Brought my little 5 year-old nephew for his first movie at the cinaplex during the school holidays last week. We went to watch the new Pixar movie, Up. Miss PreTeen had waited impatiently for this movie ever since she watched the trailer sometime in July. CoolTeen came along too, and I was rather surprised that he offered to take his little cousin to the restroom before the movie started as he generally doesn't like being around little children.
The movie is about a grumpy old man, Carl, who ties thousands of helium-filled balloons to his house to travel to a place called Paradise Falls where he and his late wife had always planned to go. Then there's this very annoying yet charming boy called Russell who happens to be on the porch as Carl's house lifts off the ground, and Carl has no choice but to let Russell tag along with him.
The movie is a little long at 2 hours...but if my active little nephew could sit through it without getting restless and bored, then I think it's a pretty good movie. My kids and I enjoyed it very much even though we saw the 'normal' version and not the 3D one.
Here is a trailer from the movie. My favourite scene is the one where Russell asks if he could "be of assistance" and Carl tries to slam the door.
My sis-in-law who works in the Human Resource Department of a large company emailed me this chart and I thought it would be helpful to share this information. At least with this chart I can compare the symptoms of the common cold with that of the H1N1 flu when my kids complain of feeling unwell.
My brother-in-law (husband's brother), his wife and 3 kids are back from USA for a 6-week holiday so we took them to visit the Elephant Sanctuary in Kuala Gandah, a 2-hour drive from KL. We went in 2 cars as there were 13 of us - 8 adults, 1 teenager, 3 kids and 1 baby.
The Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary is a temporary shelter for wild elephants that have been made homeless due to clearing of the jungle for plantations. These elephants are later relocated to Taman Negara and other suitable habitats throughout Peninsula Malaysia.
We left at around 10 am and packed KFC for lunch as we were worried that since it is the puasa month, all the Malay eateries there would be closed. We had all the kids in our car so we had to make more frequent toilet stops, and reached there around 12.30 pm. Had a picnic lunch and then proceeded to watch the elephants have their bath. First they were hosed down by the keepers, then taken to a nearby river for a thorough cleaning.
My 2 little nephews aged 3 and 5 were thrilled to be able to touch the elephants, feed them and ride on them. We asked the 5-year-old to rate the experience from 1 to 5 and he said, "100!" However, their little baby brother was fussing quite a lot because the weather was really hot today.
Each visitor is given a sticker and only those with the yellow sticker are allowed to ride on the elephants. For each group or family, only half the number of people will have the yellow sticker. I had the red one.
Orang asli children from a nearby settlement
The place closes at 4.30 pm everyday, but we just couldn't take the heat and left around 3.45 pm after watching a few foreign tourists enjoy a wet experience as they rode the elephants into the river. Despite the 'No Bikini' sign, a foreigner still took off her wet T-shirt to reveal her bikini top in the presence of everyone there.
We were quite pleased when we reached the Gombak toll at 5 pm, thinking we would get home early, only to be stuck in the rush hour crawl...
Hubby, the kids and I were travelling on the KESAS highway when this funny sight caught our attention as we stopped at the traffic lights at the Bukit Jalil/Sri Petaling interchange. The contractor must be doing his bit for the environment by not cutting down the tree before putting concrete on the slope!
A friend of mine made some double-coloured jelly for one of our church functions and they looked so pretty that I decided to try making them too. The photo above is the jelly I made, the one that my friend made was much prettier!
I made dragonfruit jelly then used cookie cutters to cut out some shapes.
Arrange the pieces in a container.
Arrange the rest of the jelly in another container.
Then I made plain jelly and poured it over the dragonfruit jelly. Leave it to cool and set. Cut into square pieces and serve.
Ingredients for dragonfruit jelly: 300 ml dragonfruit puree 10 g agar-agar powder 200 g sugar, or to taste 550 ml water
Ingredients for plain jelly: 10 g agar-agar powder 200g sugar, or to taste 850 ml water
Things needed: cookie cutters containers for jelly
A stay-at-home mom with a fairly odd sense of humour. Life in the 'mommy lane' with Mr. CoolGuy (formerly known as Cool Teen) and Miss Sweet Teen (formerly known as Miss PreTeen) is always wildly unpredictable so I figured why not just try to see the lighter side of things and enjoy the ride!
