Random activites and joy

The weather was not good for the last 2 weeks and finally it is warm and sunny. In the first 3 photos, the boys were in long sleeves. While I cooked lunch, the boys would play by themselves either in the living room or out in the garden. Sometimes they had fights and to calm them down and have a piece of mind, I actually made them watch cartoons on the laptop.
One day while I was cooking, I checked on them and saw A1 reading a book while A2 was just resting on the floor. A2 was tired as he woke up each morning at 6.30am.

Another time, I caught the boys playing with sticks in the garden.

As for the photo below, this is the forest that is 100m from our house. The trail brings us to the next village 3km away. The village is bigger and has shops. We took the trail on a cloudy sunday and stopped at the village bar for juice and coffee. We bought bread for the kids at the bakery. It was a lovely walk though A1 was tired on the return trip and did not want to continue on his balance bike while A2 wanted to be carried all the time. On top of that, a storm was brewing and we hurried back home barely missing it. What a close shave. 

As summer temperature returns, the boys are in t-shirts and happily playing outdoors. I pumped up a small plastic pool for the kids with the basic balloon air pump. My brother and mum were watching me working slowly via Skype and teasing me. They had better air pumps in Singapore. Well, it did not take me that long after all but my fingers were aching at the end.

The boys enjoyed themselves in the pool. In the end, it seemed like we were running a nudist camp as the 2 boys were in their birthday suits splashing water around and riding their bicycles. No explicit photo here. :)

Start/Stop button with the comfort access key incident

This is an incident that happened on the day we moved. I wanted to write it down to remind myself and maybe others never to let it happen again.
Seb has a company car and has been driving it for a few months. On the day we moved to this new house, I took A2 with me in our family car to the new house first while Seb supervised the movers in our appartment. In the afternoon, he took A1 with him.

Seb has a BMW 118. Instead of a conventional key, he has a so call comfort access key. When the comfort access key comes into range of the vehicle, a touch on the Start/Stop button will electronically trigger the ignition process. When we use the car, this car key can be in my handbag and just pressing the Start/Stop button will start the car. How convenient. Another 'good' feature is that the car auto locks itself.

On this fateful day, Seb arrived with A1 sleeping in the car. He came out of the car and by reflex, closed the car door. Since there was no car key to remove from the ignition, he did not take out his car key which was sitting in the cupholder. The car was locked with the key in it. The spare key was packed away in a box. It was a hot day and we panicked. We shouted at A1 and banged on the window. A1 woke up with a start. We shouted at him to remove his car seat belt. I knew that it would be impossible as he did not have the strength to press the button. He looked frightened with us shouting at him behind the car window. He then pressed the window switch to lower down the window. Thank God it was not locked! We encouraged him to keep pressing it down. I helped him to release his seat beat and we asked him to go to the front to get his dad's set of keys. He did as we said and with that we managed to unlock the car doors. He was wondering why we hugged him so tightly once he was out of the car and all the praises we gave 'bravo', 'smart boy', 'good job'......

It was long 10mins ordeal. When Seb received the car from the car dealer, we knew we should always have the car key with us when we leave the car as this stupid Start/Stop button system can make us conveniently forget about the car key.

We are extra careful now. We always check that we have the car key with us before banging the car doors.

The trees in the garden

I live in a village where there is no shops. When choosing a house, this was not an important criteria. I wanted to live in a place where there is at least a school. So here we are, in this village, there is a school for young children. In order to keep the school functioning, the village population must have enough school-going children. Depending on the policy of the village mayor, he may decide to close the school when there are too few students or attract young families to settle down. 

In this village's case, the village mayor among other reasons than the one cited above, sold land for housing development. Our previous owner bought a plot of land and had the house built 5 years ago. Our neighbour opposite us actually built his own house. I find that amazing. In this housing development, there were about 15 houses built. This ensures a growth of population and having younger villagers.

The village mayor imposed certain rules for the houses. Since our house was already built, I did not know about the house details (design, style, material, colour). But I was told that there must be at least 3 trees in each garden.    

I mentioned long ago to a friend that my future house should have a cherry tree. When I told her I bought a house, she actually asked if there was a cherry tree. And yes, we do have a young cherry tree though that was not a decisive factor. In addition, we have an apple tree and a prune tree. The trees are not much taller than me. In April, there were cherries. The apples on the apple tree are small and I shall see if they are edible come Oct. As for the prune tree, I have no idea when is its fruit season.

So there we have, the 3 trees in my garden.

Gardening and parasol

The first weekend at the new house, we set to work on the garden. Though we had limited tools, we tried to tidy up. A1 helped by staying beside his dad and giving him moral support. There were many rubbish (bricks, wooden planks, heaps of dead leaves) behind the garden shed and Seb was cleaning up that area. I was pulling out weeds and A1 came and helped too. He insisted in wearing his rain boots though the ground was hard and dry. But well, he did had that gardener look with that attire. 

When we visited the hardware shop, we bought a big parasol. It was too hot to dine in the garden without any shade. We are all spotting a tan just after a few days in the garden. This parasol is huge and covers almost the whole table. Next in our list is a BBQ. Let's hope the weather stays sunny so that we can eat outdoors and do BBQ often.

Moved

We moved from our appartment to the house a week ago. These were the boxes in the living room and there were more in A1's room. We had a total of around 60 boxes and I had emptied almost all of them. The last 10 were really headache as we did not have space for the contents in them. Yeah, it sounded weird that I mentioned a lack of space since I moved from 80m² to 140m². In the old appartment, there was more storage space since there were built in cupboard in all the rooms. Now, I need new furnitures to contain these stuff. New cupboards and drawers for A1's room, new wardrobe for our room, a cabinet in the dining area for our glasswares and plates.

Before we got these furnitures, we bought a basketball stand instead for the kids. They had so much fun running in and out of the house to play in the garden. The weather was nice and warm so far. 

 This is the backview of the house. The kids adapted really well and slept soundly from the first night. Each morning, the kids woke us up early at 6.30am and each night, Seb and I slept past midnight trying our best to put things in order. We visited the hardware store ever so often to get things for the house and the garden. We were exhausted.

With the good sunny weather and a few showers once in the night and twice in the morning, the grass were growing at lightning speed. Seb ordered a trimmer and a lawn mower and it was delivered this afternoon. He had left for a work trip and would only be back on Sat evening. Living in this small village, I can't help feeling that our neighbours are checking out on us. Prior to moving in, on 2 occasions, 2 neighbours came and informed us that the outdoor lights were left on for 2 days. Until Seb mows the lawn this weekend, this would be the only house with an unsightly garden in this neighbourhood. For the moment, I can live with that.