Channery

Channery turned 3 on 11th Oct. she is now very sensible and cute. Just to share some photographs of my little princess.

Dancing babe

Channery just turned 3 two weeks ago and she is really cute.

been busy

These few days I had been rather busy. The new puppy was very sticky and followed me whereever I go. It is very affectionate and likes to lick us. These few nights we were trying to ease it to sleep in the service balcony but it refused. We had to shift it's crate into our room and somehow that stopped the barking. Tried teaching it to do its business in the tray provided but it refused. In the end, we had to teach it to do its business outside. That's probably the way it was taught before.

From Monday onwards kids have swimming lesson every day till next Friday. They really enjoyed the lesson. The children walked about 15-20 mins to the swimming pool and have to cross 4 roads on their own. The schools here do that very often by bringing the kids around with their teachers. Singapore kids will have transport even if it is within walking distance. Kids learn to be responsible for themselves and their friends from tender age. They enjoyed the extra curriculum as no formal lesson so very fun. Chantz received a scolding from me yesterday as he lost his swimming trunk and swimming vest. Very expensive but he simply discarded it somewhere.

Joe met up with his ex boss who was here on conference over dinner yesterday. Lots of catch up and I left the kids at home and went driving out to fetch him from train station. Walking back is not so safe as at that time people usually had gone to beds and the street lights were not so bright.

I hope the little puppy will be healthy and strong as I am afraid I did not do a good job killing the parvo virus. Somehow it's a scary virus that usually will kill its prey. Only cure it's the ability of the puppy's body to fight back the disease.
Been really attached to JJ already so God bless him...

Adopting JJ

yesterday we went to Rensbury animal shelter to adopt a new pet. It is a 7 month old maltese cross shi Tzu called JJ. children said they do not want another black dog so we pick one that is white.

We opened the cage and led the dog out. JJ is a very active dog and still very puppish. We need to do a lot of training. Children said nobody can replace Charlotte as she is always special being their first dog. Just yeaterday they were still rather sad mentioning the dog. The decision to adopt a new one so soon is that we wanted the kids to move on with life and transfer their sadness to love for the new pup. We know they will always remember Charlotte but a new pet will kinda distract them. We did a through cleaning up of the house and checked that JJ had his C4 vacination 2 weeks ago so he should be protected from the nasty virus. owner of JJ did not want him anymore as they actually came in a pair - angel and JJ. My guess is that couple broke off and they were giving away the dogs so as not to remember the relationship. Anyway I read that taking care of a dog is pretty tiring so I probably will be kept busy for a while.

The demise of Charlotte

this morning I received a call from the vet saying that Charlotte had passed away. They could not do anything to save her as she was really sick. The $300 deposit we paid for her treatment would be able to pay for all the expenses incurred by her. We could not take back the body she was carrying the virus and needed to be taken care of properly.

I could not stop feeling sad and my tears just won't stop flowing. I wanted to call Joe but just could not recall his office number. In the end, I called him on his mobile and told him the bad news. Joe also could not contain his sadness and cried too. In our hearts,Charlotte was like a baby we adopted and we even gave her the name we like. Somehow she only stayed with us for 2 days but she had been such a good baby. We love her very much and even right now my tears kept flowing even when I am just writing about her. I really pity her short life. Hopefully she knows that she would be missed and loved by us.

We will have to break the news to the children afterwards and I know that they will be jsut as sad as me. Charlynn was especially close to Charlotte and she will be devastated. We will see how we can teach them about death and be resilent.

We did not have a photograph of Charlotte but her image will always be in our hearts. Rest in peace, Charlotte. We want you to know that we love you for being such a strongwilled, loving and wonderful pet.

Charlotte, our beloved Shi Tzu

Yesterday was a rather sad day for me as Charlotte was dignosed with Parvo Virus. she has only 50-50 percent of survival. she had to be put on drip and on antibiotic so she had to stay in the animal hospital. We check out internet and realized it was a nasty disease that affected dogs that are not vacinnated. The stay will cost us $600 to $1000 depending on how long she were to stay there.

when the doctor did the test and came off positive. He gave us 2 options. One was to send Charlotte to them and changed into another dog. Chances they will not save charlotte and would put her to sleep or sell her to animal rescue if she was lucky to live till then.

another option was to keep charlotte as our pet and foot the bill for her so that she could received treatment. I went out to discuss with Joe and he too felt we should do whatever we can to save her. Money can be earned back but we could not get Charlotte's life back if we were to just drop her and choose another dog. On the way home, we asked kids if they thought we should leave Charlotte and get another dog, they all disagreed so we were actually quite glad that they have kind hearts.

We thank God of sending Charlotte to us and let the children learnt this valuable lesson whereby money is not everything. We must think kind thoughts and do good deeds.

charlotte is sick

Charlottee has been adding a lot of fun and laughter to our household but she has not been well these 2 days. She was not eating well and had diarrehea. I caught her vomitting a few times and we are going to send her to a vet afterwards.

she looks pretty normal and healthy but she is getting skinnier. We checked out the internet and still she did not touch the food we prepared for her. wondered if she is stressed in a new household or that she had eaten contaminated food or that she had bacteria in her stomach. Better let the vet checked her for any illness.

She is a very well behaved gril. when I combed her long hairs. Even if she is in pain, she will just closed her eyes shut and she did not snap at me. We all enjoyed her company as she is such a sweet little girl.

okay going for breakfast as we need to go vet later on.

Adopting Charlotte

These few days i had been browsing the net to find a suitable pet dog for the family. No luck so today we decided to drive to the Fairford hospital to look for an ideal pet. We found a black Shi Tzu very cute so we decided to adopt her. We paid $210 for her and will only be able to collect her tomorrow. She was trembling when the other dogs were barking so we kinda feel sorry for her. when we opened the cage, she allowed us to stroke her. From the look of it, she must be a puppy. We have decided to call her Charlotte, chinese name is 家乐。 hopefully she will bring a lot of laughter to our family. I actually wanted to name one of my daughter that name but in cantonese poon kar loke might not sound so nice. So with a little dog, she will be named the name which I Liked a lot.

This morning I went to kids' school to help out as a volunteer. Today is campsie festival which is equivalent to the racial harmony Day in Singapore. The children dresssed up in their traditional costumes and parent volunteers from various countries set up stall to cook. Yes they do cooking in school and sell food to everyone visiting their school. children even walked out of the main street in their fineries to attract the Campsie residents. the class will be in charge of games and the whole proceeds will go into buying things for the kids education. A variety of food from all over the world. I helped out selling samosa, spring roll, chicken wings, fried rice, fried noodles. some of the food were cooked and donated by parents. Some of them were cooked on the spot in the canteen kitchen.

we had a lot of fun and I met a new friend. She is a malaysian and husband is singaporean. They are now PR. She is working night shift as a nurse as day time she had to take care of her child.

She had been here 2 yrs and enjoyed the lifestyle here very much. Only complaint is missing the good food in Singapore. Told her there is a new Da4 jia1 lai2 malaysia restaurant jsut opened a week ago at Beamish street. We had tried the food, very nice and quite like what we had back home in singapore.

Anyway I am those jian4 gu2 tou2 who likes to busy myself silly. Will look forward to going out and meeting people from all ove rthe world.

Back to school

The children were back in school. It's really good to have them away from home for a few hours. They were really excited this morning and could not wait to see their friends. We ended up going rather early today.

After that I brought Channery to the playground. the weather is rather warm lately and we enjoyed the sunshine. After that we went shopping at aldi as we needed to get some milk and bread.

I am now really tired as I did a lot of household chores today. the whole hoilday the whole house was not cleaned properly as kids were around. It took me about 4 hours to complete cleaning and mopping the place. I even cleaned up the backyard. Now quite tired but felt really good. Sense of achievement I guess.

Okay that's all. wil write again when free.

a week's updates

Last Sunday we stayed indoors as we were tired. On Monday we went shopping for groceries but Charles did not want to go with us. In the end, we left him at home as we would only be gone for a while. After buying some vegetables and fruit, it started to rain so Joe drove back without us as we had left the laundry outside the house. When he got back home, he was very pleased as Charles had the initiative to get the clothes in so the clothes were not wet through. charles decided to come fetch us together with joe. We had icecream and fried chicken before coming back home.

On Tuesday, Joe went back to office and left me with the children. I ended up asking them to clean up the toilet as they were the ones to make a mess out of it. They would get $2 each for cleaning. In the end, Charlynn told the boys to get out as they were more than a hindrance than help. I told Charlynn I will give her $5 since the boys only did halfway. When I told the kids to come forward for their reward, the boys kept whinning and said that it was not fair that they had less than Cahrlyn as they went out because they were told to do so. In the end, I took back the $3 from girl and told her she will be rewarded soe other time. The boys were really a headache.

On wednesday Joe was back at office so I was again alone with the kids. To keep them occupied, I told them to do gardening at the front yard. They happily did that looking forward for their reward. My neighbour lent us the lawn mower as the kids were cutting grass with scissors. they were unable to use the electric lawn trimmer so I asked them to use the traditional way. It would also keep them occupied for a longer time. My neighbour invited us over for coffee and had a look at his garden. They really planted quite a lot of stuff in their backyard. We chatted for a while and children decided to come back for lunch.

Today we went out in the afternoon as we decided to go to the Science Centre at Wollongong. We took the Pacifc highway scenic drive. We spent about an hour and a half there. the trip was nice as the weather was fine. We actually had hot dog and icecream at the royal national park -baldhill area as there were many people doing handgliding and paragliding. it was fun to see the participants moving off from the cliff and into the air. We managed to come back to campsie at 5 plus. We did out shopping at Woolworths and I came back to cook dinner. Children saw their friend so they went out to the park with Joe. They had fun at the park and only came back at 6 plus to have their dinner. Today's dinner was baked rice, mashed potaotes, baked chicken and fried vegetables.

Well! life is pretty fun this hoilday as Joe was mostly at home to look after the kids. He also took us out of Sydney so we kinda enjoyed this holiday the best so far.

Back from holiday

We are back safely from port stephens. We went there on Wednesday and came back today. On Wednesday we went to Bowral and then to Wollongong. the drive was nearly 2 hours. We actually wanted to go see the tulips but the entry fees was too expensive so we decided to forgo that. We had a nice scenic grand pacific drive and the scenery was spectacular. When we reached home, we had dinner at the Korean restaurant at Woolworths as we wanted to buy some groceries for or trip to Port stephens.

Actually we realized something wrong with the car for the grand pacific drive so we checked out in the internet. They all say it's tyre balancing. Joe sent the car to the mechanic and we ended up changing 2 front tyres as one of them is seriously damaged. The drive to Port stephens was alright and we enjoyed the trip. after the drive to canberra, the drive to Port Stephen actually seems easy. We reached port stephens at about 2pm and decided to stay in the hotel as kids wanted to swim and I wanted to rest. We had chinese food and then back to hotel. We discussed what we wanna do and ended up signing for whale and dolphin watch and sand dunes.

The whale and dolphin watch was 3 long hours and we felt uneasy on the boat. We managed to see 2 mother whales and their calves. they actually had a 300m law to protect the whales. The dolphins swam past our boats and we were really excited to see them being so playful. After that, we had chinese horfun at a Chinese restaurant. We decided to go to a play area Torangoo. We played slide and we had an accident. My cart actually knocked into Joe's and Chantz cart and Chaannery had a cut on her lips and I had a bruised right arm and sprained elbow. I can't lift heavy stuff or bend my elbow properly. The children had mii golf after that and they enjoyed themselves. Luckily baby was not seriously injured. I think it's not advisable to play such dangerous game.

Today we checked out at 9am and drove to the sand dunes. The sand dune is like a mini desert and it is moving inland. We stopped at the seaside and played a while after that we went to dune boarding. We were taught to use a board to slide down a sand dune. It was about 2 storey high and we all had a go. I can't use my left hand so Joe was behind me to hep me to get down. It was fun going down and actually not that dangerous. The hardest part was to climb up again. In the end, our vehicle also did a dive down and we really were scared stiff. What if the whole car colapse down the slope?

Okay that's all. We need to take our dinner soon. It's home delivery as i am too tired to cook now.