking picture after the nth escort duty on some rides.
This year, on the other hand.... well.... you still remember some of our more recent walkies (like this or this)? Basically, the difference with this year's carnival trip can be summed up with the phrase: neighbourhood gang.

Basically, we went together with the kids as a group, an evil idea concocted by the Mamas to get out of escort duty on the rides, you know?

So the kids can go and take their rides while the Mamas tagged along, watching (and taking pictures) from the sidelines. Kids had fun while the Mamas catch up, it was a win win solution.

It was especially possible, because they are basically a bunch of good kids, whose wild idea for being given a free reign at the carnival was.... err... matching the dragons they ride with the color of their clothes? Haha...

But of course, since Kecil had grown up quite a bit since our last visit, it was time to try something new this year: throwing and shooting targets!
Kecil and her friends enjoyed throwing those .... ice-picks-dressed-with-feathers-thingy... at the balloons, especially once they started hitting one or two balloons. They also got pretty excited at getting 'rewards' for hitting the target, even if the reward came in the form of various cheap snacks.

The kids had some initial problem with shooting because cocking those guns proved to be a challenge. Then we found the booth with the automatic/self-cocking guns.... where they couldn't get enough of shooting.

We had a great time at the carnival. Last year, especially , Mama got some nice shots of the carnival. This year, the focus was more on the kids. Haha.... still... good fun. We'll see if we are coming back again before they close up operation for the year.

Cheers!