CNY Cookies

I have never had the experience of making CNY cookies, not even when I was little. As business owner my parents used to get very busy around CNY and my mom has never bake any CNY cookies like other mothers with their kids and so I never know how to make the "kuey ka pek" nor experienced the "CNY cookies making environment" like other kids do.

Last week, I checked out the peanut cookies recipe and I was surprised that it is so simple. So I decided to give it a try and also let Charlotte to help out. I prepared all the ingredients in the afternoon and we were into action when Charlotte came home from school.

It was a very simple recipe indeed, and very easy to do. Charlotte totally enjoyed it!

My table top height is not right for Charlotte to do the task, it is either too low if she sits on a stool or too high if she stands on one. So, I put everything down on the floor and we were making the cookies in the "kampung" style, hehe!

Charlotte was all into it and she participated till the last dough. She then washed up and changed to her PJ and when she came down the cookies were ready! She gave a big thumbs up and said "Good", what a generous supporter! :)

I know, the print is wrong! It usually looks like a circle in circle, but this is just a hole in the middle *LOL*. I couldn't find the right tool to imprint the right shape on it, so I just took a chopstick and poke a hole in the middle *ha, lousy job*

She asked to pack the cookies into the nice containers and she brought it to her grandparents this weekends. She said "Ah Mah, I made this, you try la, so delicious you know!" *LOL*

I think this is a very nice and warm CNY greetings to giveaway and I'm going to adventure to another recipe next week, if I have time. Will see :)

Every Girl Must Have

This is one of my favorites from my recent US shopping...

When I walked into that store, it was the first thing that I saw and I absolutely loved it! Someone once told me "a pair of red shoes is what every girl must have", I wasn't too fancy about red myself and I don't buy many red stuff for Charlotte either, but this is definitely an exception. I wonder if I had a pair of red shoes when I was little, gotta ask my mom when I see her this week.


I should have kept it for Chinese New Year but I was too excited and I let Charlotte put it on during Christmas through new year! Yes, boring but couldn't help it :)

Up!

I took off for another business trip right after my brother's wedding, didn't have a chance to review all the wedding pictures and video took from various source. This is something I "must" do this week so that I can post some sharing about the wedding.

While I was away, Charlotte had her "school holidays" too. She used her power of manipulation and gotten away with grandpa and grandma. I was quite mad when I got to know about it and she actually didn't not come to pick me up from the airport thinking she could get away. Well, I did not punish her very much because to me it is more important to know that she was taken good care of.

We planned and make sure that she had good weekend and that would be my negotiation with her to get her back to school schedule come this new week. We bought her another new kite and took her kite flying over the weekend.

We arrived at the beach nearby Queensbay and we did not worry about wind and all as we usually saw many people flying their kites far and high during the weekend. However, we tried for almost 45min and there were no success, no wind! Charlotte's face turned very sour because she was disappointed!

We sat down for a little bit and I was calling it off but Charlotte did not want to leave without seeing her kite up in the sky. Both Pat and I were tired from the earlier trials but as our kite flying spirit was running low we felt a strong breeze coming up and very quickly Pat and I stood up and threw the kite up to catch the wind. Thank goodness that we got the right timing this time, Charlotte's kite flew up very quickly!

We then passed the "control" to Charlotte and we could see her face lighten up almost immediately. As she was holding on to the roller, she turned around suddenly with a very serious and concerned expression and asked "Mommy, I can fly up or not?" I didn't catch that immediately but I quickly realized what she meant! She just recently watched the movie "Up"! She must have felt the strong tension as her kite was at its' last inch of string!

Those of you from Penang island would know how close it is from the Queensbay Mall to the Penang airport. There were many airplanes heading towards that direction for landing and the planes were flying rather low and we didn't realize how close the distance was between the kites and the planes until Charlotte shouted "Mommy, the plane is going to crash into my kite!!" No, kidding!

Welcoming New Member To The Family

No, I'm not pregnant :)

1st Jan 2010 marked the 1st day of new year and it also marked the official day of us welcoming a new member to the Lee family. We witnessed a marriage registration of my 2nd elder brother and his "soon-to-be" bride at the church.

Actually, we were only told that it was going to be a wedding ceremony rehearsal that day. Didn't aware of a formal registration was planned and shamefully, some of us were late, some of us did not dress appropriately. Whether it was a communication breakdown or a change of plan, we were just glad that everything went well.

It is their big day this weekend and honestly, we have been waiting for a very long time for this day to come. Everyone is excited, looking forward and busy getting things done.

Congratulations Gary and Chia Yen!

When Communication Is A Problem

We all know the importance of choice of words and I bet you don't know how it is going to drive you up to the wall like I do when the wrong choice of words is used.

My new maid came to join our family in Nov last year. She's only 21 years old (yeah, we remember we saw 27 on her profile but then you know how 1 and 7 fooled us sometimes) and has never leave her country before. Deep down, I had prepared for the worse, that she doesn't know the basic expectations nor the most fundamental discipline that we expected from our previous maid. But, I am fine to take her as long as she is willing to learn and has some level of initiatives. The one thing that I didn't know is how communication can be a challenge.

Examples:
Right after I came back from my recent trip I found that my bedroom floor was super sticky and there were dusty and hair at the corner of the living room and under the couch.

Me: Arnie, did you sweep the floor when I was not around? How come it is still so dusty?Arnie: Yes, madam
Me: Did you sweep under the chairs and tables? And from the corners? *pointing to all those direction*
Arnie: No, no need!
Me: What do you mean no need? You have to! Remove the chairs and tables and sweep! Did you?
Arnie: No, no need madam!
Me: What?! Stop saying no need. I am telling you that you have to! ...


I came home from work one evening and realized that I didn't bring the keys with me, so I honked and have Arnie to open the auto gate for me. I saw her stood at the front door and waving to me. I couldn't understand and so I wind down the window:

Me: Open the gate for me Arnie
Arnie: No, no need open madam.
Me: What? Open the gate! I want to park my car inside.
Arnie: No, madam, no need open. *then she pointed at the small gate and asked me to come inside from there*
I parked my car and walked through the small gate...
Me: Why didn't you open the gate? What do you mean no need?!
Arnie: *Took the auto gate remote control and pressed on the button several times, but the gate couldn't open* No need!
Me: Arnie, the door Cannot open, not "no need"!

Pat uses different pieces of cloth when he washes his "precious" (car) and he will just leave the cloths outside the porch when he is done. When our previous maid was with us, she knows what to do with those. But Arnie, she just kept all those cloths in the washroom. One day, Pat realizes those were extremely dirty and so he asked:

Pat: Arnie, did you wash these cloths? How come it is still so oily and dirty?
Arnie: Cloths? No, sir
Pat: These cloths *showed it to her* Did you wash?
Arnie: No, no need sir, no need wash!
Pat: What no need wash? Please wash them and dry them every time I finish with them. See so oily? How can I use them?

Only last week I finally realized that her "no need" can be "cannot", "not yet" or "didn't"! It has been driving me nuts every time I had a conversation with her. I couldn't understand how can she be so stubborn? How can she answer me "no need" when I told her that she "Has To"? I felt like my blood pressure was shooting right up to my head when I heard "no need" from her.

Her other standard answer is "don't know". Charlotte has request now and then, sometimes she asked for her old toy, 1 small piece of a particular paper, 1 small ring, 1 small hair pin...and Arnie's standard answer is "don't know". She got me so mad that I had to tell her I don't want to hear "don't know" anymore. She better know where are all Charlotte's toys and stuff. I mean, my house is not a 3 storey big bangalow, I only have 1 room for all Charlotte's toys and those are all in boxes. How difficult is it to find one?

There are many other cases that made us go "Arghhhhh"!

Puppy

Remember this post? We met some puppies at the beach and after that we had to "justify" to Charlotte why can't we keep another dog. Back then I was thinking far to sustain a SAHM status, even then I wasn't very keen to own another dog.

The "I want a puppy" idea was out of mind until yesterday. We stopped by a pet shop to get Simba's food and other necessity and there Charlotte met her "friends" and the idea came back once again! We had to deal with the "I want a puppy" talk for almost the whole of last weekend. She was the one justifying why she wants a puppy, and how she would take care of one.

Of course I am not ready to own another dog no matter what Charlotte promises, I know it would ended up just like her fish and tortoise which the maid has to take over. Owning a dog is a big responsibility. It is not like fish, or tortoise, or even strays that you can feed him one day and ignore or assume it would survive on itself on other days.

For now, Charlotte is holding on to her toy puppy and we will get her one when she realizes the responsibility and ready to take that role.

Yup, that's the sad face I had to deal with every time we talk about this topic.