End of term party

It was Oliver's last day at school for this term. Got teachers presents in the bag, ready for the last day!



Us parents were invited to join in on Santa's visit to nursery and the end of the term party in the classroom. I don't think Oliver knew it was the last day but he certainly knew Santa was coming to the party! He was very excited and was telling me about Santa over breakfast.

The children shook the bells to invite Santa into the room, and a few minutes later we heard HO HO HO...



Some children were screaming from excitement and others were shaking seeing this strange person in the costume.
Oliver was the latter, he ran to me and told me we should go home NOW. I managed to convince him that Santa won't come close and he doesn't have to go and sit on Santa's lap. I think Oliver is scared of those who do not look human?

Anyway he decided to stay away from him. Bless him...



The party kicked off and all the children got so much food! I just couldn't get over the amount of food we had for the little ones party, it was bring a plate but ended up filling the whole table!





I made some Christmas fruit sticks:



Angry birds were dressed in Christmas colours too:



Luca and Oliver with Mrs. Kristine and Mrs. Budi:



At the end of the party we watched a slideshow of what the children have been doing in the classroom during this term, which was very nice. Oliver could recognise all his friends names!

Oliver came up a couple of times:





We weren't sure Oliver about starting nursery this little but we are glad we did. He has grown so much and enjoyed classroom activities and making new friends. Now he will be on holiday for the next 3 weeks. I hope I can occupy him as much as school can.

Happy holidays everyone!

Christmas activities

I am so lucky to have so many crafty mummy friends. Oliver was invited to join gingerbread house decorating yesterday afternoon. Very exciting!

Us mummies decided it is better we build the houses and the children will decorate as our kids are still a wee bit too small for complicated structure building like this!



It turned out it stands quite nicely.



Little chefs got to work:







The girls did a girly house: Very cute!





The children did some gingerbread cookie decoration too - smelled and tasted very nice:





It was a very Christmasy lovely afternoon. We loved it!

Winter feeling

It is one of these non-stop rainy days today. Not stormy at all just constant wintry rain. The whole house is dark and I don't even need to put any aircon on. It almost feels cold (it is around 24 degrees).

Having the Christmas lights on makes it extra cosy and wintry. I don't like rainy days but I don't mind it during December.
I miss having seasons...

I really want to touch...

Little Luca is very determined!

Beach lovers

The other day we just could not resist going down to Pantai Muara, it was such a beautiful evening. Oliver loooooooves going to the beach.

To our surprise there were quite a few people there:



Oliver didn't give up on biking even though it was very hard work:







Luca was pretty happy being on a bumpy ride:



The best activity on the beach - Matthew and Oliver chased the waves for a long long time:



Beautiful sunset:





The fresh sea breeze made us all hungry and we all slept well that night. We just love our beach walks so much!

Special coffee morning

I was invited to a coffee morning hosted by the Japanese ambassador's wife Mrs. Hirose. Luca came along too. He was sound asleep until we sat down and were ready to eat - of course!

Yoshimi and Luca:



The table was beautifully set in the traditional Japanese way.





Lots of yummy food:



Saeko and Miho:



Even though I couldn't enjoy as much talk as I would like to because of my noisy little boy, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. I don't think these things could happen at many other places, it is so nice the Brunei Japanese community is close and small :)

Flashback

Luca turned 6 months today. The time just flew and now I have a big baby (not a little one anymore). He is growing healthy and happily. Here are some photos from the past 6 months.

Day1:



1 month:



2 months:



3 months:



4 months:



5 months:



And today. How amazing he can sit up by himself and is already crawling!!







I am so enjoying seeing my boys grow every day. It is a great pleasure being a mum : )

Green, Red, or White colour day

It was another Junior School Colour Day today – students were encouraged to wear red, green, white or Christmas clothes! (the last Colour Day was to wear yellow to celebrate Deepavali).

We got ready slightly earlier than usual so that there was a chance to take some photos before heading out to school.

Here is Oliver in his favourite Christmas t-shirt (DEAR SANTA DEFINE GOOD):



Of course I dressed Luca in his Christmas colours too, here are the boys with L&L:



It's nice Luca's back is strong enough so that Lucas and Linnea can hold him by themselves:





When we got to school the Unicorn classroom was decorated in Christmas themes:





Some of the mothers from Oliver's class were very organised and gave Christmas presents to everyone so that they can take them home to put under their Christmas tree. How thoughtful is that!



Christmas is almost here. The excitement is definitely building up!

The Christmas Cookie Club

I spend my Tuesday mornings being creative and crafty with the "Creative Crew". It has been so lovely since we started in May this year.

One of our crew suggested we do Christmas Cookie Exchange this week. I had no idea what it was about and how to go about it. So I did a little research and found out about this novel "The Christmas Cookie Club".



The book description goes like this:
"Every year Marnie and her friends get together for a cookie party. Each member of the cookie club has to bake thirteen dozen cookies, which also need to be beautifully and unusually wrapped. They give the cookies to each other and also donate to a local hospice. Each cookie comes with a story, which is emblematic of the year that has just passed....."

So on Monday night I baked and baked my cookies for the girls (I don't think I have made so many cookies at once before). There are 7 of us in the "Creative Crew" so I baked enough for 8 batches of which one of them goes to charity.

Baking wasn't so hard but the problem was that I hadn't decided fully what I was going to do with the wrapping. It needed to be creative and Christmasy... I thought about it lots and lots, and finally at 9 o'clock at night I came up with this idea!



I used Christmas fabric to wrap the cookies in the traditional Japanese way (furoshiki style) so they look like Santa's present sack. I took the photo for this blog post and then! My creativeness finally kicked in!! I needed little Santas to complete the decoration.

So I got my origami paper out and made some Santas. I used red ribbon to attach the Santa to the sack.
Taaaaddaaaaa my cookies are completed!



Here are my 8 little Santas ready to deliver the cookies!



I was very happy with my cookies but I got extra happy when I saw all these cookies and getting each of them as a gift to me!



So exciting to open each one, there was Swedish saffron biscotti, gingerbread houses, shortbread cookies, cranberry orange cookies, peanut butter balls and you can see these beautifully wrapped cookies closely in Boel's blog. Not to mention they were all very very yummy!

All of us together:



What a wonderful craft session/mission we had. Thank you ladies for a lovely morning!

Guess who spotted the cookies when coming back from school?



yum yum yummmy!