RWS Festive Hotel stay - 6th Sept

While I was searching for some hotel stay for Andre's 2nd birthday which didn't materialize, I got to know about this website that provides cheap hotel price stay under their "Mystery hotels" category. It wasn't that difficult to decipher what that mystery hotel will be given their detail description of that hotel. As it was fully booked on Andre's birthday date, I decided to book a room for 6th Sept instead at 1/2 the original price. :)

6th and 9th Sept is EC's school teacher's planning day and their school will be closed. Therefore it will be a mini getaway for us for that long weekend. We didn't inform the 2 girls what we are planning to do on that day. This save our ears from all the excitement questions they will ask us... "Are we going to the hotel stay yet?", "Can we swim there?", "Are we going to stay there many many days?"...and the questions can go on and on till that day comes.

After 2 months of booking the hotel, the day finally arrived. The girls were still kept in the dark that day and was suspecting something because we left the house with a luggage and all the swimming toys with us. They thought we are going Port Dickson again!

We had a quick lunch at Vivocity, The Asian Kitchen, bought some items from Giant and proceed our drive into RWS. Reached Festive hotel around 2pm and had early check-in as the room was ready.

Basically it was really a NUA-ing getaway.
Day 1: Playing/swimming at Hard Rock hotel's pool, lazing around in the room, dinner at Macdonald (near the casino)
Day 2:  Playing/swimming at Festive hotel's pool, bathtub time for the kids and then check-out.

 Reached!

The toilet

Family Deluxe King. Comes with 1 King sized bed, 1 Loft bed and a sofa bed.

Their favorite place in the room. Cannot stop climbing up and down the stairs!

Room comes with 2 adults and 1 kid sized room slippers.

The kid size is so cute!

 Having fun at the Hard Rock Hotel pool with a man-made small beach area.

Nearly couldn't make it for the pool as it was raining when we reached. Luckily it turned to light drizzle and we just let the kids proceed to the pool.

Little Andre is scared of the sand! 

But enjoys a lot at the water play area and playing with his sister's goggle.

 Day 2 at the Festive hotel pool. As it was drizzling in the morning, so not much people were at the pool. We had the whole baby pool to ourselves for sometime before the other kids joined in.

 Andre is more daring now in the pool instead of clinging to our body and refuse to come down.

 After the swim, they had some fun bubble-bathing in the tub.

 The view from our room

Some last few pictures before checking-out.

Review of Festive Hotel@RWS:

- The hotel is undergoing renovation at level 8 and x (can't remember which floor). The staff informed us that from 10am-6pm, the hotel will be noisy as drilling works are ongoing. Yes indeed, as we stayed at level 7, the loud drilling sound is unbearable!

- It was mentioned reno works starts 10am daily but at 7+am, we can hear dragging of furniture or whatever thing they are dragging just right above our head. There's loud knocking sound too at 8+am! The streaking sound above is louder when you are at the loft bed as it's nearer to the ceiling.

- Not much facilities or things to do at the hotel except to swim. But the pool is not as nice as Hard Rock's.

- From the picture at the website, we thought the Family Deluxe King room is quite big because it includes a loft bed. But it's actually not that big per our expectation.

 * The renovation ends in Oct so if you intend to book a stay there, pls do so AFTER Oct! *

This will probably be our first and last time stay at Festive Hotel. 

Lesson learnt:

 - No use getting a separate bed (like the loft bed) where the kids cannot see us when sleeping. They will be afraid! During the day time, EC were so excited with the loft bed that said they wanted to sleep there at night. When lights off, they said they wanted to sleep on our King bed! Managed to persuade them back to their loft bed but middle of the night, Chloe kept climbing up and down up and down and requested to sleep with us. End up I slept with Elsie at the loft while Chloe, Andre and Hui slept on the King size bed.

POSB Passion Run For Kids 2013

Few months back, I received an email from company that they were going to sponsor 100 IBMers including their family members to POSB kids run event. Since it's free, I decided to signup for my family of 5.

I specially went down office early that day to queue in order to be within the 100 pax. After the sponsored 100 pax, we can still signup with company co-pay of $10.

I was lucky to be within the 100 including my family members to get the free registration paid by the company! It was snap up within 1hr+ after the start of registration.

I was all excited about this event because it's our first family run event. To be exact, it's actually a family 3.5km walk.

Finally the day arrived (8th Sept) with a bad weather in the early morning as it was raining. We left the house at 8.15am and reached around 9.10am. Our category starts 9.30am. Luckily the rain stop when we reached the venue and started drizzling when we were 1/2 way through the distance. But at least the weather was cooling and great for a nice stroll with the kids admiring the beautiful scenery at the same time.

I thought Andre would be our biggest obstacle as we did not want to bring stroller along. So we expected to carry him walking for long distance. Infact I didn't want to sign him up initially and thinking to place him with mum while 4 of us go for the run. I'm glad I changed my mind.

Unexpectedly, he was the most sportive one who did not complain tired and walked throughout the journey! We did carry him for just awhile to chase after the sisters as he's walking too slowly. But at least he did not ask us to carry at all and always wanted to get down when we carried him. The eldest was doing great too till the last 1 km where she complained that her leg was very tired. So Daddy carried her for a short distance so she can rest her leg awhile. My number 2 was the one complaining and nagging the most. End up Hui had to carry her on and off till we finished the whole journey. Truly a princess character! I think we had to bring her for more such outdoor activities!

Overall the experience was great except for the whining from number #2. I would love to participate more in such events but Hui said it's an expensive event unless we get to run for free like this time. So he suggest to do more jogging-by-the-park during the weekends with the kids. Yes, it's free to jog in the park and feed the mosquitoes! But it's more fun to see many people wearing the same outfit and jog/walk together mah!

Our number tag! This is important to the kids because behind contains information like the name, birth cert number, emergency contact num etc. So if the kids get lost, people can help to contact us.

The starting point. 10 more mins before the 3.5km family walk starts.

"Por Por"...the race started and it was very crowded at the starting point.

Andre: "Daddy, wait for me!"

WE are running walking for kids!

He's really my little idol. Enjoying the run/walk more than his sisters without any complain throughout the long distance. Yes, he's my 2 years old boy!

Some shots in between the walk/jog.

To motivate the girls, I started to have a mini race with them. 

Pretending to lose the race so I could take photos of them and let them be happy for winning mummy. :) 

 It started to drizzle and this little boy wanted to take the umbrella all by himself!

He pushed his sisters away when they wanted to share a place under the umbrella with him!

At first Andre was happily running towards the finishing line. When the people there started to cheer for Andre when they saw him coming, he stop running and stared at them. He got scared by their loud clapping and cheering! It was a funny scene! 

 Finally completed the 3.5km distance!  Little boy is more interested in the wafer biscuits on his hand which he took from the event crew FOC.

Free caps for the kids by showing my pass. IBM is one of the sponsor for this event. 

I can take as many as I want but I only took 3 for the kids.

Teacher's Day 2013

This year teacher's day the whole family contributed doing some hands-on stuffs for the teachers. I bought a box of sticky mosaics cards that allow the girls to practice their pasting and patience skills. This numbered mosaics are not new to the 2 young girls as they did it so many times. However this box of cards are slightly different than the usual ones they did because it includes some crystal stickers and some are rather small which means it takes some skills to paste it properly on the tiny numbered circle. I'm quite happy both can do it very well and they are very careful not to paste out of the circle. After finish with the sticking, they wrote a short message in the card for each teacher. Well, every card goes...

"I love you, teacher xxx", "Teacher xxx, I love you" because that's their most confidence sentences which they can spell out by themselves (but I helped in the spelling of their teacher's name). Their spelling and reading English words are that private limited!

 The cards before pasting the mosaics and crystal stickers.

 Chloe pasting slowly and carefully.

 Elsie is also doing a great job too.

 Done! It comes with very pretty envelopes too!

I did the main greetings to the teachers (printed on paper and stick to the card) 

while the girls use pen to write down their thoughts to the teachers.

Next comes the DIY flowers which I thought of to make for the teachers. Got inspired to self-make after seeing it selling at horrible price at some shops. With that price, I think I can make more stalks with that same amount of money. Finally found the materials at Popular and the art and craft begins the next day at home. Oh, I didn't know how to fold these flowers at all but my hubby definitely knows because he did a big bouquet for me during our pator days. So he was assigned by ME for this task. Of course I help him out a bit on the wrapping part. :)

 1 packet can make 12 stalks. 3 packets for 36 stalks.
Each bouquet 6 stalks, just nice for 6 teachers.

 Some samples. I wrap those netting around the flowers. Can pass right?

One bouquet was already handed over to the speech and drama teacher as she only teaches on every Monday. The rest was only completed on Tuesday. Pretty huh?

I also bought a packet of lipstick pens online which was selling real cheap at $5 for 6. My mum saw and like it. So I ordered another set. The size is just right for our ladies small handbag or wristlet and I'm sure the teachers will like it too. The bottom of the pens are stick with crystals and matches the card the girls did. Perfect!

Love these pens a lot myself and the pen refill can easily buy at any stationary shop. 

Since I bought another set, now one of them goes into my bag too :)

And so...here's the final product, all ready for the teachers today. All-in-all, it cost less than $50 for 5 teachers and 1 principal.  Not expensive gifts (which I heard from friend that some parents from other school bought COACH bags for the teachers. Crazy!) though but I'm happy and satisfied. They are little appreciation from us to the teachers from Agape! Hope they like it.