Bali Holiday - Day 4

 --continuation of Bali holiday --

Started Day 4 with some "ME" time...... at the SPA. .  Yayyyy!!!! 
After a quick breakfast, I kissed the 3 Chongs goodbye and then had to practically stop myself from skipping and singing as I took the shuttle van to the spa :-)

At the Spa Reception

 

I booked a session at the Aquotonic Pool. Heard good reviews about it and it's the cheapest item on the spa menu anyway ;-)  Even then, it's USD55 excluding tax for a 2 hour session.

At the Aquotonic Pool

Normally no photos allowed. But since it was still early with no other customers, they allowed me to take a few photos.

Another View

Looks like just a normal swimming pool but it's not. Basically, I was guided through a circuit around the pool by a spa personnel. It started with swimming against current for a short distance, then stepping on reflexology stones then going through a series of about 60+  jet stream "stations" for each part of the body.  Super Syiok!! 

Changing Room at the Spa

 

 

After the spa session, we had a quick pre-lunch in the hotel room. And then it was time to check out of Ayana Resort &Spa.

 

My overall verdict on Ayana : It is of course a beautiful place (fully expected for the price) BUT:

(i) it s a HUGE resort. so it doesn't quite have the "personalised feel" like other villas in Bali.

(ii) everything is available, but just for a price. I wasn't too pleased then even wi-fi was chargeable. We didn't even get newspapers in the room. Saw the room next to ours had it, but maybe that was an extra chargeable item too! 

 

Having said that, the Rock Bar and Infinity Pool was absolutely amazing.

 

Our next destination was Kamandalu Resort & Spa in Ubud. And that definitely didn't dissapoint at all !!! 

 

Our late lunch at Kalamandu

We had Balinesed Mixed Rice, Pizza (not in pic) and Satay.

 

Will continue about Kalamandu in my next post.

Elyssa's Fifth Birthday Celebration (School)

After the birthday celebration at home, Elyssa had round #2 with her friends in kindy.

 

Still reeling from my almost-disaster cake of the previous day, I asked Elyssa what cake she wanted for kindy. In my head, I was already planning to bake a normal square cake and then decorate with a simple store-bought printable icing.

 

But her response was :  "Mummy, I want the same castle cake please! The same pink. The same flags. The same smarties. The same ice-cream cone. Everything the same ok? I love my cake. Can mummy??"

 

How to say no to that? I loved it that she didn't look of the negatives (the uneven icing, the lopsided cake etc etc ) but only the positives. Whoo hooo...... a great way to look at life!

 

Cake # 1 for home celebration

 

 

 Cake #2 for kindy celebration

Still long way to go but at least got improvement!

I added her plastic tiara since I couldn't find the "Happy Birthday" sign.  

 

 

Loaded party packs in car. All ready for the celebration.

 

 

Blowing her FIVE candles after the birthday song

 

 

Took some group photos with all her classmates but not going to post them here ;-)

 

Distributing cakes to her classmates

 

 

Photo with mummy

 

 Teacher suggested - let her wear her tiara!

So, birthday girl became birthday princess :)

(side note :  photo angle very important hor? I look much slimmer in the 1st photo. he he)  

 

 

It was just a short celebration in kindy, but yup, she was very, very happy.

Happy girl = happy mummy.

 

Oh yeah, before the celebration at kindy and at home, we also brought her out for dinner on her actual birthday. (she had a kindy field trip on that day, so I had to defer her kindy celebration. But I contacted the teacher beforehand and her classmates sang a birthday song for her)

 

With her birthday cake in Italiannies 

 

 

 Blow!

 

"Elyssa, oh Elyssa..... you are five years old already!! You still wail in exactly the same way like when you were 2 years old. (chin up, eyes closed,mouth open for a few seconds without any sound). You still show your angry face even when we tell you it's not nice. You still pester us with "why?  "where are we going", what did you say?" questions when we are in the midst of something. You still have problems sharing toys with your little sister. 

But you know what? You are sometimes the sweetest little angel. You warm our hearts and you make us laugh. You amaze us with new things now and then. And when you give us hugs and kisses, our world still stops for just that moment. We love you very, very much.

Happy Birthday Princess Elyssa. You will always be mummy and daddy's princess. "

Elyssa's Fifth Birthday Celebration

Elyssa is now FIVE!

 

We had a birthday celebration for her last night with close family members.

 

Some photos :

 

Birthday Banner and Balloons 

 

More Balloons

Note to self : buy a balloon pump!  

 

Food

Since I'm still limping with my fractured toe, I just did 3 items - her birthday cake, chicken nuggets and vegetables. We mainly ordered from a nearby Chinese restaruant - salted egg yolk prawns, kung pao chicken, "chee keok chow", sweet sour pork, claypot taufu and fried  bee hoon. BIL & SIL brought (and cooked!) the BBQ items - chicken wings, pork slices, prawns, pork ribs and beef steak.

 

 BIL at the BBQ

He did a fantastic job. I think we're gonna name him our official BBQ chef. :-)

 

 

Throughout dinner, Elyssa kept pestering me "Is it time to cut the cake yet?"  "Is it time to cut the cake yet?".  She "helped" (notice the inverterd commas!)  make and decorate the cake, so she was really excited.

 

Talking about the cake, it was another near disaster. Some miscalculation, some wrong steps and I ended up with low AND uneven cakes. Nearly ran out to the nearby bakery to buy a replacement. Thankfully, my 3 packs of Smarties and other deco helped to make it presentable enough to be brought out that night. And Elyssa clapped in happiness and said she loved her cake after I put in the finishing touches. 

Main client happy = me happy.  :-)

 

Daddy lighting candles of her Pink Castle Cake

Birthday Song Time

The 4 of us

Inside View of Cake

 

 

Happy 5th Birthday, my dear Elyssa!

 

Elyssa's Fifth Birthday - Party Packs!

8 days to Elyssa's party celebration in school and I'm almost done with her party packs!  Yay.... an achievement for a last-minute person like me. Last year, I started only 2 nights before the actual party. ke ke.

 

I was really thrilled when my friends introduced me to a shop that sells stuff (mainly junk food) in wholesale packs. They mainly sell to sundry shops so the prices are rather low. Eg: a packet of assorted 20pc stickers only costs RM10.  That works out to only RM0.50 each.  The cheapest I've seen outside for this similar sticker is RM1.00.  A small pack of mini junk food costs about RM0.17 each.  I wished I bought a bit more!

 

Party Pack Stuff

 

 

Just like last year, I decided to personalise the party packs. After all, I need to have boy-ish and girl-ish packs anyway. (so that boys don't get Princess stickers and girls don't get Spiderman stickers).  So might as well go the extra mile to personalise for each of her classmates.

 

Elyssa was happy that she got to choose what goes to which friend. For each pack, she had to select 1) type of sticker  2) colour of Angry Bird game  3) 3 jelly cups.  She liked to explain her selection. eg :

 

-Give Dora sticker to XX.  Because she has a Dora bag so she must like Dora.

-Give Ultraman sticker to YY.  He always likes to do Ultraman pose in class.

-Give pink jelly to friend ZZ.  She likes everything pink.

 

Good to know she's observant in class.  

 

 

"Ok, he gets the purple game"

I just fished out last year's post on party packs for her 4th birthday. Coincidentally, she's wearing the same blue Hard Rock t-shirt and has the same hair-looks-like-a-mop-and-need-haircut style!

 

 

Ta daaa....... some of the completed packs.

The bags are leftovers from last year's pack. Initially, I wanted to tie a ribbon at the top just like last year. But the bulky junk food didn't leave me with much space at the top. So I decided to staple the top with thick paper (colourful file dividers which I had). For the labels, I got some graphics from the web. Did some tweaking in Excel, added some words and that was it. I was pretty pleased with the results.  I think it turned out better than last year's version. :-)  

 

 

 

Front View

 

 

Back View 

  



Bali Holiday Day 3 (Part 3)

--One small part left for Day 3 --

After our 3 hour freedom at the Infinity Pool and Rock Bar, we brought the girls out for late dinner at the hotel's Italian Restaurant. (yeah, that's the guilty part talking).

Complimentary bread basket

Pizza and Roast Chicken

Short story to share:
While waiting for our food, I noticed a very attractive lady (but I only saw the side profile) walking to the table of about 8pax next to ours. They did the typical kissy-kissy huggy-huggy greetings. A young girl quipped "Hello Auntie Tyra!". After some pleasantries the lady said "Oh no.....Auntie Tyra is sooo late. Need to go now" and rushed off. As she walked out, hubby walked in. He didn't hear the earlier conversation but the moment he sat down he said "Wow, that lady sure looks like Tyra Banks". And of course I said - hey, they just called her Tyra!

Whooo hooo..... so were in the same restaurant as Tyra Banks!  (the next morning, my kaypoh hubby asked the hotel receptionist whether it was her. They said they cannot confirm but it was pretty obvious from their facial expressions.  he he)

Anyway, back to dinner-

2 very good singers. They performed 2-3 songs for each table.

Dunno why Elyssa is super shy these days. She didn't even dare to look at them! 

Big, big difference from our Vietnam trip where she confidently danced in front of everyone. *sigh*

 

 

Ice-Cream

Bribe, uhmm I mean Reward for behaving so well with the babysitter :-) 

 

 

After dinner, we took a leisurely stroll back to the hotel room and then Zzzzzz

--End of Day 3--

Bali Day 3 (Part 2)

--continued from Part 1 --

So, operation "dump-the-kids" began when we caught a glimpse of the salt water infinity pool.

This...

And this...

And this....

We enquired at the Kids Club, and they said they could only confirm babysitter availability 2 hours later as it was a local holiday that day, thus some of their sitters may not be working. Aiks!

Both girls were having their nap and I was in the long bath when the phone rang about 1.5 hours later. I strained to hear hubby's words and heard "ok, confirmed then?".  Yayyyyy!  But the phone call woke Elyssa up. Before I could do anything, hubby told Elyssa a "kakak" will take care of them later. Ooops....wrong move!  I wanted to break the news gently to her. Elyssa typically wakes up cranky and as expected, she went "NOOOOO!  I don't want".

So, a HUGE drama started in the room. Crying, whining, protesting etc.  Erin woke up too and became super clingy. At one point, we nearly caved in to cancel our plans. But in the end, we decided to just go ahead.

Baby sitter arrived 15 minutes before the allocated time. Ok, good sign. She looked pretty decent. We signed the consent form (by then, the girls have somewhat calmed down) and we were off!!

Oh my, we dashed out of the room giggling and quietly chanting "freedom!" "freedom"!. Like 2 young kids that have been given a 3 hour freedom pass by their parents. But hang on a minute........we ARE the parents here, and THEY are the kids!  Ironic eh???   ;-)

Anyway, some photos -

Swimming Pool and Sea - almost seamless!

Him

Me

Us :-)

@ one of the Lounge Beds

Sunset Time

Lovely, eh?

    

Mini Cable Car Ride

From hotel level to Infinity Pool/ Rock Bar level

(photos taken earlier)

After the Infinity Pool, we went for drinks at the famous Rock Bar. Didn't take many photos as it was rather dark by then.  My photos below just doesn't do the place justice. 

Photo of bar area taken from cable car

Bar Area

Me looking at the menu

Our drinks

White wine for him, frozen margarita for me :)

Rock Bar definitely has that "wow" factor. It's open to public but the best tables (at the top viewing deck) are reserved for hotel guests. Plus hotel guests do not have to queue for the cable car ride :)

Since my photos are so bad, I just had to pinch this from the web.

A much better shot of Rock Bar

Definitely an amazing experience. So, so glad that we didn't miss it!

When we went back to the hotel room, we stood a few moments outside the door to listen for any screams/cries. Hmm....didn't hear any.  Good sign.

Baby sitter reported both girls were like little angels during the 3 hours. Not a single tear. Not a single complain.  So much for all the drama earlier!

Elyssa with the baby sitter, YeYen.