Bukit Bendera in Penang

We went for short holiday in Penang recently. Or more like few weekends ago. Just don't have the time to sit down to blog these days! Erin is taking much longer to sleep nowadays. Instead of being fast asleep around 10pm, this girl now wants to go downstairs to play with her toys and then bring up her toys one-by-one, sometimes up to almost 12am.  Sometimes, I doze off while waiting for her to come back upstairs. And then wake up to find assorted things like a beach ball, some naked Barbie dolls, a plastic hair dryer etc etc next to me.  Haiyoh.....

Anyway, back to our Penang trip. Got plenty of photos in my phone, but here are the ones for Bukit Bendera :

All ready to go kai-kai - Sunglasses?  Checked!  Caps ?  Checked!

At the foothill

New Train to go up

Gotta be careful though! While we were asking the guard whether we could still enter the carriage (only standing space available), Elyssa suddenly screamed cos her right leg fell in between the gap of the train and stairs. We quickly pulled her up - luckily no injuries but she was in shock for a while. 3 girls who were sitting on the bench practically jumped up and offered to let us sit. (caring Malaysians still exist. Yay!) By the time we reached the top of the hill, Elyssa was back to her normal self already.

Posing with some owls



Nothing much to see at the top of the hill. We decided to have a leisurely lunch at David Brown's Restaurant.  Ended up spending almost 2 hours there.

Love the garden!

 

 

Girls enjoyed the garden while we waited for our food. Weather was nice.

 

Lunch is served!
Edible but nothing great. Definitely overpriced.



Luckily the nice surroundings made up for the food quality. 

 

Some pretty flowers from the garden

 

After the leisurely lunch, we walked around a bit then took the train down.

 

 

We got first row seats on the first carriage. Nice!

 

Happy on daddy's lap

"Avoiding Camera" Photos

A lot of times, I'm lazy to take photos of the girls cos it can be pretty tough to get decent shots of them. Both girls often don't want their photos taken.

 

No exceptions last Sunday, but I thought these photos were really funny!  They were trying to avoid the camera hence the funny antics of hiding behind palm leaves and running around while giggling away  :-)

 

Who's that???

 

 

Jiakkk!!!

Hello!!

Elyssa trying to run away from the camera

Erin following whatever Jie Jie is doing

 

Love these photos  :-) 

My first bib!

So, what is a bib??

To me, it has always been associated with kids and messy eating and drool. But now, there's suddenly a whole new meaning - running bib!

My very first Running Bib

I happily signed up for the 12km Great Eastern Run about one and half months ago. I do hit the gym for aerobics classes so I thought it can't be that bad. Then, I ran on the treadmill and realised........ 12km is a lot further than expected!!! 

So I came up with some rough plan. Run 5km first, then slowly increase by 1km each week.  After my first 5km session at the gym, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep before the girls that night!  For my next gym session, I proudly did 6km. (actually, I was about to stop at 5km and then a guy stepped on the treadmill next to me, so I continued for another km. Talk about positive pressure, huh?)

Managed to do another 6km on the my third session, and then I got really sick :(  My longest bout of bad cough and flu EVER! Really messed up my training plan. 

Two weeks before the run, I still have not resumed training and nearly wanted to quit. Luckily, my running kaki gave me a pep talk over Skype.  Something along the lines of : "Adrine, it's easy to quit. But I know you, you are not quitter etc etc etc". ,  Wahhh....... how to quit like that??!!


I started going to the gym after that.  Even skipped 2 lunch breaks to run. Whooo hoo!!  I never got a chance to run more than 6km though. I was still coughing a bit and didn't want to push my body too hard. My target was to improve my fitness level so I could finish the 12km on the actual day and hopefully get the qualifying medal for finishing within 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Day of the run - All fired up !

My actual time : 1 hour, 44 minutes, 40 seconds.  Whooooo Hooooooo!!!!!!!!!  Felt absolutely AMAZING when I crossed the finish line. 

I got my medal!  Yay! 

Tho it immediately got hijacked by Erin.

 

Not wanting to be left out, Elyssa dug out her old sports medal :-)

 

 

My legs are still aching from the run, but I'm so pumped up! Already identified my next run in November. And my new goal (dare I declare it here?).......is to run a half marathon within the qualifying time. No more half marathons this year (missed the deadline for BSN night run and can't make it for Penang bridge run), so will target early next year.  

 

Oh man.....never imagined myself to be so excited over runs!!!  :-)  

Decorating Cookies - Part 2

Managed to do another round of cookies last weekend :-)

 

  

Plain cookies for decorating

I did heart, flower and teddy bear shapes this time.  And also some circle shapes (using Avent bottle cover)

 

 Stamped-out Cookies

I love these!!  I think I'll probably just do until this step in the future.

 

 

 

 And tadaaaa........some of the completed cookies.

 

Yipppeeeeee!!!!  I think I've improved quite a bit!! 

 

   

 

 

And of course, Elyssa wanted to decorate her own cookies :-)

Quite a few folks have asked me about the cookie recipe I used, so here it is :

http://yinmomyangmom.com/2012/12/15/how-to-bake-cookies-that-dont-spread/ 

 

Decorating Cookies

Decided to give cookie decorating a try recently.

 

As usual, Elyssa was eager to be involved. I used plastic squeeze bottles instead of piping bags cos I think it's easier to handle.

 

Decorating her own cookie

 

 

 So focused !

 

 

My cookies - "Outline" version

Not bad for a first timer eh?

 

"Flooded" version

Keke....and this is where all the imperfections are obvious! Partially due to lack of equipment too, cos the piping nozzle I have is too big. Plus I only have ONE nozzle.  So when I switched between the pink and yellow icing, I had to wash and dry it first.  Oh yeah, and then had to take turns with Elyssa for that ONE nozzle  :)

 

 

Best part - eating!

 

 

Since I still had plenty of leftover royal icing, I did a second round of cookie baking and decorating the following weekend.  My 2 nieces stayed overnight with us and they were happy to join in the fun too.

 

Elyssa with her cousins

I bought a new plastic squeeze bottle from Daiso but it was not that good

 

Using toothpick to do touch-ups

 

 

My simple outline cookies

Really need to go and buy a proper nozzle!

 

 

Just for fun :-)

 

Rather fun and addictive!  Gonna bake another batch of cookies to decorate this weekend.  But before that, I really need to get some blue colouring and proper nozzles.

Sweet Moments

*Phoo Phoo......Blow Cobwebs*

 

Haven't updated this blog for more than 2 weeks already! Various reasons actually. Have been unwell lately. Cough and flu for more than a month :(  So when the kids sleep at night, I tend to doze off as well. And of course, the longer I don't update this blog, the harder it is to "re-start" the engine.

 

So here's a quickie post to start things off again.

 

Presenting...... Sweet Elyssa and Erin moments:

 

Elyssa jie jie carefully feeding Erin

 

 

Reading books together at MPH 

 

 

Fooling around at home - they love their "same-same" pyjamas!

 

 

Sharing a cup of ice-blended coffee

(uhm....or more like trying to drink Daddy's coffee as fast as they can before Daddy wants it back!)

 

 

There are plenty more sweet moments between the 2 sisters. Love, love, LOVE moments like these!

 

But of course, for each of these sweet moments, there are probably 10  times (or 100 times?) of the "unsweet" moments. Ha ha.!  They do fight like cats and dogs A LOT!  Erin is at the stage where she wants everything jie jie has.  And Elyssa is at the stage where she doesn't really want to give in.  So yup, pretty much a standard recipe of lots of crying and wailing on a regular basis  ;-)

"T"

For Erin, the most important alphabet is "T". 

 

Example -

1. Ah Tong (= Ah Kong)

2. Tie Tie (=Jie Jie)

3. Toup (= Soup)

4. Too Too (=Shoe Shoe)

5. Took (=Good)

 

Ha ha..... I just love the learning-to-talk phase  :-)

 

 

" T's the best!!! "