Dear Sammy - 5 years old

Dear Sammy

My handsome, charming, cheeky, boisterous firstborn has turned five!

You're one year short of entering elementary school, so that means Mummy has only one more year of cherishing you in your kindergarten days before you go to a different school from your brother. It's been lovely picking up both of you from the same kindergarten.

Both your little brothers look up to you and while you're all sweet with Liam, offering him the sweetest smiles, you're pretty tough with Gabriel because he certainly knows how to push your buttons!

But to us, you continue to remain our baby and we doubt that would change through the years!

This year, for the first time, we decided to hold your birthday outdoors because there was simply no way we could house rambunctious 5-year olds in our apartment. It was also the first time that we celebrated your birthday 2 days in advance (which is a huge taboo in Germany), but that was the only time we could celebrate your birthday because we would have left for Italy for our holiday one week later (more about that later).

It was such a huge success! The sun was shining, the grass was green and everything was a picture of perfection on the day of your birthday party.

We decided to do an outdoor BBQ with simple decorations of just balloons and DIY pirate party pickers. Grandma and Grandpa even came along too! There were about 10 children in total but within the confines of a huge garden with playground, it was so relaxing!

We started off with some skewered barbecued meat and sausages followed by free play while the adults ate. Mummy prepared a game of "poison ball", where a person would stand in the middle of a circle and the other children would attempt to throw a ball to hit the legs of the person in the middle. As soon as the legs were hit, the person in the middle would be replaced by the person who threw the ball.

It was all nice and fun until some of you decided to throw the ball at the faces of the children, such that Mummy had to decide to draw the game to a close!

Instead of a birthday cake, we baked you chocolate cream cheese cupcakes and used your birthday train as candles. It was such a mess-free, fuss-free birthday! Each of you helped yourself to a cupcake without any cutting or distributing of the cake. 

We ended off with a treasure hunt where all of you had to search for your treasure, which also happens to be your goodie bag. Your present from us was a scooter! You love it and have been using it almost everyday!

You had such a fantastic time that you told us at the end of the day that it was the "best birthday you've ever had!" I certainly hope you'll continue to have the best-est birthday parties every year!

Our beautiful firstborn, please know that we love you very much. We're so proud of the boy you've become. You've embraced the whole "older brother" role with gusto and have such a protective instinct over your brothers.

We're sorry for playing the "you're the oldest" card on you whenever we want peace in the house and want you to give in to your younger siblings. Your heart continues to be so tender inspite of all our parenting mistakes. We thank God for you and pray that God will continue to mold you to be a man after his own heart.

We pray that you will seek after God's love and not after man's praises and acceptance. We pray that while doing that you will also fight for yourself and not be easily bullied or taken for granted. We pray that you will have Godly wisdom and courage, lots of faith and hope, and a lot more joy in life in doing the things you do for yourself and others. We pray that your acts will be sincere and that there will be true joy when you choose to bless others in your little ways. We pray that God will also show you His compassion and shower you with His daily blessings and mercies. - prayer copied with permission from a fellow Mom.

Love,
Mummy & Daddy

Our simple balloon decoration overlooking a huge garden

We brought the table cloth and used the birthday train

View of our little birthday hut

Kids had so much fun on this double swing

Sam and his signature "growl" pose

Love this shot with my Mom-in-law

We brought a picnic mat for the baby

Hub did an awesome job with the BBQ

Kids tucking into the barbequed food

MIL brought meatballs and we made some DIY pirate party pickers

Our friend brought a vegetable platter with dip

Time for ball games - Poison ball!

It got rough!

Gabriel having a go at the ball

I tried to help!

Second game when Sam had to catch the others. For those he caught, he had to hold hands with them to catch the others

A rare shot with our Gabe

Our birthday cupcakes with our DIY party pickers

All the kids

They had to blow the candles which wasn't easy because it was in front of the cupcakes!

Opening the presents!

This boy loves lego!

Ending off with some ice-cream time!

And party sparklers

Our Christmas this year (2014)

I can't believe that we are a day from the end of the year!

This year has gone by even faster than the previous year!

I'm so thankful to have my little family that I love and an extended family with grandparents and a sister-in-law who care for us!

There are 2 public holidays over Christmas in Germany - the 25th and 26th.

In the past, we would spend all 3 days from 24th to 26th December with the entire Tews clan - ok, there's only 3 other family members, so that's not exactly a "clan" but you get the idea.

For the past 9 Christmases since 2006 (when I relocated to Germany), we always had a guest(s) over for Christmas.

It all started with my Brazilian classmate, a 50-year old guy who stayed on in Germany after the World Cup to learn German and reorientate his life.

I felt that it would be a pity if he had to celebrate Christmas alone in a foreign city so I invited him over to join Christmas with the Tews family - after consulting my in-laws of course.

Since then, we somehow always had a visitor over Christmas. At its peak, we had 5 Singaporeans and 4 Germans at the dinner table before!

This year was the first year since I got married into the family, that we actually had Christmas just by ourselves.

It was so cozy! And small! And very relaxed!

And it was our first Christmas at our new place!! Such a blessing! We love our house! 

On Christmas eve, we went to church in the afternoon for the traditional nativity play. I actually sat on the floor with Gabriel right in front of the stage since that boy insisted on marching all the way to the front! And oh boy, was he enthralled by the play, music and all the sound effects! I hope he understood the Christmas message of Jesus' birth too!

We went home by 6pm and got ready for raclette with the extended family. Dinner was ready by around 7pm and we all feasted on scallops, prawns and a couple of servings of melted raclette cheese on cold cuts of meat.

We also decided to cut down on presents this year.

The kids only got presents from us and little gifts from their grandparents. I made a personalized photo calendar for my family and in return, we got some home-made jam. There was some money which we have put aside.

I'm all about not buying stuff for the sake of having presents because it's such clutter! We don't have unlimited space at home and neither do we want to transform our living space into a mini playhouse. So we have to be pretty selective about what we buy for our kids.

And to be honest, I didn't have a lot of toys growing up. One learns to be creative and find different ways to play with the same toys. Or one makes toys! I remember transforming the bottom of my study table to a little grocery store!

I'm still trying to figure out how I want to be able to bless my kids with presents but not raise them up to think they should be entitled to everything. Such a delicate balance!

We got Sammy a remote-controlled toy car and Gabriel got a Brio engine which he can now use on his Ikea train tracks.

Seriously Gabriel was actually shocked that the train could move by itself! He was actually a bit scared at first! Like "How can this be?! My train is alive!" I wish I took a video of it!

It was such a lovely Christmas. We hope you had a great one too, filled with joy and being surrounded by those you love.

Above all, we thank the Lord for sending Jesus in the form of a baby for the salvation of mankind. He truly is the reason for the season.

 Our first Christmas tree in the new house!

Gabe was so hungry, he was the first to eat!

Raclett - basically you BBQ either on the hot stone / grill or you make your little pizza with toppings and raclette cheese

In his new pullover before he removed it cos the living room got so warm

LOVE his "caught-in-the-act" expression!

The happy guests

Still looked like we had a lot of presents huh!

A couple of the snail mail Christmas cards we received!

Sam went straight for his present from us!

It's so nice that Sam is at an age where he understands the concept of presents

Before he went crazy with his toy car

 Gabe needed a bit of convincing to open his present and when it was opened, he was too skeptical to take it!

We gave my Mom-in-law her first Chinese wok

Doing the obligatory pose next to our tree

That's what babies are for! Endless snuggles! Ahhh... Gabe still has his very delicious baby smell!

He has a thing for necklaces! As a matter of fact, he broke mine (and I had to repair it) that evening!

Turning 32 - Most relaxing one ever!

December is always such a crazy month for me / us.

On top of the usual Christmas shopping, I have my birthday and hubby has a lot of company Christmas functions. That meant a lot of late nights for him, which translated to full-work days for me.

I can't tell you how much of a difference it makes when the hub comes home for dinner. I have an extra pair of hands and everything just seems so much easier - even if its just psychologically. Hah.

This year, I was quite torn about how to celebrate my birthday. In Germany, nobody celebrates their birthday in advance. So it wouldn't even be an option for me to celebrate my birthday 2 days before the actual day on a Saturday / Sunday. Argh.

The following weekend would have been the 4th advent so everybody's usually crazy busy and that Saturday also happened to be the birthday of a close friend of mine.

The long and short story of it is that unlike other years, I didn't have any official birthday celebratio.

The original plan was to go to Strasbourg with the kids on my birthday, since hubby took half a day off work. The Christmas market there is awesome and I would get to indulge in my Japanese food again.

BUT one day before my birthday, I checked the weather forecast and it predicted rain. *doh!*

Rain + kids + outdoors in a French city = Recipe for disaster

That's when I threw all plans out of the window. I knew two of my girlfriends were free, so I asked them over. My neighbor and her kid were free too so a birthday brunch it was!

It was a very simple affair. Just 3 women, 3 kids (Sam was at preschool) and 1 guy.

BEST.time.ever!

We chit-chatted, the kids played, they sang me the birthday song and I got a little present - which was completely unexpected either.

My chocolate cheese cake which hubby bought (2 candles for "32". Get it?)

Little P. all grown up and 1 year old already!

Lovely A

My lovely sweeties could wait to sink their teeth into the cake

My friends left early afternoon, while my kids went down for their naps.

When they woke up, we decided to go to an indoor water park (Fildorado) with my neighbor and her kid, just 10 minutes from my house.

It had a baby pool, regular pool, a wave pool, 3 slides and even a thermal pool outdoors! Awesome! The entire facility was so well-kept and clean, it was such a pleasure to bring our kids for their little outing!

The kids had a blast! Hubby went down the huge water slides with both boys and while Sammy is all "Yeah, let's do it again!", Gabriel was more reserved and shell-shocked than anything.

There was even a very steep slide that stopped in mid-air such that one flies through the air to land on another slide. Crazy awesome! And yes, I did go down that slide too! Without the kids of course! It was the best adrenalin-rush in a swimming pool I've ever had! My heart felt like it was going to pop out of my body when I landed at the bottom! 

Everybody had a superb time and the kids were knackered. I would have loved to say that the kids slept like a rock, but hmmm.... let's just say they must have been dreaming about the water slides, because both Sammy and Gabriel had pretty restless sleeps. Hee hee.

And that's not all!

Because my in-laws weren't available to babysit the kids on my actual birthday, they actually babysat the kids on the weekend so hubby and I could spend some time together!

We actually went for a movie date on Saturday, where I basically had to endure through the "Hobbit" because the screen was pretty large and somehow I had the mother of all headaches. I don't know if its because of all the fighting scenes or the fact that I had to focus on a German movie, but the movie was a pain to watch. It was good to have caught the last part of the trilogy though, since we watched the first two parts and hubby is a huge LOTR fan.

We shopped for a bit before our dinner reservation at 7.30pm at a wonderfully posh and fantastic Italian restaurant, OGGI. 

I'm not used to having 2 - hour meals anymore but oh boy. Have I missed this! Hub and I had a hard time not talking about work or kids though! What did we use to talk about on date nights?

At my suggestion, we talked about 3 qualities we liked about each other and at some point in time during the dinner date, the conversation drifted back to about our kids and all their funny antics!

 We actually had time to savor our wines! 

Mixed salad for me as a starter (5€)

First main course - Pasta with fresh parmesan and truffles. BEST pasta ever! Still salivating over it! (15€)

Hub had some ragout with veal (forgot the price. Maybe 15€?)

 

2nd main course - Grilled fish platter. Grilled to perfection and freshest seafood. But very pricey for a baby portion (26€)

Perennial fave - Tiramisu (5€). It's ok, lacking the omph.

Panna Cotta (6€) - This one totally made the cut. Great texture and softness complimented with a raspberry topping.

And the best part?

That was not all!

On Sunday, we went for our 1.5-hour Thai-mix-oil massage at Thai Jasmin. This place has by now become our signature indulgence whenever we have a special occasion to celebrate! Hmmm... actually that means birthdays and our wedding anniversary.

Felt sooo blessed!

It was like a birthday weekend actually! No party, no stress, no present galore but I wouldn't have it any other way! It was so relaxing, hub and I had some time to reconnect and I could celebrate my special day with family and close friends. Oh and of course all the birthday wishes on FB, Whatsapp, phone calls, did make me feel extra special.

I think as one grows older, one just want to focus on the things that really matter. And less is certainly more.

Thank you dear Werner and Anita for taking the kids for so long so hub and I could have a lovely birthday weekend. We are very grateful for you both!