Tag Archives: marriage

Grow Old A10ng With Me!

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Adrian and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary on Thursday and what an amazing decade it has been! I wanted to get him a really special gift and when I bumped into Frus at Public Garden several months ago, I knew I had found the perfect present for him.

Frus (say froo-se) was founded by Ben and Joanne and they design the cutest cards, stickers, and totes with whimsical local designs. The ABCs according to Frus is Ang Ku Kueh, Bak Zhang and Chicken Rice and learning the alphabet with their A-Z Local Food Print is probably the yummiest way to do so. Besides their illustrated cards and bags, they also design custom prints for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and any other occasion you can think of.

I contacted them sometime in August (they need a lead time of about 2 months) and chatted with Joanne about what I had in mind. She sent me a list of questions about our relationship and asked me for photos of Adrian and me taken during our courtship, wedding, etc. and photos of the kids as well. She emailed me the first draft soon after and I asked for some edits and after going through that process a few times, this is the final product:

the final product!

As expected, Adrian loves his 10th anniversary gift and I’m just incredibly wowed by how she turned the information and photos that I provided into something so special to us. By the way, I came up with the Grow Old A10ng With Me tagline that incorporates the number 10 so if you find it cheesy, I accept complete responsibility!

You can find Frus on Naiise and they also accept orders through their Facebook page and email (). The full list of items available is on their Facebook page so check them out and ‘Like’ them. They will be appearing at the Public Garden Christmas Flea on 21, 22, 28 & 29 November at F1 Pit Building. Do drop by and support Frus because they are such a lovely local business!

Mother’s Day at Wheeler’s Yard

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A few days ago, Facebook reminded me a post I’d written 2 Mother’s Days ago about how I felt unappreciated and also wanted to make it clear that my life as a mother is hardly Instagram-worthy. After being a mother for so many years, I think I’ve come to terms with what I can expect for Mother’s Day.

This year’s Mother’s Day was pretty good, actually. Adrian insisted on having my favourite HaiDiLao Hotpot for an early Mother’s Day dinner even though he hates steamboat. The kids all made nice cards, and we even managed some rather decent photos at the very photogenic Wheeler’s Yard on Mother’s Day. So all in all, I had a lovely time and I’m so thankful for my family.

open

two cooperative kids

Wheeler's Yard

family photo!

on the other side of the door

loads of natural light

bikes galore

on a Vespa

waiting for his haircut?

lounging about

watching the rain

Our 9th Wedding Anniversary

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We were in Nepal last week and celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary there. It was a VERY memorable anniversary and not entirely in a good way. We had a nice dinner at Moondance in Pokhara the night before and even joked that it could count as our anniversary dinner since we might be very tired after getting back to Kathmandu the next day.

dinner at Moondance

So on the day of our 9th wedding anniversary, we woke up at 4.30am and a cab took us to Sarangkot to view the sun rising over Annapurna. You can trek up, of course, but we are lazy people. There was a free viewing area but some enterprising locals were offering an elevated view with seats and free hot ginger tea for just 100 rupees so we opted for that instead.

It was very cold and somewhat cloudy but still an awesome experience. The locals told us that we were lucky because it had been even cloudier the days prior to that. We had quite a good view of the sunrise but the clouds moved in very quickly after that.

lots of people gathered to watch

a magnificent sight

didn't manage to get a good shot with the mountains

didn’t really get a good shot with the mountains

warming up with some tea

silly jump shot just because

After getting back to the Lakeside area of Pokhara, we had breakfast at the hotel and spent some time packing before heading out to explore the area on bikes. We cycled to the dam and the waterfront, stopping whenever we felt like it and randomly eating and buying things.

I had been wanting to try the fried snacks I see everywhere but Adrian was a bit paranoid about the hygiene level. He has not gotten over the fact that I suffered bad food poisoning during our honeymoon in Bali. We passed a stall that looked quite decent so we had some anyway!

cycling in Pokhara

the dam

by Phewa Tal lake

random fried snacks

After checking out of our rooms, we grabbed lunch at Black & White Cafe where I had the most amazingly delicious vegetarian Dal Bhat set ever! It was so good! We love Dal Bhat so much that we had it four days in a row while we were there and for me, that one was the best.

Dal Bhat (the curry on the left belonged to Adrian’s meal)

Sadly though, things went downhill after that wondrous hot meal. We got to the airport and were told we could not check in for our 2.15pm flight because there were four flights before ours that were delayed due to bad weather. Our options were to cancel our flight and get a refund or wait until 4pm for an update on the situation. The plane had to leave Kathmandu by 4pm so that we can get out of Pokhara by 4.30pm. They don’t fly once it’s dark.

After waiting 3 hours, we were told that the plane was boarding people at Kathmandu so we could check in our luggage and get our boarding passes. We were so happy! But just 5 minutes later, we were informed that our flight (and all the other flights after that) was canceled due to air traffic!

Adrian immediately got on the phone and asked our hotel to arrange a car and driver for us. We were driven to Kathmandu and it took us 6 hours, in the dark, and on very crappy and dangerous roads.

sad

at the petrol station before our 6-hour drive

So it was a really memorable anniversary for us and although those 6 hours on the road were terrible, we had each other and I’m thankful for our driver who drove very cautiously and for the man at our hotel who cooked two bowls of hot noodles for us when we arrived cold and hungry.

Here’s hoping our 10th wedding anniversary will be unforgettable for good reasons!

Goodbye Kumquat! Hello Henry!

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good old kumquat

Kumquat is the Nissan Qashqai +2 that has served our family very well for the last three years. (By the way, ‘Kumquat’ because that’s Jeremy Clarkson’s nickname for the car in an episode of Top Gear.) But we need a bit more space soon so we started looking for a new old car a couple of weeks ago. Knowing how fast Adrian works once he sets his mind on something, I insisted on taking a family photo with Kumquat 2 Sundays ago even though it was drizzling. I’ll really miss Kumquat because it’s the car that’s been with us the longest out of all the cars we’ve had since we got married. I hope he’s treated well by his next owner!

our new ride, Henry

Henry is our new old car. He’s about the same age as Kumquat and almost exactly the same colour but significantly more spacious inside. He’s called Henry because he’s a Mazda 8 (Henry VIII, get it? We have a very ~~strange~~ unique sense of humour…) I’m loving the sliding doors, the different air-conditioning temperature settings for the driver and front seat passengers, the space to put all our barang (like cups and bottles and phones), and the fact that we can start giving lifts to people now that there’s more room. I think Henry’s going to be with us for a while! Welcome to the family.

Mother’s Day: Reality Check

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Reality Check

There are articles about Pinterest making mothers feel depressed and inadequate and Instagram portraying unrealistic rosy versions of life and I’m guilty as charged. Guilty not just of putting up picture-perfect artistically-filtered humorously-captioned photographs of my kids but guilty also of being on the receiving end, where looking at pictures of other families/ holidays/ projects on various social media sites make me feel like I need to play catch-up.

So I present a not-so-pretty glimpse into my life with the kids. It’s Mother’s Day and I’m expecting to feel special, to be showered with love and appreciation, to be given adorable handmade cards scrawled in childish handwriting, and to have beautiful photos taken with my colour-coordinated kids. Did any of that happen?

Not really. I still had to run after the kids, take care of all their usual needs and carry out all my motherly duties. At one point of time, I was the only one watching the kids as they ran and played outside, while Adrian and my in-laws were still sitting in the restaurant relaxing after lunch. Then Anya refused to smile for a family photo and made silly excuses about her arm hurting. I was fuming and I never felt so unappreciated in my life. All I wanted was a decent photo and I couldn’t even get that.

To top it off, her class teachers forgot to get the kids to make a mother’s day card in school and she only brought one home the day after Mother’s Day. By the time I got to see it in the evening, however, she had scribbled all over it with a ballpoint pen. Nice. I complained bitterly to Adrian about his children taking me for granted and he reminded me about the other card that Anya had made for me with his help. She wanted the card to be perfect and made three different cards before finally deciding that one was good enough to give to me.

My life as a mother is far from flawless and my kids are as imperfect as they come. I know sometimes I make it seem otherwise. But Mother’s Day was such a reality check for me to stop thinking about composing Kodak moments to capture and present to the rest of the world, and to really focus on living life in the moment with my family whom I love dearly and fiercely with all its imperfections.

Green Corridor Run 2013

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I’m interested in all things to do with the Green Corridor (the continuous stretch of land where the railway track used to be on) so I ~~forced~~ persuaded Adrian to sign up for the Green Corridor Run with me. We registered in November so I had to endure two months of whining from him!

We had beautiful weather on the day of the run. We ran the first part, then walked most of the way except for bits here and there (like when we saw the photographers near the end!), and ran at the end. It was a lovely experience because the Green Corridor is so incredibly lush and verdant. But because we’re terribly unfit, we were really tired after our run/ walk and we were aching the next day!