Happy Halloween!

Last night, Abang and I went to a halloween party in PJ. It was our first time although Cuz and AJ had been for the past few years so I got bits of information from my sister which made me a little apprehensive.

First things first, we had to figure out a costume for Abang. I was adamant about not spending gazillions of ringgit for a once-a-year occassion. I found some Transformers masks at Toys R Us (for under RM10!) so decided we'd work around a Transformers theme.

In the end, Abang chose Optimus Prime and Adik chose Bumblebee which worked out quite well. I wasn't planning to bring Adik to the party, but I just let him play along and built a 'costume' for him too.

We bought some Transformers stickers and stuck Optimus Prime all over an A4 paper and pinned that to his shirt. We did the same for Adik but stuck Bumblebee stickers instead, and on a yellow shirt. Abang also wanted to 'wear' a weapon on his arm so I got some thick cardboard, painted it grey, folded it and made it into a sleeve that he could just slip on his arm. The barrels of the weapon were made of 2 toilet roll tubes, duly painted red and blue (which are Optimus Prime's colours, for the uninitiated).

Prior to all this, each child registered for the party (and who paid RM30) was given an arts and crafts kit to make a witch's hat and a goody bag - as modeled by Adik, below - to carry all the goodies given out during trick or treating.

Abang, bless him, kept asking to bring Adik along ("Alaaa Mummy, kasi chan la, Mummy, let Adik go for the party also...") but it I knew it would definitely be too exciting - scary even - for him.

It's 6pm and Optimus Prime was ready for Halloween!

We fetched Cuz from Atok's house and off we went. When we arrived, there were already 2 groups going trick or treating. There must have been about 50 children and as many adults, going around the neighbourhood in groups of about 10-15. Little did I know that upon arrival, each child is then also given a water gun, to shoot at various monsters or anyone they fancy.

My worry that Abang would be a little overwhelmed by all this was totally unfounded. He got into the swing of things real fast, screaming "ATTAAAAACK....!!!" whenever we bumped into another group.

If anybody was a little freaked out, it was me, the first-time-at-a-halloween-party mom. After unsuccessfully avoiding being sprayed by various water guns, I then had to make sure Abang didn't get too carried away and lose me or Cuz since he didn't know anybody else there. Plus highly charged kids running around on the road at night had my heart stopping more than once.

Some of the participating houses had the host (and their kids!) all dressed up in ghoulish outfits while distributing the goodies and others had rather bemused looking maids doing it. No matter, the trick-or-treaters just wanted their loot and be gone. Some houses were also "refill" stations, i.e. they had a pail of water there to refill empty water guns. The more seasoned trick-or-treaters brought their own super-soakers, which, true to its name, soaked their targets rather superbly.

Abang was well and truly drenched in sweat and water by the time we were done visiting 15 houses. At the organiser's house there were many activities - face painting, games, storytelling - as well as lots of food. I'm guessing the RM30 from each child also goes towards paying the maids extra for all the cleaning up!

Abang and Cuz sat together gorging on their candy while Mummy had some dinner. After about half an hour of chilling out, it was time to go. Storytelling was in full swing and neither boy was interested in it, plus it was getting late (i.e. almost 9pm!) so we sent Cuz home and came back after.

Next year, I say it's Daddy's turn! :P

Family Day

Today was Daddy's office Family Day and amazingly enough, we turned up!

Daddy and I are usually quite malas ... I mean, too tired ... to go but I thought we ought to go this year and show some support. Plus it would be good for the boys to be out and about. (Having said that, Abang did ask if he could bring the Nintendo DS and Daddy agreed.)

We were amongst the first few to arrive so the boys got first dibs on "helping" to paint the background for the stage, plus get a headstart on hand painting and other stuff like swinging on a vine. What a novelty for our budak-budak bandar!

Anyway, I thought I'd post some pictures of the boys since I haven't in awhile.

Scarred for Life?

I mentioned earlier that Abang had asked his best friend at kindergarten, an Indian girl called Keshika, if she would marry him and she declined saying she "wants to marry someone richer".

He also has been telling Daddy and me that he would like to have 7 sons. The reason for that is so that he can 'distribute' them to various extended family like Daddy and Mummy, Ant J, Wan, Atok, etc, so that they can 'teman' us while he is at work.

However, last week, while we were in the car he informed me that he had a change of heart.

"Mummy, I decided that I don't want to marry anybody when I become an adult."

"Oh? How come?"

"Yes laaa... easier laa, then I can do whatever I want." (I think I managed to hide a smirk.)

"Ok. But wait, I thought you want to have 7 sons? You need to get married first if you want to have children, right?"

"No, no, no," he said while shaking his head and waving his hand at me. "No laaa Mummy ... very leceh la to have sons. Nanti they keep asking for this la, for that la, want computer la, want Nintendo la ... no, no, no."

My son is nothing if not astute.

A Close Shave

Fortunately, this has nothing to do with self-inflicted wounds involving a razor blade. However, it is a bathroom incident nonetheless.

But first, Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri! It was Hari Raya morning and I was cleaning my jewellery. Although it was Hari Raya, i.e. a special occasion, it was still daytime so I figured I won't change to a 'dressy' pair of earings and just wear my regular ones. But I wanted to clean them first.

I normally brush them lightly with a toothbrush next to the sink so that I can then immediately rinse them off, then lay them out on a tissue paper to dry.

Imagine my horror when, after cleaning all the pieces, I realised I was missing an earring back. Ok, don't panic. Yet. Let's look all over the sink counter.

Nope. Nothing there.

Could it have fallen on the floor?

Nope. Just dust.

Ok, panic starts to set in as I realise that it probably fell down the sink.

Oh, #$%@. Time to be the plumber and get ready for muck and guck. Man, that was terrible. It's Hari Raya morning, I was in the midst of getting all dressed up and here I was having to crouch under the sink holding a basin and unscrewing that little cup-like thing and letting all the grossness fall out, hoping that my earring back was in there somewhere.

Daddy got me a wire so that I could also poke and prod into the sink hole to make sure ALL the gunk came out, again, hoping that my little piece of jewellery was there.

So I took the basin to the shower stall and poured it all out really, really slowly while sifting through all that #$%@ rubbish to look for my earring back.

Sigh. No such luck. I did another hopeful round of searching on the sink counter and on the floor around it but it still did not produce the results I hoped for. I ended up wearing a dressy pair of earrings on Hari Raya day!

By the next morning I had resigned myself to the fact that at some point in the near future, I would have to go to a jewellery store to buy a new earring back.

That's when I picked up my toothbrush and saw that #$%@ elusive piece of jewellery stuck in the bristles of the toothbrush.

#$%@!!