Over the July school holidays, my folks flew over from Malaysia to visit. It was just a relaxed, chilled out trip with no particular agenda planned. Just spending time together with us and their precious grandchildren. On one of the weekends, we went on a mini getaway down south (which in Perth-speak refers to the Margaret River region and located about two hours drive south of the Perth metro area). We usually stop by the usual suspects such as Busselton Jetty or the Margaret River Chocolate Factory. But there are definitely thousands of hidden gems tucked around every corner waiting to be discovered. I don’t think it’s possible for a single person to uncover them all. However I can do my little bit by sharing a couple of our own discoveries with you. I left most of the photography to my dad and his trusty Olympus DSLR. But I did manage to snap a few photos here and there to give you a little peephole glimpse of some of the places we visited during our trip. ~~~ Happs Wines I’m ...

My baby girl turned three last month. Three. THREE. It seems too big a number to assign to my little baby. Or maybe I’m just living in denial. Probably. Definitely. We should just stop right here. It’s a very good age to be anyway. Three is just perfect. We celebrated the occasion with a custom-mummy-made cake, specially requested by her highness. The theme was based on her current favourite animated film--‘Tinkerbell and The Legend of the Neverbeast’. (It should be noted that the mummy was pretty pleased with her own cleverness at putting together the various elements of the cake design all by herself). The grandparents indulged her with her very first fashion doll. They chose a Disney Rapunzel one because, in the words of her grandpa: “ I think she will find the hair is very nice to comb! ”. And as predicted, she has been combing Rapunzel’s hair very diligently almost every day until it’s all hopelessly frayed and tangled. And yet she zealously combs on. So what is ‘Three...

Phew!!! July has been an absolutely crazy busy month for us here. So, so, so much to update but so very little time. Anyway before we get too far into this next month of August, I shall give you all a good, solid photo dump just to show you some snippets of just a few things that have been keeping me busy this past month in the family day care department… ~ Scissor skills and cutting stations A number of my kiddos have been showing a lot of interest in practicing their scissor skills. A simple activity I sometimes do is to draw some lines along plain paper for them to cut along. I also set up a scissor/cutting activity station to make some paper-patty-pan flowers for added dimension to our scissor practice. ~ ‘PERFECT SQUARE’ A fun book to extend on scissors and cutting activities is ‘Perfect Square’ by Michael Hall. We followed through with our own ‘perfect square’ craft activity. Each child started with their own perfect square of coloured paper. They then had free reign to use a...