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Our neighbourhood organised a July 4th parade which incorporated a fire truck coming down the road with us as we headed towards the pool.

It was such a wonderful feeling to see everyone outside, the children with their decorated bikes and scooters, prams with red, white and blue.

People were handing out all these things for the children to wear, James had these cool Americana glasses and Cameron had a tissue - lei around his neck.

The boys raced down the road while Matt and I walked leisurely, talking with our neighbours.  I love the community feel of this place and it is something I am so going to miss when we leave here next week! We will be going from many neighbours to almost none!

One of the neighbours waving the flag high.

That is us, all decked out in red white and blue. I had a blue skirt on but I hate wearing skirts so I went inside to change.  Our nice neighbour took the photo for us, otherwise, it would be the usual Matt-and-the-boys photo.

At the pool, parents had contributed food to sell and they had many games for everyone.  Here, coins were tossed into the pool and everyone had to go fish them.  They got to keep what they found.  Poor Cameron could not get deep enough so he only found a penny! James is in the picture above, in the extreme left, with his hands up in the air.

Daddy, I can’t get the coin!

This is what they found.

There was also a sack race, a limbo dance and toss a watermelon into the pool.  They greased the watermelon with vaseline and threw it into the pool and people had to get it out.

Not sure about fireworks tonight, it might be too late for the kids so maybe next year…

Happy Independence Day and hope you had a great one!

Our whole family was blessed to see a lion dance in a mall on Sunday 14th Feb.  The Chinese Association put up an informational series about China, the Lunar New Year, different types of dances and art. It was so packed we could hardly see the dancing but the boys were transported back in time to when they were in Singapore and the lion dances were a dime a dozen.  Oh how I miss being home!

Kong Hey Fatt Choy to all of you who are celebrating the Year of the Tiger.  We are missing all of you at home and wishing that we could be there to join you, especially with the first meal of the day.

Wishing you dear readers much prosperity, longevity and health for the year!

Once a year, the county dresses up their parks with lights that take months to install. I guess you could say it would be its version of Christmas lights, like Singapore’s Orchard Road - although Singapore is more “cityscape.”

As it is so cold, people generally drive through the whole park - it was about 3 miles long of lights, some animated. It was very cute. The boys were reluctant to go at first but towards the end, they were exclaiming how it was the best night of their lives.

I had my tripod ready but didn’t realise that we were not permitted to get out of the car so I had to shoot in ISO 1600 which made the pictures quite grainy. Some of the photos turned out quite blurry because I had to shoot in a moving vehicle at night, but you get the idea.

I apologise that the pictures are in weird sizes, that is the result of using two different picture softwares to bring down the image size from 3MB to a mere 300 KB. (I was using two different computers)

A reindeer.

Candyland. We would drive through a section like this and it would all be candy light displays.

The gingerbread man was animated and he looked like he was jumping from one end to the other.

Cameron was thrilled that they had a Teddybear Land light display.

There were many funny light displays like this one here.  It was such a lot of fun that I think we will be making this our annual ritual.  It is different every year!

We had a very subdued Christmas this year, mainly because I dislike celebrating it alone.  I missed my family terribly, and was thinking a lot about Matt’s family in Australia as well.

We had a little skinny tree and the kids were very excited that they could not wait to open the gifts.  James had a lot of Bakugan toys and Cameron wanted them just because his older brother had them too.  I don’t really understand the craze behind it but James has been saving his pocket money to buy them when they are on sale at Toys R Us or Amazon.

That is Matt with his Christmas present. Unfortunately, we have had to return it to the store because the rack inside was switched and fitted badly.

Our very sad Christmas tree.  We did not realise that we had purchased one for the porch. Next year we will get a proper tree!

A few weeks before Christmas, our boys went to a church bazaar (not our church) where they sold lots of crafts and there was a room called the “Secret Room” with lots of goodies for kids to shop in only. Parents were not allowed to enter and the idea was the kids were to select and buy something for their loved ones. I had stumbled into the room and saw puzzles, toys, books, good quality gently used things at marked at 20 cents and above. The lady there would then wrap it up. There was a separate room also for the kids to do craft work. They had a blast. So the boys were very excited about their gifts to us.  In the photo above, the snowman and ring was for me from James and the other was for Matt from Cameron. The lady had somehow mixed up the gifts.

In the second boxed gift, Cameron purchased Matt a rubix cube and a me a rabbit tic tac toe game. The Nemo? Cameron said he bought a gift for himself and it somehow got caught in the box as well.  Very hilarious! I liked that it gave the children a sense that Christmas wasn’t just about gifts for themselves, although most of the gifts were theirs.

Matt, as usual, worked hard the night before, soaking the turkey in salt and making apple pie.  He was interested in glazing the ham and cooking it in the oven as it is something he has not tried before in the past. So it was a first time eating hickory baked ham for all of us - very nice!

The Gingerbread house was made by Cameron with some help from Matt - and this was our spread for lunch on Christmas day. It did not look like much but today is Dec 30 and we are still having leftovers! I am all turkeyed out! But it was such a great meal, I love the roasted vegetables, Matt is such a great cook, the kids and I appreciate it when he cooks because it is always so special.

We had our first thanksgiving dinner.  At first, it looked like it was going to be a non-event because we don’t celebrate this tradition and it is more of a get together for families and we had no one to spend it with.  However, my Dear Husband (DH) who loves cooking went out, got a 13 pound turkey for $5 (yes, can you believe how cheap it is??? If you spent more than $15 buying groceries, you get it at $0.39 per pound - I like how they make things affordable for people here) He made an apple pie the night before and pumpkin soup the next day.  I heard afterwards that it should have been pumpkin pie but oh well, there is always next year to try this recipe. Matt got most of the recipes from Allrecipe.com

The turkey turned out very nicely.  We all enjoyed it tremendously (in our pyjamas, no less) and talked about the things we were thankful for. It is a nice thought, to set aside a day to be thankful and remember how good the Lord has been to us all this while. I think we will make it a new Sale tradition!

As the whole family was down with H1N1, we decided to lay low this Halloween and not do anything.  We then decided to drive around on the day itself and take photos of the houses in our neighbourhood. Ours was the only one on our street without a single pumpkin.  Some of them went through amazing lengths to decorate their homes. I wanted to do that but I was kind of torn because I have always sat on the fence about this event - from a religious perspective.

This one was interesting, the pumpkin had these figurines that rotated inside of it.

I love how this family stuck the pictures of the black fencing and cats on their garage door. They also had gravestones on their lawn but I did not take many photos. There were lots of people around and I was a bit conscious, taking photos of people’s homes without their knowledge.  I felt like a voyeur!

This was our neighbour’s house, across of us.  The guy gives Matt a lift to work every now and then. They have grown up kids but they are still very much into Halloween, we saw hoardes of kids ringing their doorbell during the night for candy.

Some of the tombstones were very funny, one of them said, “Out To Lunch” and another one read, “I’ll Be Back”.

This one was a law firm - not in our neighbourhood but I couldn’t resist taking a photo! James and Cameron sat indoors and just watched children move from door to door.  We felt really sorry for them but so many parents are afraid of their kids getting H1N1 and we did not want to be seen passing the germs even through our candy.  Next year, I suppose!

Happy birthday to my very precious C! You are a bright, inquisitive, sensitive child who loves the arts, cares deeply about those around them. I am so proud of you.

I received this email from Christina  saying I was the Mother Of the Year 2009 and I totally freaked out. I thought it was a joke - I was a little bit shocked, wondering how did they get my name etc.

J was hugging me, he was beaming and saying, “You’re all over the news!”

Then I realised what it was. How clever. Watch it here

The boys have been working on something “Top Secret” all weekend, and I had to feign ignorance amidst the whispers of “She’s coming!” and slammed doors.

This morning, my sweeties woke me up to present me with a series of posters, made with love.

C also decided to make an extra one for me!

 J also made me a card at school but it was his poem that I loved.

They were his own words. His teacher saw it and said, “Your mum is going to cry when she reads this.”  I didn’t cry but came close to it. How blessed I am that God has given me these wonderful boys!

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there!