Home for the Holidays

Short post to say we are home from Moorhead. The entire house looks like a toy store. Both Dave and I have made lists of Things To Do After Christmas. Dave has started on his. I'm sitting here, writing this blog post, just having eaten two servings of Pho. TWO! In the same meal! I can't move. I'm thinking, "List? What list? Where's the chocolate?"

The plan is to cook this week. I have a new stand mixer to calibrate (!!!!!!! Don't ask me - I'm just parroting the instruction manual) and break in. But I also want to make four soups. So this morning Emily and I went supermarketing for the ingredients.

Watched Back To The Future last night. So much fun. Oh, those skinny neckties!

Well, off to trim a toenail now. Jenna's, I believe. Always something exciting around here.

Merry 2nd Day of Christmas!

Christmas by Preschoolers

We're off to relatives for Christmas this weekend. 

In our absence, please accept some entertainment by the children, recorded at their annual Preschool Christmas Concert. Typically, this is held in the beautiful sanctuary, as you will see in the first video starring Kate. However, the sanctuary was occupied during the time of Jenna's concert, so that became, instead, an intimate sort of affair in her own classroom. 

You all know the words to We Wish You A Merry Christmas, 

but maybe not those of Jenna's song, so here they are:

A Stable Warm and Dry

A stable warm and dry, oh yes,

A stable warm and dry

For Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

The angels came to sing, oh yes,

The angels came to sing

For Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

The shepherds came to see, oh yes,

The shepherds came to see

Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

The wise men brought their gifts, oh yes,

The wise men brought their gifts

For Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

It happened long ago, oh yes,

It happened long ago

But we still remember

The new little baby boy

Merry Christmas, all!

Merry Christmas To Me

After a fair bit of research, I finally went out and bought this one. There were others with great reviews - Borsch, Electrolux, but they also seemed very pro-baker; the sort for folks who need to bake 50 loaves of bread and 20 batches of ultra-chewy bagels per day. I just need one loaf every 2 weeks or so. And that temperamental sugee (semolina) cake every now and then. Wish we had Kenwood (what Mum has) here. I think it used to exist, but it's been reacquired by somebody else, and given a new name, and a new uh... reputation, so... pffft. 

Fancy, but still infinitely cheaper than the Pfaff Industrial Sewing Machine that was also on my Covetousness List this year. I want to sew neoprene and vinyl so bad. But we have no room for a industrial machine in the house right now, so a stand mixer it is. If we can't outfit the family in wetsuits, at least we can feed them bread now.

It's still in its box, by the way. Too many cookies on my counter right now to share space with a mixer. I'll unbox it today and take more photos of it later.

Watercolor Family Portrait

Emily brought this home from school this week. My jeans have scoop pockets! And Dave wishes he had an actual shirt like that. And Kate and Jenna have pink in their outfits - coming from any of our girls, that's like the highest, most selfless gift ever.


And here's the message that went with it:

I know - awwwwww.

Post-it to Santa

Found on our Christmas Tree earlier this week, the morning after we brought the wrapped gifts up from the basement storage.

Where did she learn P.S. ????

10 Things I Will Never Tire Of

1. The smell of a 3-year old's head
2. The roundness of a 3-year-old's head
3. Small people jumping gleefully, in completely vertical projectiles
4. Young voices singing about Jesus (and mispronouncing the important words)
5. The look in a child's eyes -and the grin they're trying unsuccessfully to hide - when they accomplish something
6. The question, "What are we making today?"
7. Sleepy, disoriented children wandering out into the living room, rubbing their eyes, needing only to be ushered back to their bedrooms with a kiss
8. Listening to a child read aloud
9. Tiny toes and pudgy feet, running fast
10. Clicking in my seat belt buckle, looking around at three little faces (and sometimes their accompanying soft toy friends, masses of coloring sheets and vast numbers of markers) and asking, "ready to roll?"

What an ride motherhood is. And how lucky I am, and how deeply blessed, to navigate it with these three, and their matchless dad.

Happy almost-Christmas, everyone!

(Ours looks set to be a brown one this year, drat it.)

Jenna Reading

Jenna reading Henry and Mudge:

Updates

We're still here, and everyone is well. But we've been busy, and not taking a lot of photos because we're indoors so much. Advent this year has been fun. Emily and Jenna are done with preschool for 2011, which translates to me getting a break from the silly chauffeuring. I've imposed a moratorium on sewing, for the purposes of sanity and countering Christmas-stress and general family ungrouchiness. When sewing sanctions are lifted on Boxing Day (or the new year, if I am especially enjoying myself), I might finally sew a couple of winter dresses for Jenna, who badly needs them. 

We're doing lots of crafts, and refusing to blog about a lot of them. We baked lots of cookies, and did blog about all of them. We're playing lots of games, like the Clothespins game, and Christmas bingo, and tomorrow we're supposed to play Princess Monopoly. We're reading lots of Christmas books, which we get to pick out of a pillowcase, as dictated by our advent calendar. We aren't going on as many trips this year, because Emily is in full-day school and would miss out on them. I've finally finished writing out our Christmas cards. I've given up even thinking of writing a Christmas letter. We've got all our Christmas presents bought/done, save one (needs to be painted). We're excited to start the wrapping. We're enjoying Christmas movies which, along with the Christmas books, are fun and fresh again after 11 months of being tucked away in storage.

Above are photos of Jenna, enjoying her new craft. She is weaving little stretchy bands on a hand loom/frame to make small potholders. She and Emily are trying to complete enough of them to assemble a patchwork rug. I am glad she's discovered it, because it is a craft that appeals to the part of her that adores sorting, colors and organizing. 

Jenna is also starting to read independently! We are very excited and also surprised at how well she is doing already. Emily has started on Enid Blyton's Secret Seven series, while also reading through the Rainbow Fairy series. Sometimes as I'm watching her sit and quietly read, curled up on the sofa, or beside me at the kitchen table, I marvel that this is the same little girl who was gnawing on board books and eating newspapers not that long ago. 

Kate is going through a new phase in her fashion journey. Where she used to alternate only between her fluffy "cute little pink skirt" and her other fluffy "cute little grey skirt", she now exclusively prefers the chiffon dress-up dance skirts that I made the girls some years ago. She wears them out to school and all day and then to bed. We have put our foot(s) down at also wearing them church, especially as they retain and display food stains remarkably well. 

We are also rejoicing/panicking at the lack of snow this December. On the one hand, we like that there's nothing to shovel. Plus I got to take photos on the deck all week, which is a miracle. On the other hand, we are not pleased at the prospect of a brown Christmas, or at the lousy sledding and tubing conditions.

We are missing family far away, as we do every year-end. But we are planning to see you all in Singapore during CNY anyway, so look out for us! Already Dave and I have started mental lists of food we want to eat, and how many times we want to eat them. We are rubbing our hands in glee and fantasizing. With those flavours finally within arm's (in a manner of speaking) reach, I think I might finally throw out those old shriveled bits of pandan leaves in our freezer, and the tablespoonful of pineapple jam from 2009 to which I've developed an almost pathological sentimental attachment.

And that's our update for tonight!

I hope your weekend is going well!

Christmas Baking

This past weekend was a Bakingstravaganza of sorts. 

We baked cookies to give to teachers and neighbors this week.

We did these Chocolate-Butterscotch Haystacks,

shortbread with white sugar and shortbread with brown sugar

and nuts

and sprinkles,

krumkake,

princess cookies and orange drop cookies.

These got packed in reusable foil pans

and topped with a kitchen towel

which the girls sort-of-helped sew ribbons onto.

The girls also worked on Christmas gifts for their classmates. For Kate's classmates, we made paper stockings and filled them with treats.

Everyone helped decorate and fill them.

Jenna filled these little plastic candy houses for her classmates:

They come with the cutest little scoop.

Everyone helped fill those, too.

Today, Jenna and Kate had their preschool Christmas concerts. It was so much fun to watch them. Then they gave out their gifts to their teachers and friends. That was fun to watch, too! 

It was raining tonight so we didn't deliver cookies to the neighbors. Hopefully we can do that tomorrow!

Chocolate-Butterscotch Haystacks

My friend Raelynn shared this recipe with me last year and we tried it for the first time this year. Yum. These haystacks remind me of the cornflake bunches we used to make in mini muffin liners as kids, but this is a much crunchier version.

Ingredients:

• 1 bag (6 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 bag (6 oz) butterscotch chips
• About a cup of roasted peanuts (ours were lightly salted)
• 1 bag (12-16 oz) chow mein noodles

Method:

1. Melt chips in double boiler. We found that melting the butterscotch chips first was helpful, since they took a longer time to liquefy than the chocolate chips.
2. Stir in everything else, and form into bunches on wax paper.
3. Store in fridge but thaw slightly before eating.

I went to the supermarket to buy chow mein noodles for the first time in my life. I found it quite funny that, considering that I'm Chinese,  I couldn't remember what they were called at first, while trawling the aisles in search for them. I don't think we have chow mein in Singapore, just like we don't have fortune cookies. Or Singapore Noodles, whatever they may be. 

Shortbread

Realized I never posted the recipe for shortbread. Shocking.

I've always made this with white sugar, and this time I tried brown sugar instead. No reason - just heard that it was nicer. 

It IS! I will not make it with white sugar again. The brown sugar version is delectable beyond anything white sugar could hope to be.

But for completeness' sake, I'll post both versions.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) cup butter
• 1/4 cup white sugar (or a little less than 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar)
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• Semi-sweet chocolate
• Nuts
• Sprinkles

Method: 

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cream softened butter and sugar, then stir in flour. Add more butter if dough is crumbly. It should stick together.
3. Roll out to 1/2" approximately, and cut shapes out.
4. Bake about 20 minutes or until set.

Topping:

1. Melt semi-sweet chocolate in double boiler. 
2. Dip cooled cookies in and dry on wax paper.
3. Top with chopped pecans or sprinkles if desired.

Makes about 26 cookies.

Tandem Art By Kate

"That's Mom wearing a ghost suit, and me wearing a ghost suit."

(G)Hosts of Christmas Past

I like Advent and Christmas. Always have. I like it differently now that I'm grown up and have small children. Way back when I was younger, friends and family in Singapore will remember that I was hardly ever at home during the Advent season. I was always Involved In Something, it seemed. Found some archival evidence of some of those Somethings which I thought my new friends and family in the US would enjoy beholding. Ready to go back in time?

Right, so when I was a youngster, we went caroling. This was our caroling choir circa early 1990s.

Lovely, isn't it - all that green grass and those bare arms in December?

That was our youth group from church. In the other 11 months of the year, we hung out together and played games and worshipped and had prayer meetings and mentored each other. In December, we became a formidable SATB choir - and many years we were even an S1S2A1A2T1T2B choir. We were self-trained and self-conducted, and sectionals were very formal and businesslike. I think I was the alto section leader some years, in spite of not being able to play the piano to actually help anyone learn their harmonies the traditional way. Some of us were very young - like elementary school-young, but many of us were in our late teens and early twenties (which was why our parents probably let us do this). On Christmas eve we hopped on chartered buses and went on a singing tour of sorts - we sang from about 5 pm to 3 am, through Christmas morning, at the homes of church members, who would invite extended family, friends and neighbors to hear us. We took caroling very seriously - not only because we took choral singing very seriously, but also because of the opportunity to be heard by folks who would never otherwise step into a church building.

It's funny looking back now, knowing what Christmas is like here in Minnesota. I mean, the whole caroling idea would never take off here for so many reasons. Hypothermia, for one. Christmas Eve family traditions for another. Our families in Singapore were flexible with family things during Christmastime - caroling on Christmas Eve meant the family got together for Christmas Day dinner instead. It would be quite different with Chinese New Year, of course - there'd be no question of us staying home then! 

Back to the picture now - are you wondering where I am? 

Here - see red arrow:

Oo - attitude.

Apart from the homes of church members, some years we also sang in malls.

I know, I know - you're looking for me again. Here you go:

One year we sang in a pub. And not just "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" either. It was quite the experience, doing Christmas outreach in those very public places. But then we would've done anything together, really - this was such a great youth group.

Backing up a few years to the late 1980s - this was my high school choir. The man in the black suit was our conductor and instructor; the lady on the left of the photo was our manager of sorts. I don't remember her much, only that she was very nice and strongly believed that well-brought-up girls should always wear nylons. Even in the humidity of the tropics. Hm.

There I am - see yellow arrow. This was not specifically a caroling choir - we sang all through the year and entered competitions and gave concerts and did general choir things. During Christmastime, though, we did go caroling, and whenever the timing of those performances conflicted with church caroling events, we (those of us affiliated with churches) always picked church, much to the conductor's dismay. Incidentally, I was never alto section leader here - the conductor decided I was not compliant enough for leadership. Ha!

Going back even farther in time, here we are in the 1970s. This was our Sunday School caroling choir. If I remember right, we also did a round of homes. That's me, not watching the conductor. 

This is photo evidence of one of the best parts of caroling - the food. The dishes served became part of the caroling tradition itself -and the hosts gamely played along, so that for years after, we still remembered with fondness, the excellent macaroni soup at so-and-so's, or the pizza, or the little cocktail sausages speared on the enormous pineapples.

Here I am in the photo, being Big Sisterly to Sean (brother). I was always slightly bossy that way.

It was also interesting to remember the friends in these old photos, and marvel at how we've grown up into actual people who contribute to the national economy. See what we became!

Urm..... well, some of us are (happily) not exaaaaaactly contributing to the national economy. When we were as young as we were in the photo, we truly believed we would be children forever. I think I still am.

OK, old YF*ers reading this: do you remember these songs?

These songs were part of our caroling repertoire. I still have the choral scores for them, believe it or not, but it's been years since I've heard a recording of the actual music. And then tonight I found them on youtube - hurrah for youtube! 

So, old YFers - are they conjuring images of (hopefully modest) white dresses, white shirts, dark trousers, fancy ties, uncomfortable dress shoes, huge paper bags of Christmas gifts, Magdalene and Stanley's mansion, that house in Geylang, and Audrey Tang standing on a plastic chair, conducting and signing, "watch me" with her fingers pointing to her eyes, minus ones blaring? Ah, the past is a strange and wonderful thing.

*YF = Youth Fellowship

Magnitudism

Here's my hypothesis on age: one's perception of bigness is proportional to one's age. Or, at least, it varies with age. Us old people, for instance, describe biggest possible numbers with words like "infinity" and, even less precisely, "gazillion". Little children, though, are far more specific.

The biggest number, according to Kate, is "one hundred".

According to Jenna, it is "one thousand-one thousand" (said with passion and arm gesticulations).

We realized we'd never heard Emily's version of the Biggest Number Ever, so we asked her yesterday.

"One trillion and ninety-nine," she told us.

Then she asked me what my Biggest Number Ever was.

"Um.... a googol."

"What's that?"

"It's a one with a hundred zeros after it."

"No!!!!!! You're kidding, right? There's no such thing!"

Yes, there is. But as it's also a general word for "A Very Big Number", it was sort of cheating to use it, along with (my second choices) "as many as there are stars in the sky or grains of sand" or "more numerous than the hairs on your head." Those are the Very Big Numbers I grew up learning at Sunday School. God should know, considering that He's been around longer than anybody else. 

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

.... is Advent.

We brought home our tree early this year. 

The girls decorated it, as is evident from the charmingly-random placement of ornaments, none of which quite made it to the topmost branches. Except for the star, which I was given strict instructions to emplace upon the highest bough while every one else was (unwillingly) in bed.

The little brown table that, 11 months of the year is covered with coloring sheets and markers of all kinds, is now laden with Christmassy figurines and other display items.

And Emily made a stable for a new set of nativity characters from Grandma K and Grandpa A.

It is a rare and wonderful thing when our family is ready for Advent before Advent actually begins.

Now it seems that all we need to do is bake a lot of cookies, play and sing a lot of carols, buy a lot of presents, and enjoy a lot of family.

Happy eve-of-the-eve-of-the-eve-of-Advent!

Boringism

Kate: Mum, our front yard and backyard and downstairs are boring*, boring.
Me: Why are they boring, Kate?
Kate: (no answer).
Me: Well, if those are boring, what's not boring, Kate?
Kate: Well...... Emily's school backyard and my school play area are not boring.
Me: What else is not boring?
Kate: Computer games and watching TV.
Me: What about cleaning up?
Kate: That's boring.




* Although she says it "baw-in".

Emily Does Watercolour

I love what the schools do in art here. I cannot remember what we learned in art in Primary One (first grade) but it wasn't this. Every time I am in Emily's school building, I gawk at the artwork on the walls. Either the kids are all incredibly and naturally gifted in art, or else the teachers are good at teaching it. Or both. 

There's a lot of art done by the kids on this blog, and not as much other-academic-subject matter. To an extent, we do a lot more art (than any other learning area) together because the girls are so young that it's something they can all enjoy. Also, art is a lot more interesting to document and photograph than, say, a sine curve (not that we're there yet). For instance, we do a lot of random counting exercises, mostly for Kate's benefit, while we're out and about on the road. Our most current game is to spot and count Brown Trucks (aka the UPS delivery vehicles). Once the girls unexpectedly spotted a UPS airplane and were beside themselves with joy. But as it was technically not a truck, we were initially perplexed at how to include that in our daily tally. Last week, we added another game - spotting and counting school buses, and on a particular day, we counted 44 school buses and 18 brown trucks. The challenge for the older girls is to simultaneously keep count of both kids of vehicles.

Jenna, our resident colour aficionado, recently suggested we also play the very popular game of spotting coloured cars. Her rules were: no bicycles, skateboards, work vehicles (including construction-type things and semis) but motorcycles were allowed, and pick-up trucks were allowed. We were also not allowed to spot white, black, brown, tan or grey vehicles, because they were "boring", or pink (surprisingly) because it was "too hard". In other words, colours of the rainbow. Jenna is very one-track-minded that way.

Mathwise, Emily makes Dave give her mental sums during supper. Her rate of success depends largely on whether she happens to be in a daft mood that evening or not. I'm glad I'm not the one in charge of her Math education, because I just have no clue as to what sort of things are appropriate for the early elementary school level. A couple of months back, Emily missed a whole week of school because of a bad cold, and I thought she should have some make-up lessons, so I taught her Venn diagrams. Apparently, it was slightly too advanced for a first-grader, even with plastic fruit and vegetables and large sheets of paper with large circles drawn on, strewn all over the bedroom floor. And by "advanced", I don't mean Emily didn't comprehend the concept - the challenge was stopping Kate and Jenna from stealing the plastic fruit and making fruit baskets with them on the side while the lesson was in progress. How was I to know they would completely miss the point?

That's our academic update for the week! Emily has a field trip tomorrow to watch an outdoor play. She's very excited about it, which is a good attitude, especially since it was 24 degrees this morning and we were several inches deep in snow. Yes, winter has suddenly descended upon us.

Have a good week, all!

Bread Rolls

Thought I'd share the recipe for the bread rolls I mentioned in this earlier post. It was in the week's newspapers and I tried it for fun. I'm always interested in bread making, and will probably do it more in earnest when I finally buy myself a stand mixer with a dough hook. Winter is not the best time to make anything yeast-involved, because the temperatures, even if supplemented with space heaters and bright hot lights, are just lousy for rising. Case in point: this dough literally sat like a lump for almost an hour before I stuffed it in the oven that was cooling down after a batch of cookies. It rose, if a bit rapidly, and we managed to get some decent rolls out of them. I think they would be quite spectacular if the yeast actually behaved the way it was supposed to, but we do what we can.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk (not skim)
• 2  Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp oil (I used olive)
• 3 cups flour (I used bread flour mixed with all-purpose)
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 1.25 tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp packed light brown sugar 
• 1/3 cup instant potato flakes
• 1 Tbsp butter, melted, for fan tans
• 1 egg (for glazing)
• Sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dried rosemary etc for garnish

Method:

1. Heat milk in saucepan till you can comfortably swirl your fingertip in it. Remove from heat, add in butter and oil and set aside.
2. In mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, yeast, salt and potato flakes. I used a little less than the 3 cups of flour and left about 2 Tbsp for dusting later. This is so I wouldn't have to add additional flour that would make the dough hard/dry.
3. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ingredients by hand (or, if lucky enough to own one - a dough hook) and knead till springy, about 5-10 minutes. Dust hands with the remaining flour, only adding more if absolutely necessary (it won't be).
4. Place dough in lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave in warm place (snort!) to rise for about an hour, till doubled in size. I used a warm-cool oven (lowest temp 170 F and switched off immediately upon reaching it) for about half an hour.
5. Shape rolls into cloverleaf buns, fan tans (layered), crescents, knots and snails, tucking all tails under, where applicable.
6. Cover with light cloth and let rise in warm place for about 45 minutes.
7. Brush with egg beaten with 1 tsp water, then sprinkle with seeds.
8. Bake in 350 F oven for 18-20 minutes or until golden.

 Recipe from here.

Operation Christmas Child 2011

Every year in November, the girls and I pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. Each time, we take photos of our packed boxes and mention that we dropped the boxes off at some collection center. This year, we finally remembered to take photos of the process and print out the little bar codes that will allow us to track our shoeboxes, so we know exactly where they finally end up.

Yesterday, we packed the boxes. As with the year before, we set up an assembly line of little stations so the girls could fill their shoeboxes. Here is our messy basement sofa, laid out with boxes of art supplies, toys, candy, vanity items and toiletries.

Today after school, we drove to the processing center, which happily was about 5 minutes from where we live. We carried our shoeboxes up that little black flight of steps to Suite 500,

where we dropped them off (they are stacked behind Emily on the table). The kids got little green I Gave A Shoebox stickers and a big thank you from the staff.

The nice staff guy also showed us on the map where the shoeboxes were headed this year (the year on the post-it note isn't quite right). Last year, they went to India.

The girls got to peek inside the warehouse where, come Saturday, tours would be held to take people through the process of moving the shoeboxes from the drop-off centers all the way to the recipients in far-off lands. Last year, Emily and I went on the tour and we are going to wait till Kate is a little older before we sign all of us up. Saturday will be a busy day, as will be the weeks following, as the boxes are processed for their long journey. Today, it was quiet, with only a few workers pottering about, receiving shoeboxes from donors and setting up the tables and supplies for the busy days ahead.

Before we left, we stood in front of a wall of cardboard cartons. 

Mostly because I can never resist cardboard boxes, let alone a whole wall of them, but also to capture a bit of the magnitude of this project. We gave just four boxes, but by the end of Collection Week, literally millions (8.2 million were delivered in 2010) will be packed into cardboard cartons like these, and sent to children in more than a hundred countries all over the world. Our girls, especially Kate, are still too young to understand the impact of those numbers; all their little heads (and hearts) know is the shoeboxes are for "the kids who have no toys." May God multiply that motivation a thousandfold as He brings our gifts to those other children we've never met, who have even less than no toys, but whom He loves just as much as He does ours.