12 April 2009 - Baby Tobias' Full Month Celebration

Tobias Tan Yi Jing (陈毅靖), the newest addition to the family has officially pass his first month and can be brought out to gatherings! Yeah! Hahaha...

The small little present I got for Baby Tobias. I'm slowly gaining a reputation for giving baby bibs... Tobias' name was ironed-on with alphabets I bought from Chinatown. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it but I did the iron-on with some help from my mum. I'm lousy at ironing...


Baby Tobias, sleeping soundly in the arms of his Auntie Jassica. Aunt Regina (ME), still doesn't dare to carry him because his neck is still not stiff yet. I only dare to carry babies with stiff necks because they don't seem that fragile.

Anyway, everyone is really excited over Baby Tobias' birth. It's not that we are biased and like boys better. It's just that after 3 girls, we prefer a bit of 'variety'. Hahaha... Baby Tobias is the first boy of the 4th generation. Imagine the excitement from our grandma and the old-fashioned uncles...


Elva, a VERY shy girl who refuses to let anyone touch her, except for her immediate family. My greatest achievement that day was that I finally got to carry her. The reason was quite funny though. She dropped something from her watch and I, who happened to sit beside her, told her that she most likely sat on it. So, I carried her up so that we can see if the thing she dropped was really under her. Lucky it was, if not, I think she would have started screaming...

Baby Tobias finally opened up his eyes at 9+pm after feeding...

Posing... With me snapping away and his grandma (my godma) behind me, talking and coo-ing to him, trying hard to make him smile.


And finally, we succeeded! Or rather, my godma succeeded. Haha... So cute!!!


The bewildered look on his face when he saw his Aunt Regina jumping up and down ecstatically after snapping his precious smiling photo. According to his mummy, Juliana, she hasn't managed to capture a photo of him smiling yet. This baby had successfully won a place in my heart too!


Baby Tobias' first 'namecard'...

5th April 2009 - Grandma's Birthday

Every year, we (as in The Family) know to keep our weekends in early April free because that's when we usually celebrate grandma's birthday. If we have plans, we'll try to find out when is the exact day we will be celebrating and then try to plan around it. NO ONE is allowed to be absent without a valid reason, eg, NS. I was absent last year though and I think all of you know why. Haha...

This year, we went to a small restaurant in Bedok North for dinner. My favourite was the one in Chinatown where we got to sing ktv while having dinner. However, I heard grandma doesn't like it because it was very noisy and most of us were too busy singing to eat. Grandma hates it when we don't eat enough.

That's my grandparents' wedding photo, taken in year 1951. This was a restored photo though. The original was old and tattered. So, one year, we decided to do something really meaningful and sent grandma's wedding photo for restoration. It costed more than 100bucks but split between all her grandchildren, it came to less than $10 each. While waiting for the photo to be ready, my cousins and I thought up another brilliant idea. We decided to make a family photo album and that was way before scrap-booking became popular. Grandma's wedding photo is of course, on the first page of the abum.

Second and third page are photos of our parents taken when they were still children.

Followed by wedding photo and babies' photos of each 'branch', that is, each child of my grandma. Each family got a page and this page belongs to my dad, the third child of my grandma. On top of the page is my parents' wedding photo and the date. Below are photos of my brother and I (when we were still babies) and our birth dates.

And since the photo album is quite big, with lots of pages, we can even put in for the third generation. That's the page reserved for me.

Grandma kept this album high up on top of her wardrobe. My cousin, Jassica, took it from grandma to update the album. I put in the reservation notes when I realised grandma kept some random photos in this album and took up our pages.

Cousin Joey and I... This crazy girl somehow got addicted to hugging me and will give me a tight hug whenever she sees me. It all started the last Christmas when we gave each other a hug and our ribs bumped into each other, hard. In case you didn't notice, both Joey and I are quite skinny. Anyway, she got quite addicted to the feeling of 'ribs bumping'. Haha...

Grandma's birthday cake, shared by the younger grandchildren (I'm not included).

Grandma, blowing the candles with her oldest great-grandchild, Felicia.

Cutting cake... I took a video of the cake cutting ceremony, with all of us singing the birthday song but somehow, I couldn't upload it.

First uncle and family...

Second uncle (also my godpa) and family. Ignore the 2 little girls in front, they don't belong in this 'branch'. Haha... The other grandmotherly lady sitting beside my grandma is my godma's mother, my grandma's in-law.

My dad (third) and family... Same thing, ignore the 2 girls in front. Btw, the grandmotherly lady in orange is my god-grandma (dad's godma).

Fourth uncle and family...

Fifth uncle and family...

Aunt Yan (grandma's eldest daughter) and family...

Aunt Choo and family...

Uncle Mike (grandma's youngest child) and family... Grandma lives with them.

Baby Chloe having a good time because everyone keeps feeding her. Look at the chocolate traces on her mouth!

My mum and her two best friends in the family, my godma on the right and Aunt Jasmine on the left. The three of them wore green without prior arrangement and it was very obvious because they sat together during dinner. Such an coincidence...

28th March 2009 - Chloe's First Birthday Party

This day, we celebrated Baby Chloe's first birthday! Soon, we wouldn't be able to call her Baby Chloe anymore... A photo of Chloe with Auntie Regina before all the other guests arrive and snatch her away.


The two aunties who arrived much earlier than the rest of the guests to discover that everything had been done. Ok, actually I was supposed to reach at 3+ but ended up reaching at 4+. Hey, I was late because I had to go around looking for reusable ice packs for the cake which was delivered at 3pm instead of the appointed 6pm. I didn't manage to buy any though...


Baby Chloe's first birthday cake...

Chloe with her god grandpa who kept carrying her.

Chloe with her Daddy and Mummy...

Chloe with Daddy, Mummy, Grandpa, Grandma and Uncle Marcus.

Chloe with god grandma, god grandpa and uncle James. Auntie Adeline had to leave early for work so missed Chloe's cake cutting ceremony...

See the top right corner of the cake? Baby Chloe decided that since she couldn't reach with her short chubby hands, she used her feet to try and touch the cake instead.

Grandma feeding Baby Chloe, held by her favourite uncle, Marcus.

Chloe's grandpa on her dad side really has a sense of humour. Many people thought it was made by NEA! Haha...

Ben & Jas Wedding - 28th Feb 2009

From left: cousin Adeline, Apple (friend of Jassica) and ME
We were the 'sisters' of my dearest cousin, Jassica, on her wedding day. Our colour theme was supposed to be purple (I think Jas set that colour for my sake)... Anyway, all 3 of us stayed over at Jas house the night before. We were going to have a bachlorette party for Jas but my uncle (Jas' dad) kept asking her to sleep early so Jas had no choice but to go to sleep while the rest of us continued the party without her.


Groom and party arrived! I'm quite ashamed to say that due to the 'party' the night before, we were not really prepared for the gate crash. We kind of 'forgot' to prepare some of the items and so had to improvise a bit. The groom and his 'brothers' were really lucky because we don't believe in asking them to eat disgusting stuff. The most disgusting thing we got them to eat was some unknown brand melted coconut ice-cream. We got the groom to write out 5 promises to his wife and sign it as a 'love contract'. I kind of stole that idea from the previous time I was a 'sister' during a friend's wedding.


The beautiful bride and her sisters...

The bride and groom with their 'sisters' and 'brothers'. The photographer asked for a casual pose and the naughty bride decided to make a funny face.

The outdoor shot at Bedok Reservoir. The man standing at the left most is not one of the 'brothers' though. He's actually my youngest uncle who was tasked with driving the 'sisters' car.
The 4 beauties... This is one of my favourite pose now. Since I'm flat-chested, this pose enables me to show off my best asset, my curvy back. Haha...

The must-have ceremony of the bride throwing her bouquet of flowers to the single ladies. As the oldest, I've been tasked with making sure the flowers don't fall onto the ground and get crushed. However, I stood a bit too far and didn't manage to catch the flowers in time. I hope that's not an omen... :b

Taking off the veil... Actually only Rita (our videographer of the day) and Apple were taking off the veil. Adeline and I just stood close and pretended to look busy. Haha...

The groom took off the bride's veil and threw it... I was told that it's another traditional thing to do also...

After the tea ceremony at the groom's place, Jas changed into a red low-cut gown and we all went back to the bride place. That's my godma and my mum, accepting tea from Jas and her hubby, Ben. Both my dad and godpa were working and so couldn't rush back in time for the tea ceremony. So, being very good friends, they decided to accept the tea together.

The tea ceremony was quite messy though. Jas has 3 unmarried older cousins, i'm one of them. According to my grandma, we can't give her 'ang pow' so we'll just shake hands with the bride and groom. Somehow, when it was our turn, they said we don't even need to shake hands with them so it's kind of pretending we were not there! wth... Discrimination against older unmarried relatives! Hmmph!

Dad arrived shortly after the tea ceremony was over. Luckily, he was still in time to take our family photo with the bride and groom before they left.

Godma and family with bride and groom. My godpa and cousin Vincent were still working so they were absent from the photo. My godparents dote on me and always ask me to join in for family portraits.

This was supposed to be our whole family portrait but one-third of them were not present... And most of them were AWOL too! Unforgivable! They better not try that on MY wedding!