Before we get further into 2018, I must take a few moments to marvel over how big my Christmas baby has grown. Seven years to be exact. Just look at that! I’m already getting teary just looking at that picture. But let’s not get into all that now. First let me show you the awesome birthday cake I made for my birthday boy when we celebrated his birthday last month. He had asked for a Lego Nexo Knights cake. After trolling Pinterest for a bit, I came up with this version of a chocolate knight’s castle cake. The embellishments were created with the aid of the printer, laminator and my trusty washi tape kit. Next to the goodie bags, the birthday cake was probably the biggest job I had to do. Because this year, Nathan specifically requested the most chilled out birthday party ever. Nathan: “Just three of my bestest friends…” Grace: “But what about MEEE????” Nathan: “Of course you’ll be there… you are always there !” Grace: “Okay! Good.” The party itinerary consisted of a play at our ...

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays, we flew up to my hometown, Kota Kinabalu, to hang out with family (and satisfy our Tuaran mee cravings). For the first time in my life, I am now a real bona fide aunt to a gorgeous little niece, whom we were looking forward to meeting. Nathan and Grace just loved the fact that they had a true blue cousin to add to their generational count. Nathan and Grace had unlimited hang-out time with their grandparents. Enjoying nightly sleepovers with them in their bedroom and staying up for late night pillow talks together. Chilling... A post shared by Serenely (@livingserenely) on Dec 26, 2017 at 11:31pm PST On Christmas Eve we let the kids stay up late to attend a candlelight service at the church I grew up in. They were super stoked that they could hold an actual flickering fire-lit candle on their own. We took the ultimate family photo together at a famous photographer’s studio. Nathan picked up some slick photo posing tips during the session...

Hello! Hello! Hellooooo! Here we are on the other side, crossing over into the new year. We had a lovely, unplugged, chilled-out break over Christmas and New Year’s spending time with family back in my hometown. I kept the social media updates to a minimum to allow myself to just ‘be’ in the moment of whatever moment I was being in. I might have less Instagram-worthy moments captured for posterity. But I hope the memory of the feeling in the moments that meant the most have been imprinted more deeply instead. I used the down time to breathe and reflect on the year that had just gone. I remember the year before was a year of hard knocks . I think after that tough year, last year was kind of a ‘breather’ year for us. We were still reeling a bit and recovering from the blows from the previous year. So last year was a year of sitting back and taking it easy for a bit. Not that we were lazing around. Hubs had started a new job and was getting his feet stuck right in. Nathan and Grace were ...