Hubby and I are in the midst of getting a piece of land to build a house. A house to call our home. There is so much to consider, but so far we haven't had much time to meditate on it as much as we'd like to. We have been receiving both negative and positive comments from various people. Positive being that the suburb has been picked out as a key development area in Perth, with plenty of infrastructure and amenities planned. Negative being that is perceived to be a little further away from Perth. It is so scary. Scarier than buying the investment property a few months ago. Hubby reckons that it feels scarier than getting married! So please pray with us over this.

We were at Ronald and Diana's house to get our haircut and have dinner. Yes, a haircut - we know a hairdresser who does house visits. Christopher after his haircut (which was 6 months overdue!) For dinner, we had this very interesting dish called 'Golden Pillow'. It's basically chicken curry cooked inside a big bun. Very nice! Apparently it originate in Singapore, but one of our church members learnt how to cook it, so we tarpau-ed a couple of them from him. After dinner, it was play time! Chrisopher's latest trick: Jump so high, up in the sky!!! Wheeeeeee....... For some reason, some people seem to be surprised that hubby gets along with kids so well. Why should it be surprising? He likes children very much lar--his favourite now being Christopher. Anyway, again we had a tearful parting when it was time to say good-bye. This time he wanted to follow us 'home' and bawled when we tried to explain to him that he was already home. Sigh, hard to tell if it was ...

Today we had the adventure of playing surrogate parents to little Christopher. Ronald was at worship practice and Diana had to stay home to look after Daylan who is sick, so they asked us to help pick Christopher up for church. He was very happy to sit in our car. For some strange reason, he seems to like sitting in our car very much... and kept himself amused, looking around and making funny faces with MH-koko. After church, he insisted on following our car to lunch. Perhaps he just likes the variety of sitting in a different car for a change from seeing mummy's and papa's cars every day? I suggested another theory of a subconscious memory of his papa's old Mitsubishi Mirage when he was still a baby? Who knows? During lunch at Emma's Seafood, he sat between Ronald and MH--it was quite a comical sight to see the two grown men looking after Christopher. Ronald was trying to get Christopher to eat his food, while MH was trying to keep him clean, wiping his hands and dusti...

Yeah!!! We're in Sunny Sydney!!! Touched down on Thursday night. We rented a car for one day and decided on a whim to drive up to Newcastle to visit Paul. Here we go on the road once again... Smiley driver EVERY single time we go on a road trip, we end up going through a navigational nightmare (perhaps because I am the navigator?) Arrrghhhh!!! We're LOST!!! And we can't seem to even get OUT of Sydney, much less get on the freeway to Newcastle... Finally after going a few circles around Sydney, we made it OUT in one piece onto the Sydney-Newcastle freeway... Stopped at McDonalds along the way... french fries and milkshakes always help to put a smile back on faces... Here we are at Paul's student accomodation... Typical student room... quite tidy lar... :) Hehe... no need for those books anymore... bring on the game consoles!!! Some assurance that our dear Paul isn't starving to death out here... We went out to a nearby Chinese restaurant for some dim sum We ordered d...

Monday was a public holiday in WA. It was such a nice day, hubby and I decided to go out for a walk by the river. Nice to have a day like this as a break from the cold weather we've been having... This was one of the parks we used to pak tor together last time... Just something about walking in a park on wintry evenings that just draws people together. I know we weren't the only ones who used to frequent places like this... ahem !

This week is officially the last session for our Marriage Enrichment Course. It's been quite an extended course - 12 sessions but held over the past few months. Because it was paused over certain busy holiday periods, plus we only have it once a fortnight anyway. We had a pot bless before our final wrap up session to share what was the most significant thing we learnt in this course. So our Mondays are free again. But our pastor said that they might soon be starting another course on Parenting, which I will be keen to attend. I feel there is so much to parenting that I still don't know about. I guess I could just dive straight into it and still survive, because so many have gone before me and lived to tell the tale. I think the most important thing I want to learn about good parenting is how to instill the right values in my children. I always find it interesting to see how different kids from the same set of parents can turn out so completely different from one another. Class...

This evening I checked my mail (as usual) and lo and behold, I received an e-card from mum and dad... surprise, surprise! For no special occasion (at least not that I can remember) but just a sweet card just to cheer me up I guess... so sweet of them, I confess I felt a little choked up and slightly teary when I saw this card... The card came with some background music... Fur Elise... a familiar tune as it was one of the songs I used to play on the piano when I was a girl. Sigh... seems like it was so long ago because many times I feel that I am so far off from the carefree little girl I once was. I wonder why my parents sent me this card. Okay, the obvious thing to do would be to call them and ask them myself... but I'm feeling sort of reflective tonight so let me have a crack at it... Sometimes I feel I've changed so much... I find it hard to remember who the real 'Serene' is. I feel like who I am now is someone that has been pieced together... a mozaic combo compris...

Swan Valley on Saturday afternoon... an indulgent afternoon of chocolate, cheese, wine, German beer, German sausages and pork shanks - the pork shanks were especially MASSIVE but super yummy! More photos here Easter Sunday!!! Our church had an Easter carnival after service with food, face painting, mini-golf, sumo wrestling and lots more. Click here for more photos After church service and the Carnival, we headed down to Mundaring to see the Mundaring Dam ... very beautiful. Unfortunately there were no civil/structural engineers in our group, so can't comment on the structure or design of this dam. More photos here And to enjoy a scrumptious pizza dinner at Little Caesars ... we ordered six family sized pizzas and two dessert pizzas. Their pizzas are super unique, among them were Pisagnes (combination of lasagne and pizza) and Fettucine Pizza. For dessert we had this chocolate mud pizza and a cheesecake pizza. I was sooooo full after that, I think I ate about seven slices in tot...

Haven't cooked a proper home dinner in some time... that's what hubby said... actually his definition of a 'proper' dinner is anything with rice. So tonight I whipped up a mini culinary symphony of Chinese stir fry. Stir fried cabbage with ikan bilis Cabbage Carrots Ikan bilis Oyster sauce Tom yum prawns stir fry Prawns Capsicum Tom yum paste Soy sauce

Missing home. Maybe it's because I realise that Chinese New Year is finally over but there was just a little something missing which can never fully get except from HOME. Something about the atmosphere and people that is different. During the course of a few conversations with various people yesterday, someone will always mention something about Malaysia and Singapore and compare those places with Perth... what's good... what's bad... I love Perth. And I am grateful that I have an opportunity to live life here. And occasionally I suck in my breath in relief when I come across news from back home like this... Malaysian PM's new $50-mln jet order sparks row Religious department defends khalwat raid on Americans Students and academics forced to 'Aku Janji' document But then again I realise, these are big issues that most times, don't affect the everyday living... people still carry on... life still goes on for the ordinary folk... And quite a significant part o...