From our garden

We planted Australian tomato seeds few months ago hoping to get lots of yummy tomatoes.
Our plants got bigger and bigger but we found out that we need to keep the plants reasonably small and send nutrition to the fruit (thank you Dennis for the advice).
Finally we harvested our first tomato!!

Yeah, it's rather small...



Normal avocado not a giant one

(✈ Off today)

Bike ride II (second big one)

This morning Matthew left home for a big bike ride with his new bike riding mates.
He put his new toy on his bike and off he went. He came home after 2 and half hours exhausted.
His watch tells us that he did 62km in 2hour 35min. On the map it looked like he covered half of Brunei. He burnt so many calories (1780!).

I am happy he has a new way of exercising (because his tummy is still big...).
He was not too keen thinking about a big ride but when he came home he looked very satisfied!

No prizes today...

(✈ standby hasn't called in yet)

Sporty Roses

Three of us Roses went for a run yesterday. There is a big empty section 2 min drive away from our house which is very lovely for bike riding and running.
As a part of my Auckland Run training, we did 2 min running, 2 min walking for over 30min. Even though it was a short program we enjoyed running with Oliver. He really enjoyed the bumps and nice breeze.





(✈ standby no flights for Matthew today)

Scottish Baps

Last Easter I wanted to make hot cross buns so I asked Matthew to get me a nice bread maker. It makes bread making 10times easier than making dough from scratch by my hand.
Once I tried to go to bread making school in Japan because when I came here for a visit before moving I found out there is so little selection in Brunei for fresh bread. (There are lots of bakeries around but most of the bread tastes too sweet.)
I was determined that full time house wife should bake nice bread everyday to make our breakfast special. But as you can guess I used the bread maker only 3 or 5 times last year... (our amah Rosie makes bread every week but that doesn't really count)

Today I had some Japanese friends over for lunch. So I decided to bake. It was my first attempt to bake Scottish Baps. I used the bread maker I shouldn't get all the credit for it, but they were so fresh and yummy!!



(✈ Brunei - Singapore - Brunei - Singapore - Brunei / Singapore twice!)

Feels good

Oliver had a big nap wrapped in mummy and daddy's special quilt.



Thank you Merryn.

Monkey and Monkey guy

The day before yesterday, our amah Rosie told me we had a visitor who stole our shampoo and Matthew's face wash. The visitor threw them in the backyard. We were wondering who might that be? Matthew went outside and found the visitor on top of our roof. There was a baby monkey jumping up and down trying to tease Matthew.

Since he was on the roof we couldn't do much except for closing all windows in the house. Very efficiently the house maintenance people came to trim our trees. Some of the trees were overgrown and touching the roof and that made it very easy for little animals like rats and monkeys to run around our roof.

As you can see from Boel's blog the way they trim trees is very different here so we had to supervise them all day so that we still have some trees when they left.

There are two Philipinos who do maintenance work for our house. One of them we call monkey guy. We proved that that is the best name for him as we saw him climbing the trees. We were telling him which branches to trim from our bed room window (yes it is on the second floor). He had no harnesses, no shoes, just hopping one branch to the other. Just amazing...



In the afternoon our monkey man got stung by red ants and honey bees when he was trimming other trees in our garden. Poor guy...

When they left they told me "monkeys can jump so you might still have monkeys visiting your house!"

(✈ Brunei - Singapore - Brunei)

Play time

Oliver loves his toys, especially the Winnie the poo music toy (thank you Nicole) and eight numbered cups. Every morning, every afternoon he plays with those toys. Just amazing how much he has developed over the last few months, he can grab toys, push buttons, chew them, and knock them over...

Before we had Oliver there were maybe two or three soft toys in this house.
Now there are so many different toys everywhere in the house. He is such a lucky boy.



Listen everyone!



number 3 feels good on my teeth...



I love the concentration on his face

Matthew is back on flying from tonight, after having 6days off over the new year. Only 3 weeks until he gets another holiday. This time 10 days away in New Zealand!

I am going to write where Matthew is flying to on the bottom of my blog for you.
(✈ Brunei - Kota Kinabaｌu - Brunei - Manila - Brunei)

Matthew's new toy

Matthew has been acting like a child for the last three weeks or so. Every time the post man (there is only one in our area and often fooled by the pizza hut delivery man) comes to our simpang he looks out the window and say "is it here!???" when he drives off without dropping anything off in our mail box his says "why is it taking so long" But finally the day came!
He got a little slip in the mail box and went to the city post office (here in Brunei you have to go and collect your parcel at the post office and show them what's in the box).

This is what he was waiting for :



And this is what it can do :





The watch transfers all the data collected from his exercise to the computer and analyses it. You can see where he ran, exact distance he ran, his heart rate, how many calories he burned from that exercise etc. (we found out what he burned was the same calories as 7 cans of beer!)

I am sure this new toy will make him fit.

High tea at the Empire

This afternoon I took our visitors to the Empire. We walked around the hotel then sat down for a very nice high tea.

They had good selection of food, fried noodles (of course you need those for high tea right!?), samosas, sandwiches, fruits, and lots of different kids of little cakes.



Yuji loved the sandwiches, he cleaned up almost an entire plate! Us girls enjoyed the little cakes and coffee. They were very very yummy!! It was a fantastic deal - only $28 for two people, $10 for a kid (with a pot of coffee or tea each). I am sure I will be going back there with my friends soon.



Chie looking very lady-like

Zen look

Since we put away our Christmas ornaments our house looks bit empty. I try to make the house look nice but there are only limited places we can go and buy for household here in Brunei. I managed to get nice vase and put some flowers from our garden. Giving our entrance a zen look.



I am getting very excited to go to New Zealand in 3 weeks time. Of course to see our family but also do some arty & crafty shopping. If you know nice shops that you can take me you can start making your lists of places that Misuzu would be interested in!!

Swimming is fun!

Today we went to the yacht club to have a little swim and early dinner.
I take him to the RBA pool sometimes to meet up with other babies and mums. (yacht club pool is bit too deep for me to support Oliver in the water) He really enjoys being in the water. Since last month he is really showing an interest in being in the pool. He can splash water, kick in the water. check out these photos!









I enrolled him for a baby swimming class which is starting in 10 days or so. I will post you with his progress!!

Oliver can crawl !?

When we were at the Watsons (our neighbor) place yesterday, Boel got excited seeing Oliver sort of crawl (I thought crawling was more sophisticated movements...) and told me that he was crawling. Oh! so he has been crawling for a while then. First time mother didn't have a clear idea of what crawling was. I took a short video of Oliver "trying to get his favorite toy, Matthew's iphone" Enjoy!

Quiet day

Since the end of last year we had lots of parties, lunches and dinners. So we decided to have some quiet family time. Three of us had a nice breakfast outside. (Since we mounted the ceiling fan it is very comfortable to spend time at our front porch)

Here is Oliver enjoying fresh air with his dad. After we took this photo he had his food sitting in a famous IKEA high chair. He loves eating! Especially those nice bananas and mango.

New Year's day play date

1st day of the year, you sort of wish things are new and different.
Well...Oliver got up as usual, 6am (he was also up at 3am, 4:30am) so I dragged myself out of bed and had a play with him downstairs for a while. I kept finding myself falling asleep so I took him in his buggy and had a little walk outside our house. It was rather nice morning, the air was very fresh as it rained a bit last night and the sun wasn't too high yet. When we were walking around I heard a voice over the fence "coffee??" from our neighbor Boel! She made me the nicest latte I had in a while! (I should have given Matthew a coffee maker instead of the bike!)
On top of the nice coffee we got some bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Oliver had the first play date of the year, with Linnea and Lucas.


Linnea, Lucas and Oliver


Linnea and Oliver

Good bye 2009 Hello 2010 !!

Year 2009 was very exciting for us Brunei Roses. We started our new year with a big power cut (not surprising anymore...) In February we went to Hong Kong with our friends Chie and Yumiko from Japan. And in May we had Oliver!! Oliver's first oversea trip was to Japan in August. I took Oliver back to Osaka again in November to experience COLD WINTER! The time flew and we celebrated our new year with friends yesterday. We had a wonderful dinner and count down watching Malaysian TV program (that was the only channel we could find in the same time zone).

In Japan we celebrate our new year mostly with family and it is very traditional and quiet. We eat soba noodles before midnight then we visit a shrine or temple to wish good luck for the year. When you wake up in the morning on the 1st Jan kids get new year money and we eat special new year food such as osechi ryouri and zoni. Friends and families send you new year cards (normally I got 20-30 cards).

You receive cards like this :



Happy new year ! wish you all the best for the New Year!