I am glad I came from a Cantonese family. We Cantonese like to boil nutritious soup and drink. Notorious because when you boil the soup over a small fire for a long time, all the nutrients go into the soup for your body to absorb. Sometimes we add herbs, gooseberries, dates or peanuts into the soup, depending on the recipe.

Every time I cook, I just need to boil 1 soup, 1 meat and make some stir fry some vegetables for the family.

It is definitely much better than taking outside MSG food. Now with prices going up, I need to cook more often.

By the way, below are Lotus Soup, Steam Fish with Abalone and Stir Fry Chinese Cucumber (aka Jik Kuah). And my kids will asked me to put lots of garlic onto the stir fry vegetables.

My children have been asking me to bring them there. Since it is an affordable place to go compare to overseas vacation, I agree. I started planning for the trip 6 months before the date of departure.

I was reading lots of review on hotels and all. At that time, Legoland hotel was still under construction. By the way, I asked the reception, the hotel rate at Legoland hotel is RM700 to 900 per night and 2K for the suite. Ended up I selected Pariss Hotel Skudai.

Pariss Hotel Skudai is centrally located and it is only 15-20 minutes’ drive to Legoland. There are lots to eat near the hotel and Giant, Tesco, Aeon is nearby. The room was spacious and at the lobby there is free WIFI. The staffs could be a little bit friendlier. It is a budget hotel so you cannot expects a lot of facilities, there are none. The room came with free breakfast too.

Airport transfer to hotel – RM68 (6 seater car)
Blue taxi to Legoland from hotel – RM30
Red tax to Legoland from hotel – RM13

If you do not have a car, you need to rely on taxi. I can tell you taxi is unreliable especially the trip back. Someone them hikes up the price of the taxi especially the blue ones. A tip is to collect taxi contacts as you go. You can book ahead with the taxi, when you want to return to the hotel else you need to pay the hiked up price.

There is no local bus available from hotel to Legoland. There is a bus service from Legoland to other places like Hello Kitty, Johor Premium Outlet and Airport. Here is the bus schedule.

I also decided to get the Legoland Annual Pass. There are 2 types: Standard and Premium. Premium covers Waterpark but more expensive and no child rate. I have plan for my family to go for 1 day in the Waterpark, so we buy individual ticket. With Annual Pass, you only need to pay RM50 per entry. Do not buy Waterpark tickets ahead of time because the weather is unpredictable.

With the Annual Pass, my family went in and out many times. In fact 3 days we spend in the dry park. We saw all the shows and gone through every rides at least once. I will share it with you in the next post.

The Annual Pass is open for 1 year, I can take my family there again next year!

Lastly, since I planned this trip ahead of time, I managed to get good deals from Air Asia flights too. The trick is plan early and you can get a lot of savings.

My kids are into running now, joining their papa in training. Just the other day, we were talking about getting the right shoes for them to train. Today we saw Nike free run 5.0 shoes on sale for 40%. These shoes are very light, flexible and water resistance. It is breathable too, so no smelly feet after running. Great shoes for training.

Maybe next year, they can join their papa in 10km marathon run.

Children’s day is here and my girl came back from school, telling me that there is a costume parade in school. She wanted to participate asking if I can help her with her costume. Yeah she loves participating in most of the school activities. She is very different from her brother. Her brother will tried his best to stay away.

At first I was reluctant to help because of my busy work schedule. Moreover she doesn’t know what character she wants to be.

One day, she quietly sat down and started working on something. It was a Thor weapon. She is really keen on participation. Then I started searching in the web to see Thor’s costume. It did give me ideas on how to make 1 really fast. Getting the template is the most important part.

Finally I did this in 2 days for her….

Let’s hope she win something with this costume. Even if she didn’t, I am sure she will get lots of attention especially with the boys.

Emily got baptized on 29th September 2013. I am so proud of her taking the step of obedience and following the Lord’s command.

She did ask for baptism at a very young age but we hold off until she is ready. And now she is.

Praise the LORD for blessing our family!

My church group organized a day to make bak zhang together. It was fun for me to learn how to make bak zhang. It is not too difficult to make all the ingredients. The difficulty is wrapping it properly. For those first timers, they really had a hard time keeping the ingredient together in those bamboo leaves.

After wrapping it, you need to boil it for 2-3 hours. I will not post the recipe here because there are many recipes out there. Just Google it or watch it on YouTube!

Here are the ones I made….

I won some vouchers to have Japanese Seafood Buffett at Eastin Hotel Penang. There were a varieties of sushi and sashimi, seafood, fresh oyster, sukiyaki, tempura, unagi, garlic rice and lots of desserts. It comes with chocolate fountain and ice-creams for the kids. Here are the pictures:

Next week will be the Raya Holidays and my kids are looking forward to the 2 weeks break. One day my boy came home trying to weave a ketupat. He told me some steps on how to do it. I am always interested in doing these types of craft. Quickly I went to search YouTube for video on how to do this.

WAH LAH…..

When I give out instructions to my boy, he only carried out half of it. Often he will do things without paying attention to the environment. I have to keep reminding him of the same thing over and over again. However he is not emotional, not get sad over small petty things.

When I give out instructions to my girl, she will do all that I ask. Sometimes I don’t even have to ask but she does it for me. She is very aware and observant too.

Both like to create a mess! Well we don’t have a maid which is a good thing, so they have to clean up their own mess.

My boy is taller than me and he is only 11 years old. He grew up really fast as I still remember giving birth to him. He has grown up so fast. I missed him as a baby. Now I wonder will he be taller than his papa.

However he needs to put on some weight. He is shooting up but not sideways. It really makes him look like a stick. I will update his height again after he grew pass his papa’s height.