The Apple's Diary!

The new study table was delivered. I was a little worried the table couldn't come in time for Jon's new  tuition plan. one side I think this was a little low for adult and adult won't be comfortable for long use. However, this is suitable for the kids. Best of all, it can be folded and kept away if not in use. full extension It can also be fully extended to 150cm in length, so both boys now have more space to do their works. For the tuition plan, we intended to have this table right in the middle of the living area. We would be able to view tutor and Jon through the camera. I think this is better than having them in the room and have no idea what is going on.

Hais... Jonathan came down with the terrible HFMD and 2 days later, I found myself infected as well. It was a double whammy because I, am the one who took all precautions to minimise the chance of the boys getting HFMD in their early childhood, yet in the most prepared defence mechanism, there was still a loophole. And as if it was not enough, I, who didn't like to eat the children's leftover food, decided that day was too hungry and bended the rule. One careless mistake was enough to send me and my boys into "house arrest". By Day 3, the pain from the ulcers in his mouth was too much for him to bear. crying in pain His food and fluid intake dropped from Day 1 onwards and lasted till Day 5 which he managed to start eating and drinking as per normal. mouth full of ulcers spots on feet, palms, elbows and knees His first exposure got the full scale of the nasty virus. I didn't even want to count the number of ulcers in his mouth, becau...

Towards the end of August, we celebrated Teacher's Day with a little handmade card (more of a scribbled by the younger boy). We also had 2 horrible encounters. First stop : Teacher's Day Ordered this croquembouche in Teacher's Day theme. I had one sent to their preschool when Jon was a Playgrouper. Now he is 6 and graduating from preschool so I thought it would be like a full circle for his preschool life. photo credit : cloud9 The boys also did their own cards with no help from us. I only sponsored them the stickers which they picked and chose to paste it all over their cards. doing up their cards Over at Sunday School, the kids also put up a performance for the teachers. Sunday School Performance With Teacher's Day and public holiday, we took the boys out for some fun under the Sun. Thought it would be a good start for September but who knows.... enjoying their happy moments Big boy came down with the dreadful Hand F...

Photo Credit : Sophessa Cakes This week, we had our Jon turned 6! How fast can the time fly and just like that... like a snap of your fingers, he is 6 and going to the next leap in his life. He is one year older and hopefully, a year wiser. He makes interesting observation at the most unexpected moment and is sharp eyed. This year, he requested a Spider Man cake for home celebration and a Cruise Ship theme cake for his class celebration. We did consider having a party at Waku Waku but with the renovation, it would be too tight to plan such an event. So we settled for Bengawan Solo's Spider Man cake, held it last Sunday together with our mini house warming (house is not completely furnished so I shall hold on posting first). Simple Home Celebration Family Shot For his class celebration, he specifically requested for a cruise ship theme because he said his friends asked a lot of questions on his May cruise. So he wanted to show them what a cruise ship is l...

Who likes renovation? Not me, certainly. The packing and unpacking, the dust, the number of decisions to make, the coordination etc.. there are enough to drive me crazy. So I managed to pack our stuff into 14 small boxes and 8 big boxes which we barely made it onto a 15" ft truck. The 3-men mover team took almost 2 hours to bubble wrap our furnitures and my piano and another 1 hour to loan everything into the truck. the mayhem of moving out loading into the truck And that were only 3 rooms of belongings. On side note, I would have better gauge when we move again to new place, it would probably be 2-3 trips of the truck and probably 50 boxes in all! So the first stop was to IMM Extra Storage to deposit our load and then to my parents' place. Their place was our temporary holding site for us while we tide over this renovation period. mid size storage also packed to the brim Renovation started on Monday. We engaged Kass Design for Project Reno II...

And so... just like that, exciting July rolled over and P1 registration for 2018 ended last Friday. The results came out to be eye popping! Ah boy's school was highly oversubscribed with 94 applicants for 26 places. Actually this is not the only school that ended up with such result. A total of 88 schools require balloting and you will be surprised neighbourhood school eg. Northland Primary in Yishun had garned 200 applicants for 51 places. Most schools that enter balloting situation were for Singapore Citizens within 1km. From this round of exercise, I would really advise parents to get into alumni or affiliation. Best is to stay within 1km from school of choice, at least you get a chance to ballot. Otherwise, you are directed to the back of the queue again and there would be very limited choices left at Phase 2C supplementary. And good luck to all who is balloting!

I didn't expect we would actually make this move. Instead of moving to a new place, we decided to renovate current place. 2 factors propelled us to make this decision. Primary school and unable to find a better place to move. So we decided to bite the bullet, vacate current place and do a major overhaul for current home. And this is no fun at all. We got Kass Design to assist us in our Project Reno II. The objective is simple. Refresh the look so we can easily stay for another 5 years. Project Reno II consists of re-doing the 3 bedrooms flooring, whole house painting and carpentry work. To allow the renovation to take place, we rented Extra Space (a 66sqm storage container) at IMM. Then we have engaged mover to help us move most of the furniture and our stuff to IMM. For our temporary holding place, we are migrating west-ward, back to my parents' place. This project is crazy and tedious. We are back to the pre-reno days which we have to make many decisions within a sho...