Honesty, the best policy?

This happened earlier this year when the primary threes are choosing their CCAs for the year. Being unathlete Jonah avoided the sports. Uniformed group was too much commitment just in case he didnt enjoy it in the midst of it so he opted for clubs. The comic below tells the rest of the story....
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Poor baby was too afraid to tell the truth so I coaxed him into writing how will the Gradening Club benefits him instead. After attending almost a year of gardening, he has learn to pull out weeds, prepare a pot for planting chili seeds (yes, the chilli plant is still alive seating in our corridor :)), attempted many tasks like leaf pressing, make a dried seeds collections, poster, making a silly poem about plants, he was awarded a Young Botanist Badge organised by the Science Centre Singapore!

So I asked him if he would like to switched to another club next year and he said he's happy to stick to this one :)

Daddy Long Legs

Our bookshelves are bursting with books! It was time for me to clear some but I found it hard to lose some of them like this one by Jean Webster.

I won this in 2nd prize for my school's geography quiz in the secondary one category back in 1982! Yes, truly a long long time ago :) I left the other books lying on the floor and went into reading this one all over again. Typical story that teenage girls would love and it tickled me all over again. I felt like a teenager during that couple of hours reading by the terapin's pond. It would be nice to be able to share it with a daughter, I guess, I'll have to wait for a grand-daughter in the future. The book is so old and yellow already, actually more brown than yellow.....I hope it won't fall apart when the time comes.

Do you have a book that is sentimental to you?

Sex and the Kiddy

Yesterday I attended the third lesson in the Parent Facilitator Course. It's a 40 hour training for parent volunteers which empower us to facilitate the running of SFE programmes and the formation of parent support groups. It's subsidised by MCYS and module 1 covers topics like family life cycle, developement stages of tweenies, how marriage can affect parenting, challenges of teenagers and family wellness. I learn something new about parenting and my children on every lesson. Yesterday we touched on a topic most parents avoid discussing with their children. Yes, it's about sex and not 'that thing'! LOL....As for me, I'm pretty comfortable talking about it with my 2 boys since I started reading them books about where do babies come from when they were just toddlers. "Mummy laid an egg" by Babette Cole is one of my favourite. It's funny, factual and very frank.

Whenever the boys ask any questions concerning sex, hubby and I would try to answer them as honest and factual as possible. I remembered when I was in preschool, I asked my mom about how did I come out from her tummy  and she said through her armpit! That led to another question of how was that possible and she said she had actually found me in the toilet bowl! I knew she was kidding because she was giggling but it puzzled me for the longest time. What kind of other silly answers did your parents give you when you were young?

But I guess some questions are hard to answer like this one from Russell when he was 10.
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Elder Wise

I respect my mom-in-law. She's great at time management and is a fabulous cook. She could babysit 2 toddlers, clean her home and make 3 warm meals a day for her family of 5. She could even find the time to read the papers and scrutinise the property market. Through her encouragement, savings and hard work of moving from a HDB  flat to a HUDC apartment to a terrace house, both my parents-in-law eventually sold their landed property to become millionaires and now living happily in an EA flat with little to worried about. She is a wonderful mom-in-law and we get along very well. Although I respect her a lot, there are times when she's a tad old fashioned in her thinking, well to me at least....

So when she whipped out this advise on how to be a good housewife, I thought it was joke until I heard my hubby mentioned a conversation they had on a guys' night out 2 days ago. I was stumped and my mom-in-law's words slammed into my head at that point. The sequence of the actual event wasn't really like that in the comic below but the words are real.
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LOL! Well, my fellow homemakers, how about you? Do you try to finish your chores before the hubby is home or do you start only when he gets home? Maybe I shall surf Bloggers until hubby gets home before I start sweeping and mopping that darn sticky floor! hee...

It's a Ferrari or something!

Last Sunday, I went to pick Russell and his 3 friends up from their Junior Youth Group meeting. It was my turn to send the boys home and I was driving my van. This was the conversation they had....

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Of course it's not a Ferrari! LOL! Gotta love kids : D

He's so going to Swenson's

Couple of months back, I received a parent letter from school requesting that the Primary 3 children to take an International Competitions and Assessments for School (ICAS) conducted by Educational Assessment Australia, UNSW Global Pty Limited.. I sent an email to Jonah's form teacher to inquire if it was necessary to put the kids through another 'exam'. He explained that the kids would enjoy the challenge as the questions would be very interesting. Jonah said he would like to try it out so I consented. Later on, another letter was sent out to parents to remind us not to give undue stress to our kids for this test so I just let Jonah take his test without any kind of 'training'. In fact I'd totally forgotten about it until he came home one afternoon telling me about the test. He said the Science paper was pretty tough.

Yesterday, he came home from school looking very tired after Chinese remedial class and the Health & Fitness program. He flopped on the sofa for awhile before telling me excitedly about his day. The children received their results for the Science performance. The results were graded as Participation, Credit, Distinction and High Distinction. And he recieved a Certificate of Distinction! In the result's letter, it stated that his score was in the top 11% of Primary 3 Participants in Singapore. WOW! Top 11%!

Needless to say, we are very proud of his achievement. He was smiling from ear to ear and did a little jig when I said he was so going to Swenson's! LOL! Ice-cream is his favourite and he loves eating at Swenson's, which we go only on such special occasion.

I've also framed up the Certificate and put it in our glass shelf  'Hall of Fame'. Every year he received a little laminated certificate of encouragement from his form teachers for doing well in his school's exams. Most times, he's nonchalent about it but this time, I can see he is very happy with this little achievement. It's a joy to watch him glow in confidence :)

My kind of Therapy

Most people enjoy clothing shopping but I prefer browsing in furnishing stores. I can spent hours looking at stuff and it's therapy for me. My all time favourite place is IKEA. It's very casual, no one follows me around the store and yet I can always find someone to help me when I need it. I get to touch and test out almost everything I see. Then when I get tired or hungry, there's a cafe with yummy Swedish meatballs and free coffee or tea. I was delighted when IKEA opened a branch in Tampines. It's just 5 minutes drive from my home and parking is free because of its location. The products are priced reasonably well and I love their slogan, "You don't have to be rich to be clever." .

Every year, every household in Singapore will receive their latest catalogue. Just a couple of days ago, we received our 2011 catalogue. So I've been spending a couple of minutes here and a half an hour there flipping through it. I enjoy looking at their simple designs and I keep every issue. Yes, I do take them out once in a while to get inspiration one way or another. Did you know that I even have their catalogue dated 1988?

Are you an IKEA fan too?