One Hectic Morning...

... before Mommy left for work ^_^!

Lunch Date

Henny and Lulu came over to our house with their little ones in tow. It was hectic, but Super FUN. Here are a few pics of us... three hot mamas and four cheeky monkeys!

My Cheeky Monkey

Nick's Reading Corner

We want Nick to grow up entertained and, hopefully, enlightened by books. So we create a reading corner (a.k.a. the bottom shelf of his changing table!) for him.

Loving It! The New “Times” bookstore in UPH Campus - Lippo Karawaci

I read an ad in Kompas a few days ago that there’s a new bookstore in town. And it’s not just any bookstore… it’s the biggest one around! So I HAD to go there yesterday! And it lived up to my expectation! In addition to the large numbers of books available there (yeah, no surprise here!), this is the nicest and coziest bookstore in Jakarta! I love the carpeted reading areas next to the glass walls and the nice café run by Imperial Cakery. This is definitely a perfect Sunday afternoon hangout place for our family.

Also, they have a decent selection of children’s books. I say decent because they stocked mostly popular flash cards, baby’s vocabulary books, and teenage series and didn’t have the classics that I was hoping they’d carry, such as The Tales of Peter Rabbits, etc… Then again, I did find one children book, The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson that I really loved and ended up buying.

On the downside, yes, 90% of the books on my list were not available, but to be fair, I couldn’t find any on my list elsewhere in Jakarta. They were a bit flustered when I asked them the possibility of ordering the books from their Singapore branches so I decided not to pursue it further. While browsing the literature section (yeah, right!), I stumbled upon Momzillas by Jill Kargman and decided that I HAD to buy it (otherwise I'd end up thinking about it at 9:00 PM every night during my nightly reading hours). I had a blast reading it well into the wee hour yesterday. It's not something that would go on my recommended list, but it was entertaining. At least now I am so thankful that in my 1.5 years as a mom, I haven’t met any serious-case momzillas hee hee hee…

Pictures from Taman Safari

A Trip to Taman Safari Cisarua

Last Saturday we went to Taman Safari Cisarua. We left the house at 8:00 AM and got there around 10:30 AM. The traffic was quite bad, and it was a challenge to keep Nick and Grace (Nick’s cousin) entertained throughout the journey. However, once we got there both of them couldn’t take their eyes off the animals! We bought some carrots and the kids took turns feeding them to the the animals (we weren’t supposed to, but since everyone was doing it and the guards didn’t seem to mind… hee hee hee…).

It took us 2 hours to see all the animals. By the time we hit the parking lot, everyone, except the kids who had eaten in the car, was starving! We went to the food court and ate fried chicken from SFC (Safari Fried Chicken) - there used to be a KFC outlet there, but apparently the owner of Taman Safari decided to serve their own brand hehehe...

Once we’re done with lunch, we hopped on the ferris wheel… looking back, it was probably one of my bravest acts in the past years. The thing was small, dirty, and didn’t look safe at all. But because Grace wanted to be on it, we took her. Next, she wanted to ride the cable car, but after the ferris wheel experience we had to decline her request. Instead, we took her on a few other rides that looked safer and didn’t require us to be hundreds of feet off the ground. After spending some time in the mini amusement park, we went to take pictures with the baby tiger. Grace was a bit scared, but she finally agreed to be on the pictures after we told her that a baby tiger was as harmless as a big cat hee hee hee…

Right before we left, we went to the mini bird park and saw many kinds of birds from owls to the flamingos. As we exited the bird park, we saw two white tigers in a cage. They looked very graceful and tame. Next, there was a baby orangutan in a glass cage. He was very cute. Nick must have thought that the orangutan was a little boy like him because he started chattering and “high-fiving” the orangutan. It was a pretty hilarious scene! Some strangers even laughed with us! Hee hee hee…

On our way home, we stopped by a small marketplace and bought some corns, sweet potatoes and other veggies. They were so cheap! The sweet potatoes was sooo yummy! Oh, we also stopped by Cimory, Cisarua Mountain Creamery, and bought milk, yoghurt, sausages and lots of snacks. The place was really crowded and the food looked tempting, but we refrained from sitting down at the café because it was getting late the kids looked very tired already.

Overall, it was a great trip! Despite the horrible traffic that we had to sit through on the way there and on our way home, it was well worth it when you saw the sparkles in the children’s eyes throughout the trip.