Suzuki Spring School

We spent a whole day at Abbotsleigh today attending Suzuki Spring School. The program was more intensive than I thought. Lara was in Group V8 (Book 1 up to etude). She had a tutorial lesson at 9.30am, repertoire lesson at 10.20, enrichment lesson at 11.30 and 'play in' at 12.20. We had a short 45-minute lunch break before the closing concert tuning and the concert itself at 2pm. We left home early this morning and didn't get home until 4pm!! I am exhausted and I didn't even play any violin!

This turned out to be a good distraction for me. I was very busy with work in the last 3 weeks that I not only neglected my motherly/wifely duty somewhat, I was in this 'work rut' that I stopped appreciate the important people/things in my life. Being surrounded by kids and violins today made me forget my 'little work problems' and cleared my head a little.

Lara didn't really want to play in another concert at the beginning of the day. But when asked what the best part of her day was, she said 'playing in the concert"!. I only managed to record half a song at the end (camera technical issue-insufficient memeory!). This song 'Perpetual motions' had great significance because it was also the song Lara played at her debut concert last week at her teacher's house (Lara's new violin teacher holds a student concert every term. I'm so glad we found her, but this is another story). At that concert, Lara 'forgot' one part of her song, luckily re-gained her composure during the variation part of the song. This is just like life I guess. Sometimes you play well, sometimes you don't. You go past that and life goes on!

Sam's birthday

Sam didn't eat any dinner and had a sudden temperature on Thursday night, two and a half days before his birthday. I took him to see a doctor on Friday and he had the first dose of antibiotics by lunch time that day. However, Sam still got worse overnight, vomited many times between 1-5 am on Sat morning. We would cancel the family birthday dinner on Sunday if he hadn't shown signs of improvement. Sam asked for bread and started to eat on Saturday night, and by Sunday was full of beans again. It was a tiring weekend for the adults, having to look after a sick child and prepare dinner for everyone. It was my birthday the following day, all I wanted to was to have a good nap!

Sam playing with new toys on his birthday. He received several Thomas presents, he is a Thomas fan!


I had learned from past birthdays that there was no point trying to do too much and made myself too tired. There is always another birthday coming. I decided to outsource the cake this year and made the family dinner as simple as I could. There was no time to make another dessert either but the white chocolate mud cake (it weighted a ton!) was enough really. There was plenty of food left without me making more varieties.
Lara and Sam loved the ballons and enjoyed playing with their cousins.
Happy 2nd birthday my little boy!

Writing, reading and drawing

I didn't really teach Lara to write before kindy started. Lara learned to trace letters in daycare but was not taught the alphabets. I was happy to leave the formal learning until school started. Lara slowly learned to write all the letters (capitals and smalls). After two terms, she now writes quite well, with most sentences started with Capital letters, only occasionally mixed up capital and small letters.On a good day, Lara writes neatly with letters in similarly sizes and the right 'finger spaces' between each word.

A couple of school mums had commented to me about how neat Lara's writings were.  I saw her improvements when I saw the 'Hansel and Gretel' story she wrote. Lara has good imagination and writes interesting sentences. She received a deputy principal's award last term for her story on "yo you and the zoo". The occasional mistakes, like writing 9 like letter P or 2 the wrong way (more like a 5) were alright as long as there are improvements.


So far I have taken a relaxed attitude towards sight words (the 100 words they have to learn in kindy?). There are so many things to do between the time we get home (sometimes close to 6pm!) and bed time, including cook dinnner (while look for food to give kids to eat, they are just very hungry when they get home!), eat dinner, get Sam to bed (usually Simon's job), practice violin (with Lara), homework (some nights), readers, bath/brush teeth and bed time story. Sight words are usually forgoteen! Lara was not the slowest, but not in the top half of the class as far as sight words are concerned. While we read readers, I noticed Lara can sound (with guesses or help from the pictures) most words, even those not in her sight words. My execuse is I'd rather her learning the words properly from a book than memorising them on a sheet of paper. Most of the time I feel Lara has enough on her plaste already and she is doing well at 5. Other times, I wonder whether I should perhaps spend more time with her on reading and writing.

We receivd Lara's first school report at the end of last term. I admit I was a little disappointed that everything was 'meet expectations' and all efforts were 'satisfactory' but there was no 'exceed expectations' or 'extraordinary efforts' in any subject. Simon reminded me that he didn't 'get it' with maths until 10 or 11. I did quite well from primary school, but we didn't start school until 7 in Taiwan. I have to remind myself that Lara is still very young at five years old, and that it is more important she enjoys her childhood than worry about the grades.



Lara enjoy drawings, painting and drafts. Her drawings of animals are more correctly-proportioed now. She needs to learn to be patient and not get too upset when her artwork doesn't turn out as she likes sometimes.

Siamanges and the goat rescue

Continuing on about our recent holiday...

The highlight in the zoo was the Siamanges. The siamanges have throat pouches that can inflate to make loud resonate sounds. Here is a short video we took while these apes howled. The mummy Siamanage carried a two-week baby on her tummy and the daddy Siamanage ran round showing his arm muscles to warn us off. The kids loved them!



The highlight in Mudgee was the goats. We spent some time in this place called 'Leaning Oak' patting goats (or more correctly, one goat in particular). This friendly goat followed us around like a dog. She had a collar on so I thought her was a family pet. We later found out that only the 'naughty' ones get to wear collars (so people can get hold of them easier). This friendly goat made an attempt of eating everything the kids thrusted into her mouth and seemed to enjoy the attention. She did some funny jumps away from Sam, other than that, she followed the kids around while they looked for 'food' for her to eat. 




After lots of patting and photos, we went inside to try the goat cheese. I bought a block of brie and some goat cheese in pesto (yummy!) and we chatted to the lady owner about her goats and sheeps (one of them had babies the night before). Just before we were about to leave, we heard strange high-pitched sound coming from the shed. The next minute, the owner lady ran out from the tasting room into the shed shouting after her that the goats are in disstress. Then she ran out and asked if Simon could go and help her. It turned out that two of the goats wandered into the shed and fell into the underground water tank. The cover to the tank broke and the male owner in fact left for town just after we arrived to get new covers for the tank. The water tank was very deep and luckily Simon was around to help the goats out. It was nice now back at home we talked about the goats while eating the lovely cheese (wish I have bought more!!).

[23 months] Talkative

Sam knows many words and talks all the time.

You have to decode what he says though. "Nanni" is 'Iin the night garden', his favourite program and "Nonni" is 'Thomas'. "Ta-tu" is thank you and "You-ee" is lolly. He was introduced to lolly during the long car ride this holiday and every 2 minutes, we heard 'you-ee?' coming from the back seat. He also asked 'why' when we asked him to do things, no doubt getting this from Lara. He is great at passing things to Lara and like all kids, will choose the biggest food item while passing the smaller potion to Lara. In the morning when I tell Lara to 'get ready to go' if we are going somewhere, and if Lara is not 'getting ready', Sam would go up to Lara and shouted 'weedy to doe wa wa'. In fact, he really like to shout 'instructions' to Lara. (probably copying me...) He calls himself 'Nam' and like any two-year-old, he likes to do things himself 'Nam do it' he says.

Sam likes to sing 'ee-i-ee-i-o' in 'Old MacDonald had a farm' and he does all the animal noises at the right place. He dances every time the volin music is on. He also knows the tune to 'twinkle', 'lightly row' and some other violin songs and humming every time the CD is on or Lara is playing. We don't let him touch Lara's violin in case he breaks it, but I'm thinking of making a 'box violin' using a ruler and a tissue box for him later. This is him playing violin with a friend's daughter's violin (a cheap one she bought overseas as a toy for her daughter)

July holiday

We just came back from a 5-day short break, a couple of days in Dubbo and a couple of days in Mudgee. It was not a great holiday because we all got Sam's cold. In fact we were all sick before we even left home. The first day driving to Orange was the worst day. When we stopped at a petrol station at 2pm there were snow pellets dropping from the sky. It was very very cold. Not a good weather for Lara who already had 39.5C fever the night before. In fact, her fever would last 5 days. Rather than going to the zoo, we took her to see a doctor the first morning we were in Dubbo.


The first night in Orange was not great. I was very tired from a day of driving with temperature and a very sore throat myself. Simon went out to get some food for us (in the freezing cold). Most of the restaurants didn't open on Sunday and the food he eventauly found was barely edible. While he was gone, I had my attention somewhere else for 5 mintues and Sam managed to get hold of a red crayon and drew all over the cream carpet in the hotel room. We spent the next half an hour trying to get the marks off.



Despite Lara not wanting to do much and threatened to throw up, we spent one afternoon and a half at the zoo. Dubbo zoo was big but there was minimum walking involved and it was very easy to get around in a car. It was very relaxing being with the animals. We got very close to the giraffes, heard the lion roar, witnessed the Siamanges and their baby in action. The view from the Savana viewing platform was amazing too. We were also lucky that the Mudgee wine-tasting part of the trip was at the end. We managed to taste and bought some wines and Simon managed to rescue a couple of goats on the way!

We are very glad to be home though.

A thing or two about violin

Lara is doing well with her violin. Even if some days we could only fit in a 10-minute quick practice (when I'm too tired to play or no energy to supervise), Lara is progressing well now passed the middle of book one. She is learning 'Andantino', 3 songs away from minuet 2. Bach's minuet 2 was the first violin song we heard when we sat in at a lesson back in Oct last year. I can hardly believe Lara is nearly playing that! The young fingers are very able - Lara can move her fingers faster than me now...

Lara went to a Suzuki violin funday a few weeks ago. It was for Book 1 & 2 kids, there were around 20 kids there. We met an experienced teacher Mrs Haywood (whom I was trying to get in touch with) there and saw how she taught. It was good value for only $10 one hour. Playing with other kids just made it more fun and the hour went very fast for Lara.

A small hiccup last week when Lara broke the bridge of her violin (she was being silly trying to play the wrong way). It meant no practice for 3 days, extra time spent to get the violin repaired on my day-off and $65 out of pocket (another shop was going to charge $95). Luckily there was a spare 1/8 violin we could borrow to do the lesson on Saturday morning.

At around the same time, I got a call from a teacher I spoke to earlier. She invited us to her student concert at her studio as she might have a spot next term. She has more advanced students, one of them played Vivaldi's Winter at the concert. She's located in Cherrybrook (a little far), but we will see what happens after the trial lesson.

Lots happening!

Spottle

We had the class pet 'Spottle' with us last weekend. Spottle is a fluffy 'giraffe' and he followed Lara to all her weekend activities.

First stop was violin at 8am. Lara played the two new songs - Allegro and Perpetual motions.



Secondly, we had ballet at 9.15am.
Lara stood straight-backed and tall and looked like she really enjoyed the dance.



Finally we had Lara's classmate Sophia's birhtday party at 3pm.
It was a carft party. Lara painted a t-shirt and cards, played dress-ups and had a slice of the rainbow cake.



And that didn't count Spottle going to the shops and coffee with us and had dinner with Grandma & Grand-dad on Sunday! Spottle (and us) had a busy weekend!

Recently

School started again so the days are pretty busy. Work was very busy in April therefore the lack of motivations to write anything down, not that there was nothing happening. Both Sam and Lara were sick. Sam had an awful, itchy rash all over his body and didn't want to do anything (or eat anything) for a couple of days, that was very unlike him. Lara also had temperature and was lethargic and off school sick. After that, Simon got Sam's rash and had temperature and achy hands for a few days. I also have this frustrating cough for a few weeks now. I got into 'coughing fits' at work sometimes, I coughed so much that I wanted to throw up and had tears running down my face. I think I'm feeling a little better today.

Mum was here for two weeks and left this morning. I took her for a traditional Thai massage last week for Mother's Day. Those tiny Thai ladies were very skillful at the massage table. When asked what strength I wanted, I said 'strong' thinking I can take 'tiny ladies'. But when they sat on me and dug their knees or elbows into my back, it really hurt. I had to ask them to ease off. Mum and I both enjoyed that hour of bliss.

I found I couldn't read some labels on jars recently and had my eyes checked out a couple of weeks ago. I can't believe my short-sightedness actually regressed/improved. Is this a sign that I'm getting old? The new glasses, after private health rebate will be close to $600!! I don't know if I should still have the laser surgery? (it will cost nearly $7000). Decision decision.

I spent a good part of my waking hours recently thinking about Lara's violin situation. Lara's young teacher went overseas for 3 months to further her studies, and I wasn't very impressed with the substitute teacher. I am afraid this might not be a one-off occurance. The teacher's boyfriend lives in France, and we already had her going to France twice in the 6 months we've been with her. This teacher-changing is interruptive. In the long term I need to find a teacher who stays, and that probably means someone older. I've made a couple of phone calls, but finding a teacher is not an easy task. Most Suzuki teachers in the area are either fully-booked or not experienced enough. I also have to be careful not to hurt anyone's feelings. This situation now goes into my 'monitor-for-now' list. Something to think/worry about later.

Food glorious food

Mother's Day dinner at Darshna's place. Darshna looks after Sam 3 days a week at her house. She frequently makes Roti for the kids for breakfast (those lucky kids!). I had her savory breakfast pancakes the other morning, it was so yummy. I took Mother-in-law with me to her Mother's Day dinner. I'm getting recipes from her, I love her curries!


For Sunday morning breakfast we had Pattisons' pastries.


Mum's steamed buns. I bought a big stainless steel steamer last weekend, its purpose is to cook homemade buns like these... when I have time....

Some pictures of Sam

Some photos of Sam, the first few in his family daycare.

Sam reading to little boy Jacob.
Sam loves to read. He frequently brings a book to us so we can read to him. He likes the 'In the night garden' book, 'Spot' books and his Masiy cloth book. Sam's not very careful with his books, h ripped books apart and threw them about.


Sam enjoying a cup of babyccino.
He loves to drink our tea too. Sam loves Indian food! He can eat very spicy curries!





Sam playing with toys.
He loves cars and balls. And trains too. He says 'all on board' (in his own way) every time he sees a train. Did I mention he talks all the time now?



Sam fascinated by Lara's face-parinting in school's 'family fun day'.
We have been to a couple of fairs recently. Both Lara and Sam enjoyed being out in the beautiful winter sun, patting the animals and the play facility. The most recent one we went to was 'Festival on the Green' in St Ives. We paid for Sam to go on a $5 jumping castle and he wanted to get out in 10 seconds....

Nearly harvest again

Our mandarin tree is full of mandarines again. They are green at the moment but hopfully will strat to ripe soon! Simon gave me a new task of doing a mandarin marmalade this winter. Better start researching for a nice recipe!

Eczema and vegetarian cookbook

Sam has eczema since he was a newborn, on and off, sometimes not so good but mostly managable. It got worse when he was around 6-7 months. He had red patches all over his arms and legs but none under his nappy. Doctor suggested we change laundry powder. A acquaintance at daycare told me her specialist recommended pure soap as her son had bad eczema too. I switched to pure soap for Sam's clothes, but we still use normal detergent for ours(omo sensetive). It probably helped Sam's skin somewhat, well enough for us to forget about it for a while until it started again at the end of last year. The eczema was the worst ever, it was not on and off, it was ON all the time! Sam would scratch his skin, it bled and healed and you could see little red blood marks everywhere. The itch would made him awake at night(otherwise he always sleeps through) and made him irritable during the day. Doctor prescribed cortisone cream (elocon) and said eczema is a chronic disease we need to manage. Sam was only 18 months old and my lovely baby boy, for his sake I need to believe I can find a solution for his eczema. Anyway I started doing research on the internet and looking at alternative medicines. We took Sam to see a Chinese doctor for herbal cream and he had acupuncture. I was also looking at naturopaths.

It was during that time that I came across this website : Eczema - One family's solution . As soon as I saw it, I remembered we had changed back to detergent for Sam's clothes at around the time his eczema got worse. I was very moved by this Mum's determination to fix her son's eczema and I realised detergent exposure was probably the main reason Sam's eczema got worse. I can relate to the "water in bucket" analogy of allergy on the website - Sam's bucket was full (he had a lot more exposture to detergent) and that made him susceptible to allergens that he could usually tolerate, like grass. Now we only use pure soap to wash clothes for the whole family, we also switched to a detergent-free dishwashing liquid. I'm watchful for anything that has SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) or similar. Food was another big contributor to Sam's eczema problem.

A book I read recommend eating only veges and brown rice for two weeks then slowly introduce food to determine the 'culprit'. It sounded like a good idea but very hard to implement. Sam is in daycare 4 days a week. It is very hard to control his food intake during those days, it's even harder for me to cook tasty food with only vegetables. I know I need to learn to cook more tasty vegetarian food so I bought a new cookbook "River cottage veg everyday" to help me. Every dish in this book looks so yummy and I want to make every dish in this book! So far, I made beetroot and walnut hummus (page 300), oven-dried tomatoes (page 304), pistachio dukka (page 294), roasted pasnip chips (page 357) and Tahini-dressed courgette and green bean salad (page 74). I will be making more even when Simon and the kids don't share my enthusiasm unfortunately...

Apple picking at Bilpin

This trip was supposed to be steam train rides, apple picking was a do-if-we-have-time event. Apple-picking became the main event when we arrived at the zig-zag railway and found it closed due to unexpected maintenance. What a disappointment! Thank goodness for apples to cheer us up. The day was beautifully sunny. Driving up the Bell Line of road was lovely. We heard the distinctive high-pitch ringing sound the Bell birds made when we wound our windows down. Being Easter Saturday, there was a small traffic jam at Richmond. We managed to stop at Fruti Tutti for lunch and ice-cream but due to time constrain, drove right past Mt Tomah national park. The Fuji and Pink lady apples we picked were nice, Sam had 3 and didnt have much for dinner afterwards. There are also plums/apricots to pick if we go at the right time.

First term of school

I can't believe how fast the first term of school went. This blog entry was changed from first week of school to first month then the fist term of school!



The few weeks leading to Lara's start at 'big' school were busy days. Not only was I trying to get everything ready (uniforms, shoes, socks, school bags, swimming gear, lunch boxes to name a few - there were a lot of things to buy!), I also planned special activities for Lara, we went swimming and skating, went to the beach, had playdates and watched 'The Muppets'. Lara was very excited with the prospect of going to school 'every day'.

Lara's first day at school was smooth and uneventful. We had our cameras and took a couple of quick pics but as advised we didn't make a big deal of it. We left Lara as soon as she settled in the classroom. It was good as there was no time for Lara or us to get too sentimental. Getting upset or emotional would not help Lara or us in this situation.

Lara made some new friends and seemed to take this new school thing matter-of-factly. She loved school and complained about school being too short. The first couple of weeks of school was perfect. Then she got sick, vomiting, temperature and had to stay home for 3 days. After that it was complaint of tummy aches. To cut a long story short, the recurren tummy aches, we found later, was due to not drinking enough water (apparently very common in school kids) not bullying as I suspected.

Swimming classes started at week 2 and homework at week 5. There were readers to read every night and sight words to revise (when I remember). My life was extremely busy with class funcitons, playdates and plays-in-the-park, pencil-shapening and literacy volunteering. There are special days to remember (Harmony days all kids wore orange, healthy-lunch-day $5 but no lunch etc), lost properties to find (Lara seemed to lose at least one item of clothing every week), and so many notes going back and forth. I felt like I have two part-time jobs!

Even though I am busy with work at the moment, I'm very happy about this short break called school holiday! Somehow I managed to volunteer to do more reading and pencil-sharpening next term!! Hopefully things run smoothly next term.

Violin lesson 25-Feb and beyond

Lara is learning "Song of the wind" at the moment, the second song after the Twinkle variations. The challenge of "Song of the wind" is the jumping Mr three, which Lara seemed to get quickly. Maybe being left-handed helped in that regard. The twinkles, though simple, were the toughest part of the violin journey. We experienced a lot of crying, and resistance during that time. I did not complain about it much, but it was hard work without a doubt. I did a lot of reflections (was I too strict, too relax, did I ask too much or not enough) and researches on internet, read books and wrote emails to teacher during that time in order to calm myself down. The Suzuki Institute holds 'twinkle graduation concert' in Opera House every year, because being able to play the twinkles is a great achievement. I see other parents going through the twinkles stage now and listening to their stories, I am very glad that Lara's home practice sessions are getting easier.

Music is a long road and we are only at the beginning. With violins, there is also that initial period of learning to hold a foreign object, tilt your head in an almost unnatural way, press down hard on your fingers(they do hurt) at the right place or you don't make a pleasant sound. We have our good and bad days. Lara's young teacher Elle said it took her a long time to complete the twinkles, but 18 years later, she's still playing. I think about this every time we encountered difficulties.

A friend was talking to me about starting her 2-year-old on violin lessons at 3. I don't think I will do that with Sam personally. At the Suzuki summer camp, I met a piano teacher whose 4-year-old girl started violin at 2 (& sat in at lessons at 18 months (Sam's age!) I didn't get a chance to hear her play but I watched her on stage at the final concert. She might play well but she didn't have the mental maturity to follow instructions. During the time she was on stage, she kept stopping in the middle of the song to do other things (look at other kids, scratch her arm etc). I can only imagine what daily practice would be like. Do I want to go through this with Sam every day? The answer is no.

*********************************************************************

I was looking for photos to go with this post, and another 3 weeks passed. Lara is now up to 'oh come little children', the forth song after the twinkles. This song had some difficult parts (esp the two up bows). Just when I thought practices were better, we had an awful week. Luckily during this time, I chanced upon an article in "teaching suzuki" about learning 'oh come little children'. Then I realised my mistake - I couldn't expect Lara to remember the bow movements before she can play the song. I needed to just let her play the melody, once she knew the song well, the bow movements would follow. And she played so much better after that! I have a lot to learn too....

Eating out alone

We had a few chances this past month to go out for lunch by ourselves (without the kids). Simon was off work and looking for job (he just found one so will start work soon), and I work 3 days a week. Sam is in daycare four days a week this year so I can have a day 'off'. On my first 'day off', both Lara and Sam were sick, so we had to cancel our plan to watch a movie. We also realised it was too ambitious to watch a movie and go out to eat on the same day, because Lara needs to be picked up from school at 2:30pm. Yes 2:30. The off day is extremetly short anyway.

We managed to eat out a couple of times after that and it was great. We had a nice relaxing lunch at the local Thai place last week. This week we went to the Cooks Garden and had steak'n' chips (simon) and zucchini flower stuffed with prawns (me). You don't need to keep 'stop eating' to feed someone small or not keep to the conversations because the kids keep interrupting.

It is very nice to eat out in peace and quiet sometimes.

The picture shown above was taken at a vietnamese place in late Jan. I think Lara was with us at that meal (but no Sam). We love Sam to bits but a 18-month-old is a lot of work at meal times!

Visit the zoo

We finally managed to visit the zoo at the beginning of Feb thanks to free zoo passes from work. We hadn't been to the zoo for over 10 years. The cloest we got to the zoo was when I pre-bought tickets last year, but Lara and I had food-poisoning the day before we planned to go. The tickets expired before we had time to use them!



The day started out raining but it turned sunny and quite warm by mid-morning. The giraffs were much taller than we thought. The chimps and gorillas didn't seem too happy to see us, but put on a bit of a show for us. The tiger/lion roared near the window, you could feel the thick glass trembled. One of the elephants did a huge wee right in front of us, Lara and I were glad we were not near his feet. The seals were cute as usual, but Sam couldn't sit still for the seal show. Lara enjoyed feeding goats, chickens and pigs at the kindy farm too. I was not too impressed with the lunch set-up, maybe we should pack our lunch next time.



Sam didn't have his midday sleep therefore was a little cranky at times. Walking up and down pushing a pram and running after a 18-month-old was tiring too. I can't say that it was a nice and relaxing trip but we all enjoyed it very much thanks to the good companions we had. We did a lot of walking around that we wer all exhausted at the end of the day. This trip inspired us to go and vist the Dubbo Western Plains zoo in the near future. Maybe when Sam is a little older?

Suzuki summer school and first violin lesson in 2012

We neglected our violins somewhat and didn't practice every day in January. The teacher was away so there were no lessons. Furthermore, I bought our violins after the rental period was up so for a couple of weeks there were no tapes to guide the left fingers. The frustration of not getting the note right also cast a shadow over practice and made it less frequent. Fortunately Lara and I slowly learned to listen to the tunes and adjusted our fingers accordingly.



During the holiday, we manged to get to the Suzuki summer school for a couple of days. We attended 2 parent talks, a play-in session and the closing concert. It was nice to walk around in the beautiful Abbotsleigh ground, seeing kids with violins on their shoulders and immersing ourselves in music coming from many of the classrooms while lessons took place.

I'm glad Lara's teacher is back now. Lara just had her first violin lesson after 6 weeks of break. There were a lot of communications, changing of schedules before we finally arrived at the 8.30am Saturday lesson time. In the lesson, Lara learned to play 'small bow', a couple of bow work-outs (moving bow up & down and side to side in rapid consessions to build strength in arm and wrist) and the Allegro body movement song. This week, the main practice will be to get 'Mr 3' down as soon as possible after the open E in twinkles. I learned something new too - always start playing with a 'down bow'.

Looking forward to learning new songs this year!

Two dinners

Two of the dinners we shared with family and friends this month at our house...



Earlier in the month, ex-work-colleagues-turned-friends G and N came over for a simple lunch. This year was very difficult for N being a empty-nester (youngest leaving home for uni) and going through a separation/divorce. We hoped a small lunch would get N out of the house and made her feel a little better.

Menu: Shallow fried mixed seafood (fish, prawns and calamari- N is a vegetarian but eats seafood), mango salad, cabbage salad, homemade Hungarian salami (made by G, yummy!),home-grown tomatoes (hand-picked by G that moring), curry puffs (curtesy of N), olives, bread and crackers.

We all had too much to eat. The stroll to the nearby park after lunch(it was around 5pm by then)was a nice and relaxing way to end the day.



Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with in-laws.
Menu: Fried rice with carrots and eggs, veges (brocolli and cauliflower), pork spare ribs (american ribs marinated in bbq sauce), beans with bacons, coconut prawns.

I didn't cook a whole fish as is the tradition (whole 'fish' symbolise having more than enough for the new year) because I didn't have fish in the fridge. The inclusion of spare ribs wasn't very chinese either, but the ribs were very popular with in-laws, husband and kids, so who cares!