Last Saturday, the boys were with us in church. During worship, as we stood lifting our hands in worship, the sight of the boys lifting up their little hands in worship was a most touching one.
Their hands may not reach very high or very far, but I just had a feeling then that they could reach God sometimes more easily than we can.
We are told to come like these little children.
Reaching out those hands to the Father. Not asking for anything. Simply in worship of Who He is.
Yesterday was not a good day to make cinnamon buns. How many things can go wrong when you are trying to make cinnamon buns?! For me, quite a lot.
Disaster #1 – Put in half a cup of sugar instead of a quarter cup. Ended up trying to remove some of the sugar from the mixture of flour, salt and yeast…
Disaster #2 – Put in half a cup of water instead of a quarter cup. Using the same measuring cup! How did I just not remember that I was using the half cup to measure instead of the quarter cup? Reason #1: I’m used to using the quarter cup to measure things. Reason #2: I just lost my mind. Not in the baking mode yesterday… I couldn’t fix this as there was no way to remove the water!
DIsaster #3 – Ran out of flour! Already I needed to add more flour than usual because I added too much water. Running out of flour was not good. I had to quickly get flour so I can salvage the dough before it’s too late! Good thing there was flour at the provision store on the ground floor…
Disaster #4 – Zapped the butter for the cinnamon spread too long. It was supposed to be softened butter, not melted… Put it back in the freezer for a minute to harden a litle.
Disaster #5 – Now the buns are baked and I was going to drizzle some glaze over them. Ran out of icing sugar!!! Could only drizzle a little glaze over each bun. I guess that should be ok considering I put in too much sugar in the buns in the first place!
I guess yesterday was just not a good day to make cinnamon buns… Or maybe it was just lack of planning ahead! Hence the depleting of various ingredients. I had wanted to make oatmeal raisin cookies. But I didn’t have chocolate chips at home. I guess if I had thought of baking earlier in the week, I could have gotten everything I needed when we went grocery shopping on Monday! Then again, I may not have gotten what I needed since I don’t always keep track of what we have run out of at home! Shopping list shopping list, I need to keep up with updating the shopping list everytime we run out of something!
Here is the picture of the final product. It did turn out ok in the end… except for the shape, had some trouble getting them in good shape! 🙂
Caleb is 5 today.
5 is the number of grace. We have much to thank God for. His grace abounds in our lives and in Caleb’s.
We thank God for the gift He has given us in Caleb.
We thank God for Caleb’s zeal for life and in everything he does.
We thank God for Caleb’s infectious joy and laughter and the joy he brings to so many others.
We thank God for Caleb’s sensitive nature. He is quick to pick up on how others are feeling and it breaks his little heart to see someone sad. He prays for those who are sick or down and empathises with how they are feeling. Even his teacher in school commented that he is a sensitive kid, sensitive to the needs and feelings of others around him. He even puts others’ needs and wants before his… most of the time. 🙂
We thank God for Caleb’s obedience, respect for authority and desire to do what’s right.
We thank God for Caleb’s intelligence and his earnest desire to learn and learn more.
We thank God for Caleb’s ability to read so well at his age.
We thank God for Caleb’s creativity as can be seen in his making up stories, play time and art work.
We thank God for Caleb’s musicality. He writes songs, sings and plays any instrument he can get his hands on. Or else he would just make do with tables, chopsticks, toy boxes etc for makeshift drums.
We thank God that Caleb loves his little brother and is a good big brother.
Most of all, we thank God for saving Caleb and being his personal Saviour. We thank God that Caleb has known Him from a young age and knows how to call on Him for help and comfort, also to be thankful for what he has. We thank God that Caleb likes to pray, and read the bible, and now, to memorise his scripture verses.
It seems like we have a perfect child. No, no child is perfect, no man is perfect. But this gift that we have from God, is a perfect gift. And we have much to be thankful for today.
We thank God for today, when Caleb turns 5.
Frankenmuth is a quaint little German town in Michigan. We spent one night there on a short getaway/vacation. I absolutely loved it and our time there. Of course, being with the best guy in the world is the icing on the cake. 🙂 Here’s a pictorial journal of our time in Frankenmuth.
We’ve had two beautiful days and I love them. The weather here has been unpredictable and swings like a pendulum. When we got here, it was Singapore weather (well, minus the humidity). Then it was rainy and like 18 degrees last weekend. Yesterday and today, it was 21, 25 degrees. Sunshine and beautiful, so we’ve had two great days to do some fun stuff.
Yesterday, we went to a baseball game. We thank God for the good weather, no rain! For a while the sun was really shining hard on us, but once the sun was done blazing on us, it was great weather and a great game! Tigers won in the bottom of the last inning, with two outs, no less! Go Tigers! It was also Star Wars night at the game so there were Star Wars characters all around the park. But… I forgot my camera! So we didn’t get any pictures with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, C3PO etc!!! Mad at myself! It was still fun to see Darth Vader try to use the force to strangle people when the characters were marching around the ballpark.
Today the boys went out with Aunt Deanna and Uncle John to the park and for ice-cream. It was a beautiful day for them to go out and play. I was glad they got to. As I said bye to them, it looked so beautiful outside that I decided to go for a run. It was 25 degrees. Much better to run in than 32 degrees. 🙂
When I came back from my run, the boys had just gotten home too. We spent some time outside, to take advantage of the great weather. Last week they couldn’t go out to play because of the rainy days. The boys helped Grandma rake leaves, then we played ball in the backyard.
As unpredictable as the weather is, it has been forecast that it will be 6 degrees this Friday! 6 degrees!! That’s almost freezing! I just pray that we will have the same great weather for two days, tomorrow and day after, as we will be going to Frankenmuth, a little German town further north in Michigan, for a little getaway, thanks to Cameron’s parents who offered to babysit while giving us a good holiday. Looking forward to that!!! I will bring my camera this time… And charge it tonight…
We are right now in Michigan. We came back for my sister-in-law’s wedding. It was a beautiful wedding, and she was a beautiful bride.
As we were riding in the limousine on our way to take pictures at the park, I was just looking at Deanna and thinking. She looked like a princess. Today was her day. She deserved it, and she deserved being princess for the day.
Deanna is such a giving person. She leads a busy life; a lot of the busyness comes from helping different people. I’ve heard of her being bridesmaid for her friends, throwing showers and parties for her friends, even going to be with people who are about to have babies (as part of a volunteer scheme)! She and Mom planned and held our reception here in MI 6 years ago. Both of them are such giving and generous people. I am blessed to be part of the family!
Looking at Princess Deanna in the limo, there was a sense of happiness and gladness. Glad that love came to John and her. Glad to see them about to start on the next part of life’s journey together. Glad that today was her day, a special day for a special person.
I learnt three new words today. I’m learning new words all the time. I wish I knew and used more words. But it’s never too late to keep learning. Ps Yang’s write up in the bulletin this week talked about the most productive people also being those who have an insatiable quest for knowledge and more knowledge.
1) Apocryphal = of doubtful authorship or authenticity; a word my husband uses often to describe facts and stories his cousin spouts. 🙂
2) Assuage = to make milder or less severe, to satisfy or relieve; a word I learnt from reading a GP comprehension passage today
3) Clandestine = done in secrecy; a term the preacher today used to describe his ministry because God wanted him to remain obscure and unknown, that all glory may be unto God.
I like having dictionary.com on my phone.
At Sunday School today the boys learnt about the sacrificial lamb. Caleb played the lamb whilst Evan insisted on being a cow, according to the teacher. So whenever we talked about what they learnt in Sunday School, Evan would tell us about how much fun he had being a cow (Where did the cow come in in the story anyway??) and he would go Moo Moo…
At bedtime, we discussed this again and asked the boys to pray that God will help us to be obedient like the lamb. Evan insisted, “Me not lamb, me cow…” Daddy decided not to pursue this and we just asked him to pray that God will help him to be obedient. So Caleb prayed, “Lord, make me obedient like the lamb.” Evan, “God, make me cow…” (Mommy and Daddy trying to stifle their laughter)
We set off for Melaka on Tuesday, 31 May, for our annual Family Camp. Camp was from 1-4 June but we went a day earlier to get in some fun and swimming before camp started. Also, we wanted to get the driving out of the way and not risk being stuck in the morning traffic if we set off on Wednesday morning. Here are some snapshots of the camp.
The boys are so excited about going to a hotel. The moment we got to our room (which is a nice sized room by the way), they explored the room and found this long mirror and started making funny faces in the mirror.
The hotel is right next to a huge shopping mall, and within walking distance of other malls, so you can imagine we spent quite a bit of time in the malls. Especially when they have places like A&W and Baskin Robbins which you can’t find in Singapore!
Here we are at Kenny Rogers, waiting for our lunch, and the boys killed time by being funny, again…
Here we are, sharing an ice-cream cone. Yum…
On Friday, we went sightseeing with the Lamberts at the historical sites in Melaka.
This is the famous Christchurch, painted red by the Dutch, as are some of the other buildings.
Caleb took some pictures of the beautiful flowers near the church.
And we went for Chicken Rice Balls!!! These look like fishballs, but they’re actually rice balls, which we had with chicken and roast pork.
The boys really enjoyed Sunday School, especially Caleb, since Evan only stayed for a while each time.
One of the highlights of the camp was watching the kids’ performance on the last day. Caleb got to introduce the songs although he read through the script too quickly. We are very proud of him. 🙂
He really enjoyed the singing and dancing and put his heart into it as you can see from the video here. http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=10150205579559232&comments¬if_t=video_comment
I bought Caleb a kids size guitar. He likes playing on his guitar and singing new songs. This is the one he sang on Friday. I had to quickly type what he was singing. It’s quite amazing what he came up with, some parts quite doctrinally mature. It’s very much all on his own. I just left out some repetitions or sentences that totally didn’t make sense and this is what he came up with.
Verse 1:
Jesus, You’re the One
God of everything
The God who created the sun and the moon
The good Lord of the heavens
He’s the lovely One
Chorus:
His name is Jesus
His name is Jesus
Forever, He is King
Verse 2:
I know, I know, for Jesus is very good
So that’s why we praise Him and worship
Because He’s the King of Kings
Verse 3:
One day He had supper with his friends
Before He died on the cross
He had to die for us
But the Holy Spirit in our hearts is like You
Jesus, the Creator of the world
Bridge:
I know forever, He is the One
He is the King of all
I know that He is the One
Holy God, the God of everything
Holy Spirit, come to us
“One day He had supper with his friends”? That’s hilarious. Yet so true and sounds like words out of a contemporary Christian song. And then “He had to die for us, But the Holy Spirit in our hearts is like You”. God did not leave us orphans but sent His Holy Spirit to us. “Holy Spirit, come to us”. We have been praying for revival in church. I believe even little ones can catch the spirit of revival. Revival cannot be taught, it must be caught. As seen in the words of his song, there is a desire for God’s Holy Spirit to come sweep over us as in the day of Pentecost.
“We need another Pentecost!” – William Booth
Last night I went to Siglap to have dinner and catch up with a couple of friends whom I’ve known for half my life!
Siglap seems like the perfect place to meet up with old friends. The nostalgia, the memories, even the eating places, some of which have been there for ages!
Siglap is where we spent a lot time in our younger days because church is just down the road at East Coast Road. Our pastor used to live at Siglap so there were meetings, makan sessions and house/teen-sitting days spent at Siglap. One of my first cell groups met at Jalan Tua Kong, off Siglap, so we had dinner at Beer Garden sometimes. The KFC at Siglap was also a choice location for studying in Uni days (besides the KFC at Tampines Street 11 and the MacDonald’s at Tampines Street 81) because it’s quite empty. Siglap is on bus service 10 route so we pass by it everytime we go to church. I like Siglap.
So Siglap seems the perfect place to meet up with pals I’ve grown up with. Our conversation was centred around family and having kids. But we also talked about ‘back in those days’ when we were 17! 17 was a special age that kept being brought up 🙂 It was so nice to just chill with pals in a little corner in Coffee Club.
The most memorable part of the night, the part that left me stunned, was the carpark. (Yea I know, I’ve been writing about carparks lately) When I turned to go into the carpark next to Coffee Club, the car in front of me stopped. Then this lady went up to the driver’s side and wrote him a slip of paper. What? A carpark attendant? Dude, we’re in Singapore! We complain when we have to wind down our windshield to “insert the cashcard”. “Aiyah, why can’t it be electronic? So ley chey, must insert card.” And here we are at Siglap and there was a real life human carpark attendant writing out a slip of paper and collecting money!
When I left the carpark after dinner, I had to stop and pay her for the parking. It still really amuses and amazes me. I guess this is another thing that makes Siglap special and all the more nolstagic. 🙂
Privileged to Serve 