Holiday At Home

The 2-week long school holiday is coming to an end soon. Tomorrow, KK returns to school again for Term 2. This holiday has been comparatively low key for us. Same time last year, my parents were here for a visit, followed by my brother and all of us flew to Queensland for a week of fun at the theme parks. This year, with two of our good friends and their kids back in Singapore for visits, even the Good Friday/Easter long weekend is quieter than usual. It seemed like a long 2 weeks ahead.

Division of labour: XX cuts the strawberries and KK stirs the jelly mixture.

Perhaps it was also due to our exhaustion from the recent move, our family spent the first week or so hibernating at home. Of course, with the two boys together, staying at home is at times worse than going out. Hubby tried to make KK catch up on his Chinese during this period, which he did. When not doing Chinese homework, the boys dashed in and out between the garden and indoors, drifted from watching cartoons on the TV to games on the computer and made us crazy with their accidents, spills, mischiefs and quarrels. There seemed to be endless rounds of dishes to wash and childish disputes to settle.

One of their favourite activity: Chopping up and eating up fruits

I tried to make time pass a little faster by involving them in my baking activities and getting them to help make little treats like konnyakku jelly and fruit salads. They were enthusiastic helpers, XX especially. He will drop whatever he's doing and run over wanting to help when he sees me making something at the kitchen countertop. Sometimes they offered more trouble than assistance, like when XX spilled half the rice I asked him to fill and when he toppled the whole pot of flour to the floor, but otherwise it was nice to see them have fun kneading dough, chopping up fruits and beating eggs for a change.

My first attempt at ondeh ondeh on Easter Sunday

A considerable amount of time was spent outside the backyard garden also. While Hubby and I weeded, watered and nurtured seedlings, the boys were seen alternating between their bicycle, scooter bikes and simply digging around the backyard. We thought they couldn't do much damage playing outside but one day we paid the price for a brief absence of supervision when XX drew on our car with a stone....arrgh!


Luckily there were a few interesting activities to break the monotony. Our family did a photo shoot at the botanic garden in Williamstown last Thursday to commemorate our 10th wedding anniversary. I'll post more about it when the photos come out. But check out here to see what I wore. We also did a day trip yesterday to Echuca, spending more than 6 hours on the road. The weather wasn't too great in the morning, foggy and rainy. Though it cleared up by the time we arrived, it did its damage as we couldn't do our buggy ride as the track was washed out. Althought we didn't do much except take a steam paddler boat ride on Murray River, I always enjoyed long car rides to the country and it sure felt good taking it easy and getting away from homebound duties for a while.