Jared's 1st Birthday

We celebrated Jared's birthday on last Saturday, 4 days earlier, because the actual day falls on a weekday. It was a modest birthday party with family members at my brother's house.

As I had wanted to keep nice photographs for this event, I engaged my brother, who is a "professional photographer" :), to be Jared's photographer for the night.

We ordered a cake with the design of basketball as Jared loves his basketball toy.

He was so excited the moment he saw the candle lit up and wanted to grab the fire, LOL. He doesn't seem to understand what was happening that night but was surely enjoying all the attention given to him by Ah Kong, Ah Ma, Ah Ku, Ah Kim, his cousins and jie jie.

Happy Birthday my darling Jared.

Doesn't he look so behaved posing with his birthday cake or is it just a camera trick ? :)

Posing with Ah Kong and Ah Ma.

He Can Walk...

Jared finally took the courage to walk by himself last week, after having to walk with support for more than 2 months. He would be so excited each time he got up to walk. Look at his big smiles all the way while walking. Isn't he adorable ?

Finger Food

I have started introducing snacks to Jared since he was 8 months old. It comes really handy when hubby and I want to have a decent meal in the restaurant or at home. However I find it really difficult to get them from the local supermarkets, there are only a few brands to choose from and most of them contain rather high sugar/salt level. I have also resorted to local organic shops around my area but only very few sell baby snacks. I wonder why..

However I found many interesting types of organic snacks selling in US through online and am glad to be able to purchase them through a good friend of mine. Both Jared and Emily love these snacks and I do not need to worry that Jared chokes on them and most importantly they are made from natural organic ingredients.

Picnic by the beach

Last Friday, hubby and I took the day off to spend time with Emily as school holidays will end this week. We decided to have a simple picnic by the beach at Bt. Ferringhi. It was quite hot when we reached the beach, thankfully there were lots of pine trees which provided shade and it felt really cooling with the strong sea breeze blowing towards us. There were many other families who were picnicking there too.

Emily was so excited about it and I could see that she enjoyed herself so much playing with sand and trying to build sand castles. Next time must let her wear her swim suit.

Hokkien Mee Fiesta

I recently bought 2 packets of hokkien mee paste from a friend of mine, http://www.talentcook.com/. Decided to cook them at my brother's house today. My parents helped to prepare the soup which is cooked by frying prawn shells in chilly with "belacan", grind the shells before adding into the chicken stock to cook soup. Finally sieve the soup to remove any residues. Err.. sounds like alot of work, isnt it?? All I did was bringing the paste and added them into the ready cooked soup, LOL...

We had a lot of other extra ingredients when serving which included fish ball, "sui bak", hard boiled eggs, kangkung, prawns and taugeh.

Everyone, including my nieces agreed that it was really good, so much better than those sold by most of the hawkers.

Very satisfying attempt and looking forward to more hokkien mee sessions :)