Halloween in Disneyland

We were travelling quite a fair bit last year and with our relocation to Beijing, I have had little time to update my blog then. On checking, I actually discovered that I did not update much of Ryan’s first trip to USA, especially his trip to the happiest place on earth – DISNEYLAND.

 Disneyland at Anaheim, LA was decked with Halloween decorations when we visited last year

So, here I am, just to add that post into this journal, both for myself (to refresh my fading memories as I grow older) and for him to relive his childhood fun when he grows older too.

Before this trip, the furthest we have brought Ryan out of the country was to Beijing. Hence, we were initially apprehensive as to how he would cope with this 20 over hour flight. He quickly put our apprehension to rest, when he excitedly settled down quickly on the plane with the in-flight games, movies, his iPad and chatting up the air stewardess!

Our first stop was in Seattle where mommy has to attend to her business meetings while daddy was left with the job to keep him occupied. More of that in the next few posts.

But he was eagerly waiting for, was the trip to DISNEYLAND, the place where every kid dream of, not to mention many adults too, including yours truly.

 Bright orange pumpkins were everywhere, truly reflecting the spirit and atmosphere of Halloween

When we were there, Halloween was just around the corner and DISNEYLAND went full steam to capture the spirit a Halloween. The entire Disneyland at Anaheim, LA was decorated to reflect Halloween. The sight of bright orange carved pumpkins was EVERYWHERE! It was simply amazing. They even had a special Halloween night where guests were encouraged to go in their full Halloween costumes. We did not opt for that because, firstly, it was held on the first day that we arrived and secondly, it was rather expensive and we gathered that it would be so overly crowded that it would not be worthwhile paying that amount to fight with the rest for the rides.

 The main street in Disneyland, Anaheim, LA

But we had fun nevertheless, soaking in the Halloween atmosphere, on all the three days were there. Yes! We were there for three days and to Ryan, it is still NOT ENOUGH. Who could blame him, when DISNEYLAND has been branded as THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH and if you immersed yourself in all the fun and activities, she actually is.

 Standing in front of the icon of Disneyland, Walt Disney and his star creation, Mickey Mouse against the backdrop of the Magical Castle.

Posing in front of the GIANT Pumpkin Mickey Mouse, at the start of MAIN STREET USA

There is simply a special MAGIC in the air the moment you entered through her gates and you are transformed magically into this fantasy kingdom where cartoon characters that I grew up with comes alive! YES YES YES! There was Goofy, Minnie and Donald. And out of nowhere, apparently, CHIP and DALE popped up to say hello. And of course the STAR of the kingdom, MICKEY MOUSE himself.

 His best Halloween ever !

More pictures of that in the next post. For now, my dear son, you must be one lucky boy. I have to wait 49 years before I could see my dream coming true and there you were, cuddling Mickey Mouse at the age of 4!

Ice Sledging

At the twinkling of an eye, autumn in Beijing is almost over and winter is fast approaching. The hot summer days of 36 to 40 degrees are giving way to much cooler temperatures now. Cold to be exact. As I write this, the temperature outside at 9:30 in morning is standing at 14 degrees and expected to plummet to only 11 degrees tonight.

Time flew past when we looked back, doesn’t it. It has been almost a year now since we shifted over to Beijing. As winter approaches and as I look back at my previous blog at http://babynme2008.blogspot.com, I realised that I had not updated much about our very first winter. Part of the main reason was that I was having so many issues with my paid VPN here to get connected to blogspot (which is blocked by the great firewall of China). When I could log in, I just could not update a new post for several months until the problem suddenly went away when I wrote in several complaints.

Although most of the pictures had been uploaded in my Facebook, I thought I would update some of those outings that we had during that period of `blog silence’ since I wanted both Chenya and Ryan to be able to read about the fun we had together as a family when they were young.

 During the cold bitter winter, the entire lake at Houhai turned into one giant skating and ice sledging ring where many, despite the freezing temperatures, came out to have fun.

One of the very memorable outings of course was having fun on a completely frozen lake at Houhai.

The central of Beijing is dominated by several lakes near the Forbidden City. They are the Houhai, Beihai and Jianhai. For most part of the year, these lakes are beautiful places to hire a boat and spent a leisurely weekend, boating. Comes winter and the lake will be totally frozen and turned into one giant skating ring!

Last winter, we managed to make our way there in sub zero temperatures during a weekend. Since, none of us have no experience in ice skating, we opted for the very crude ice sledge ride. I called it crude because it is simply just wooden planks they called chairs affixed on simple sledges with two sharp iron rods to help you push your way through the icy ring. Crude BUT fun!
 

We rented two and had so much fun sliding all over the lake with the tune of “Dashing through the snow (frozen lake),” ringing in our heads and at the same time, enjoying seeing others slipping and falling all over the place. It is no fun slipping and falling on solid ice. It can be rather dangerous, painful and definitely wet and cold.

Mommy wanted a picture taken with her daughter.

We ended up freezing, cold and wet. Ryan’s and Chenya’s nose were running faster than a 100 meters sprint because of the cold, despite the many layers of thick clothing they had. But WE HAVE FUN!

Ryan having his very FIRST cotton candy and enjoying the moment ....

 

I just can’t wait for this year’s winter where we will probably get out for another round and I am sure that Chenya will enjoy this even more now since she is already 2 years old.

Mid Autumn Festival in Beijing

This would be our very first Mid Autumn festival away from home back in Malaysia. When we were back home, mid autumn festival were celebrated with my in laws and my youngest sister. After dinner, we would gather at our car porch, tabled laid with all sort of biscuits, cookies and the most important of all, moon cakes of every variety and fillings.

Lanterns will be hung across the car porch while the children will have a ‘FUNstatic’ time playing with their individual lanterns and candles of course. Lanterns back home comes in different shapes and sizes and Ryan’s favorite of course was his ‘Ultraman’.

However, we have much difficulty trying to lay our hands on some decent lanterns here in Beijing. We simply could not find them anywhere. We thought that we did not know where to search and hence we have been asking every local we came across, from the waitresses at Jamaica Blue, our daily morning coffee hang out to the illegal taxi drivers whom have became our friends over the last nine months.

One of these taxi drivers said he knew of a possible mall where we could get some and took us there last Saturday morning. We spent over an hour there before we came across this ONE store that has some in stock. They were nice and inexpensive, approximately RMB10 each. We bought six. Now that we have our lanterns, the next item to hunt for were the candles and that we have to buy from another store (and the only one who carries them) for RMB20 for 8 pieces per pack.

Finally, we have our lantern and our candles. Then we realised that we do not have any stick to tie the lantern to. We asked our driver friend if he knew where we could buy some. To our pleasant surprise, he drove us around on the way home and stopped by the road side, where he saw some broken branches, got down and stripped some sturdy ones for us.

With that solved, we were ready for the night. We got our Ayi to cook some noodles for the night and we have invited Coleen and her son, Slevin who is also Ryan’s best friend and neighbour to join us that night. It will be their first taste of celebrating mid autumn festival. Being Americans who have stayed in China for the last 6 years, they have heard about it but never really experienced it.

To complement the fried noodles, I made some simple appetizers for the night, mango salsa, oven baked crispy potato skin with mash potato and minced beef, and oven grilled crispy thinly sliced French loaf with minced beef dip.

 Mango Salsa, a combination of ripe mangoes, red capsicum and chopped mint leaves with lemon zest and lemon juice.

Oven Baked Crispy Potato Skin with mash potato and minced beef filling.

Oven grilled thinly sliced French Loaf with Minced Beef dip

Our newly employed Liew Ayi’s birthday falls on the following week. In keeping with our tradition and practice, where we have always celebrated our helper’s birthday back home, we bought a small birthday cake for her but kept it as a surprise. When we brought it out and sang her the birthday song, I can tell that she was pleasantly shocked.

 The children helping Liew Ayi to blow off the candle on her birthday cake.

To complete the night, we lit our lanterns and walked around the park within our apartment’s compound with Zoewe, our toy poodle happily tagging along. To our amazement, we made several heads turned when we walked past them with our colourful lanterns and some even stopped to take pictures of us with their mobile phones.

We are unsure of our future plans next year and whether we would still be in Beijing for the next mid autumn festival but for now, this year’s mid autumn festival was indeed something different from the previous years and an interesting chapter in our adventures in China.

Home Cooked Birthday Dinner

The month of September and October this year would be rather busy months of all of us here in Beijing. There will also be several rather significant changes in our daily routine.

For one, my mother in law who has so graciously came to help taking care of the children when we first came to Beijing will be going back to Malaysia after helping us for almost a year. We have also engaged a full time Chinese helper (ahyi) for 8 hours daily to help clean and cooked dinner. Ryan is already going back to school and Chenya is due to start  her first pre-school in November.

Wife has a rather full travelling schedule for the next 3 weeks of so, starting with travelling  back to Malaysia and then to Singapore for some training, after which she would be flying off to Seattle for another week or so. And I will be staying in Beijing to handle to the two super hyper active `monsters’ during this entire period. Lucky me.

Until Chenya goes to school in November, there would be no more early morning coffee or breakfast alone like I used to. Chenya would definitely be tagging along and with her around, there would be no more updating of Facebook or my blogs during my routine early morning breakfast.

With wife being away during her birthday, we had a simple pre-birthday celebration for her at home and as promised, I arranged to cook some simple dishes for her on Sunday.

On Saturday, we made arrangements to visit our favourite market at Sin Yuen Lee, where we could look for the ingredients and items I need. And the following are what was laid on the dinner table last night with some help from my local ahyi who I must said, was a little taken aback with me, teaching her to cook.

I prepared two appetizers for the night.

To start with, we have oven grilled Tiger Prawns marinated simply with some salt, black pepper, sugar and olive oil, served with Mango Salsa, a combination of ripe mangoes, red capsicum  and finely chopped mint leaves with lemon zest, lemon juice and salt and black pepper to taste. I must said that the Tiger Prawns are definitely much cheaper here in Beijing as compared to getting them back home in PJ. We had 7 tiger prawns measuring over 6 inches end to end that only cost us less than RMB50 (RM25).

The next appetizer was something that I did not expect to do but when she saw these life scallops at the market, she said that that would be nice to have. I have always worked with frozen scallops back home in Malaysia and have never work with life ones before. 1kg of these (numbering 8 scallops with shell) was RMB45 (RM22.50) which sounded rather reasonable to us. Instead of my normal oven baked scallops with Japanese mayonnaise, and since I don’t know where exactly to get them, I was thinking about a different cooking method.

And this is what we have. Oven baked life scallops, marinated with some salt and black pepper and Chinese cooking wine, baked with olive oil and finely chopped garlic. My ahyi gave an excellent proposal which I will definitely try and that is top the baked scallops with some glass noodles.

The soup is simply one of our all time favourite, especially my mother in law and Ryan, a creamy broccoli soup.

I had originally wanted to grill some beef steak as the main course but I have done that quite a couple of times and I am getting bored with that. Instead, I thought of doing a beef kebab with BBQ sauce. Hence, I bought some Australian sirloin beef from April Gourmet (a chain of small supermarkets catering for the expat market in Beijing, the other two being Jenny Wang and Jenny Lou). I also bought some green and yellow capsicum and large onions from the local wet market not far from our apartment.

The sirloin beef was cut into smaller cubes, marinated with salt, black pepper and BBQ sauce and left in the refrigerator for about 4 hours. Before grilling them, the beef cubes were pan seared with some olive oil till the sides were slightly browned before they were put into some wooden skewers alternated with pieces of yellow, green capsicums and large onions. The wooden skewers have been soaked in water for a good one hour prior to this to ensure that they don’t get burnt in the process of grilling. They were then put into the oven and grilled at 250 degrees for approximately 5 minutes before they were served.

We had a good dinner at home and I washed the food down with a glass of Shiraz Cabernet from Jacobs Creek Winemakers Selection.

Now that the pre-birthday dinner is over, my wife is now hinting that she would love to have lobster next because the life lobsters at the Sin Yuen Lee wet market was simply too tempting to resist. And that is something that I have never attempted before and it is going to be interesting.

No Longer Available

My wife's laptop has been invaded! Yes. Invaded by stickers of every kind, from Ultraman to tiny burgers!

Suddenly, her laptop no longer looked so serious nor 'corporate'.

My wife often comes home telling that some colleagues or acquaintance were telling her that she does not look like one who already had two children at home. Of course, each time she tells me these, she is is smiling and grinning from ear to ear and I guessed that is something every lady would love to hear.

To be honest, she definitely does not look her age and she always complained that I do not say that enough in front of her. So, I might as well document that down here in my blog.

When she showed me the laptop and what the children have done with their newly acquired stickers, I was telling her that it is one way that the children are labeling or branding her as a 'Mommy', 'Married','Taken' or simply 'No Longer Available'.

What would be your first impression when you see this laptop?

Back to School

The long summer holiday is finally over today.

Ryan is finally going back to school and he is more than glad because he just cannot wait to get back to see his favourite teacher, Jeff and his pretty assistants, Mari and Grace and to play with his classmates. The two long months of summer holiday have been challenging especially with Chenya at home as well, because Chenya tends to fight with her brother quite a fair bit. Most of the time, it was Chenya who bullied Ryan rather than the other way round. She bullied her brother so much so that Ryan spend most of his time in the master bedroom, watching TV and playing with his toys while Chenya stayed in the living room with her toys.

The moment they are together, Chenya would already have either scratched or beat her brother, or comes crying that her brother had beaten her, although most of the time, it is the other way around, all within 10 minutes.

This morning while Ryan was getting ready for school, Chenya was getting ready too. She said that she wanted to go school too, complete with her school bag and waiting. I just hope that she is as eager to go to school when she actually has to go and not have to be drag up the school van every morning, kicking up a fuss, screaming and crying.

We have already registered Chenya into the same school and although the term actually starts today, we have asked to delay Chenya starting date till November. That is because the first week of October is going to be China National Holiday and after that we would be going to Juizhaigou for a holiday. Hence, we thought it is best to start her in November so that we don’t have to waste paying for her school fees in October when she is going to be away from school so much.  We also did not want to start her off in September and then having to re-orientate her all over again in November after our holidays. That will save us quite a fair sum of money.

For now, daily routine is back to norm and slightly better, now that we have already engaged a full time Chinese helper (Ahyi) for 8 hours everyday to do the cleaning and cooking.

Just looking forward for Chenya to start school too.