Moments in My Life

We just returned from shopping when the gates to my aunty’s house opened and she drove in the car we were in. As I hopped down her silver CRV, my son was shouting, “Meow-meow! meow-meow!” with his right hand pointing towards my cousin’s cat - HeeChul. She was climbing up the navy blue CRV parked in the car porch and then stood high above the car’s rooftop while looking up above. My cousin was trying to ask her to come down when she noticed bats hanging above the car porch. The cat was actually trying to tell us there were intruders in our house. Smart cat!

There were three of them there, hanging upside down sleeping. No wonder some of the droppings on the cars and ground have tiny seeds in them. Now we know those were from the bats and not from the birds.

There are not too many local fruits that Brandon likes to eat in Malaysia.  I gave him the papaya because I like it a lot as it doesn’t have the weird taste as those papayas we get in US, but he didn’t like it.  I gave him guava, and he didn’t want to even try it.  I gave him ‘jambu batu‘, he again said no to it. The other local fruit that is familiar to him is only banana. And he liked the banana last year when we were here in Kuala Lumpur. He ate a lot of them.

So this afternoon I peeled him one piece of local banana for him.

Mommy: Come and eat your banana.

Brandon: *looking at the banana*

Mommy: Eat lar. Very sweet one.

Brandon: Moi (Don’t want)

Mommy: Why you don’t want?

Brandon: Very small.

Mommy: *giggles*

If any of you that have been and seen the banana we get in the States … you will understand. The local banana banana in the States is so BIG compare to the those here. He can finish one by himself. And here, he probably has to eat 2-3 to make it equivalent to the amount he takes back home.

After our lunch just now, I took out the wrapper of a miniture bar of KitKat to enjoy while watching ‘I Love You, Man‘ on my laptop.  Something sweet to complete my meal.  I know my son would notice if I eat with the wrapper on, so I was trying to out smart him by throwing the wrapper away and have the very small bar of KitKat hiding in the pasta bowl. 

Brandon was busy with his cooking toys when I told him to eat his green grapes on his snack bowl while I put the last bite of the KitKat into my mouth.  I paused the movie and went down to the floor to sneak by the bowl of grapes purposely stealing a grape to get his attention.  He walked over to me.

Brandon: *sniff* *sniff*

Mommy: Eat your grapes lar.

Brandon ran over to my laptop to check on the table and then came over to me again.

Brandon: moving his nose closer to Mommy’s face now *sniff* *sniff*

Mommy: trying to talk without opening her mouth What are you smelling? Here, eat your grapes lar.

Brandon: No grapes! Mommy got chocolate!

Mommy: *giggles* Where got chocolate? See my no wrapper on the table, see nothing in the bowl.

Brandon moved his nose to my cheek. *sniff* *sniff*

Brandon: ‘Yau!’ (Got!) giving Mommy ‘don’t lie to me’ look.

I signed Brandon up for Superkids Parent and Me Gym at Torrance Cultural Center end of June. Our classes are on every Saturday morning from 9:45am to 10:35am from June 27th to Sep 12th (no class on July 4th and Sep 5th). The fee for this 10 weeks class was $110 for non-Torrance-resident.

I arranged it to be on Saturday because I can have Hubby to attend with him instead of me. It was a bit tough for the first class as Hubby told me, Brandon was looking for me and wanted to go home all the time. Good news is that he loves the class now and looking forward to attend it with ‘Daddy’ every Saturday morning.

After I drop them off at Torrance Cultural Center, I will drive around to do my errands. Grocery shopping and farmer’s market are the two on top of my list. And for the past 5 times, I was ONLY able to do two things during that 50 minutes time, which actually is about 40 minutes because I try to be back at the center before the class is over.

Hubby told me the instructors set up a few stations with beams, padding, bars and such. Parent will bring each student to each station and so on. They even have singinng session towards the end of the class. And every two weeks they will have a special theme. And when I took the picture below, it was beach volley ball theme. I came in just in time before they were done with it and I quickly snapped a picture.

This post was sponsored by Kmart. All the opinions are mine.

Attention All Mommies!! You gotta check this out. Kmart has annouced the return of the Kmart Bluelight Specials, just in time for us to shop for school supplies and more. Believe me, I love shopping, and I even love it more when I can save money and shop at the same time.

‘Kmart Bluelight Special’ is back every Saturday beginning 8/1 and throughout the day itself, you will be able to find over 40 great items on the Bluelight Special. They can be anything from patio furniture, to toys and even jewelry. So remember to drop by any Kmart store tomorrow (8/8) to find out the items on Bluelight Special. Don’t worry if you can’t leave your home or work tomorrow because if you have internet access, you can even shop online for these Bluelight Special items. Kmart is offering free shipping for all orders $60 and up, exclusion apply (please check their website).

I wonder what items will be on the Bluelight Special tomorrow. I love to see some toys, clothes and household items on sale when I am at the Torrance Kmart tomorrow morning. It would be great to find a pair of children’s shoes on the Bluelight Special too because the current pair which my son is wearing had worn out.

Twitter’s fans out there, you can follow @kmartdealsnnews for more updates and specials.

Visiting Australia was our biggest travel this year.  It was our first time at Down under.  We visited 4 cities in our three weeks vacation -  Brisbane & Gold Coast (Queensland), Adelaide (South Australia) and Sydney (New South Wales).  At each city, we stopped for 5 days except at Adelaide where we stayed 7 days.

My direct flight to Brisbane from LAX was good.  We flew out at night and arrived at 6am Brisbane local time.  The airline didn’t give me the seats I pre-booked online and instead they put us towards the back of the aircraft in the middle row.  Fortunately, there was an empty seat between us and the other passenger which gave us a little more space to play with.  My son skipped his supper meal in the flight as he was already sleeping.  He slept for 8-9 hours in our almost 14 hours flight.  He was awake in the first 2 hours of the flight and then the last 3-4 hours before arrival. 

Unfortunately our return flight from Brisbane to LAX was very uncomfortable.  I booked us to be flying off from Sdyney on the (not-so) new Airbus 380.  Thus we took a flight down from Brisbane to Sydney and stopover for 1hr before our adventure on A380.  Our flight to Sydney wasn’t delayed or anything but when we arrived at the Sydney airport, it was a rush.  We had to pass through immigration and then immediately board the plane.  Most of the other passengers were already in the plane waiting for the last group of transfers (us) to get on.

Upon finding our seats, a quick look at him, a very nice college student age boy was sitting on the window seat.  We had the aisle seat as we know that I need to take the little one to bathroom very often.  It never came to me that the post-college boy, Nathan, had to use the facility more than my son.  He went once before the flight took off.  Then for a total of six more times in the next 5 hours.  I took my son to bathroom only 2 times within the 5 hours.  And on top of that, Nathan was drinking a lot of Barcadi coke and I could see his face was turning purple and sense that he might be throwing up.  It wasn’t just me, the passengers behind our row as well as across from us saw the situation.  I was told to inform the flight attendant which I did and they eventually moved me to the back of the plane and seated next to a very delightful 80 year old lady travelling by herself.  Btw, she only asked to come out once from her window seat for bathroom during the 8 hours I was sitting next to her.

Later I found out that Nathan didn’t throw up at all but instead he was sleeping and occupying all the three seats on his row.  What a bummer!  We shouldn’t had moved!  But another I found out about westerners are … they are as greedy as the Asians.  This boy, in his mid 20s, took all the extra Barcadi liquor, utensils as well as the magazines, and he even kept away the bag of toys which I left in the pockets of our seats that were given to us upon boarding the flight.  He even took our overnight bags containing toothbrush, toothpaste, eyemask, socks, which were given to each long haul passenger.  This is the first time ever I saw a ‘male’ passenger taking something from the flight that wasn’t his to begin with.  It is very digusting to me seeing a westerner male doing this. 

When I told this story to my hubby immediately when I saw him at the arrival terminal, he was laughing and couldn’t believe it.  You will definitely get to see all kinds of people when you are traveling more and more.  And now, I may have to prepare myself for another long haul flight again … probably in a week or two.  *wink*

There are many online travel websites that can help you search for flights, hotels and vacation packages. But it is a hassle to check them individually to be able to find the best rate for your hotel stay because each travel agent may have their own promotions running at different times. If you want more time doing other important things rather than sitting in the computer to search, you have to visit www.HotelsCombined.com for finding the best rate for your hotel reservation.

HotelsCombined is the one place that helps you locate the best rate because it searches all the travel websites (not limited to but including Expedia, Hotels4U and eBookers) and presenting to you the BEST rate available at the location or city picked by you. They even search the individual hotel websites if they have the better rate, it will be shown at the end of your search. Usually, I like booking directly from hotel websites as they always have the best and lowest rate. But instead of visiting individual hotels’ sites to find which hotels in the city I chose has the lower rate, I just search it all on HotelsCombined.

And for now, if you participate in HotelsCombined’s Spread The Word For Charity, they will make a donation to a charity. They believe the best way of advertising would be by the word of the mouth. There are three options - they will give out $20 for a blog mention, $10 for a tweet and $5 for becoming a fan of our Facebook page. So please join me and spread the word for them.

Summer is the best time to be in the pool.  In other seasons, our pool is just a bit too cold to enjoy because we do not want to spend extra energy to warm the pool to the right temperature.  On a hot summer day, our pool has just the perfect temperature for us to dip and cool our body down.  And I am proud to say for this summer, we’ve been using the pool very often. 

Brandon has learned to love the pool.  Of course, it wasn’t easy to get him to like it.  The first few times when I brought him into the pool, it was Nightmares on Elm Street.  He was screaming until my MIL heard him from her backyard, her house is just three doors away from mine.  I could imagine what our neighbors were thinking then.  But over time, it got better and now he can float on his back with the help of a body float. 

Since the beginning of July, I’ve been looking into getting my son private swimming lesson and found through Craigslist dot org a website or a group of swim instructors for Southbay.  After a few times over the phone with the group’s leader/organizer, I finally managed to arrange a trial lesson this Thursday at 11am with Erin.  Will see how it goes then.  The lesson is 30 minutes and it cost $45.  The session can be shared among 2 students if wanted.  I am very excited and I will try to pick up a skill or two so I can teach him when I am in the pool with him myself.