I went to a wedding dinner last night. Normally we don’t take the kids because it’s considered rude to bring your whole family and take up precious seats at a Chinese 9-course wedding dinner.

But last night, the kids got a rare treat. Of course, the girls were all excited at the last minute trying to decide what to wear and which shoes to go with the dress, etc.

We got there unfashionably early, of course, like we always do. It’s rude to keep others waiting but we’re the rare folks in this country who seem to think so.

Everyone else only start drifting in way after 7pm with nary an apology. It’s the done thing here. Everyone does it. No one complains because they’ll all in this together.

On the invite, it says dinner starts at 7pm but if we ever get to eat before 9pm, that’s considered lucky. Well, we got lucky. Dinner started 10 minutes before 9. Woo-hoo!

We were practically jumping with joy. Not that we were hungry. We always eat before we go. The kids have their MP3 players each, I have games and songs on my PDA phone so we’re all nicely settled in for the long wait…

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I have a wedding to attend this weekend. The wedding dinner will be at a Chinese restaurant which means I can afford to dress a little more casually than if it were held at some posh hotel.

The way I see it, restaurants are probably going to be the trend since having a dinner for hundreds of guests can easily cost a fortune at hotels these days.

It might be more economical to just opt for destination weddings instead of organizing a big-scale reception, dinner and honeymoon afterwards. It’d be simpler and so much more romantic to run away to the beautiful beaches of Riviera Maya in Mexico, don’t you think?

Hmm, I can just picture the sunsets, soft sands, exotic food, okay… don’t get me started.

I’m late, says the March Hare. Yes, something I need to be saying right now as I’m late to Marie’s Mommyfest which is going on even as we speak.

I’d meant to put up a post last weekend but I guess I got swept up by Mother’s Day. Anyways, here I am, better late than never .

Hats off to Marie Ynami for this fabulous idea of a blog party. This is my first ever blog party and I’m excited.

Hi and nice to see you. I’m excited about making new friends and saying hi to those who know me from Marie’s Tuesday Toot meme. I’d love to visit your blogs, so please leave me a comment and I’ll stop by later.

I’m not really sure if I’m dressed right for the party . I’m casual as usual, tank top and shorts ready for what’s going to be a steaming 90+ degrees today.

I have three teens, all school-going, so I’m kept constantly busy with taxi runs, lunches, projects, sports. Any free time I have is spent sipping tea and blogging about my kids and sharing tidbits of my experience raising three kids.

I’m off to blog hop now before the kids get home .

I got my presents early this morning from Raine and Skye who have been strangely quiet about the whole thing this year right up till now.

Aren’t these the sweetest? Like I always say, it’s the daughters who know what makes Mom happiest. Big hugs for Raine and Skye !

I don’t have time to write a long, soppy post about the greatness of mothers right now. But let me make this short and sweet. Mothers make the world go round. Moms rock!

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mommies out there, no matter where in the world you are.

I went to a baby’s fullmoon party last weekend. What I really cannot understand is why some couples even bother inviting guests when they’re just not bothered to entertain them.

In this case, the baby’s mother was ‘hiding’ in the living room with her baby and the father was only entertaining selected people and leaving the rest of us standing there like fools.

There was only two main dishes and frankly the food wasn’t enough for everyone there. The drinks were diluted beyond recognition. I barely ate and we left in less than half an hour and we’d driven all the way out to the boonies.

I honestly wish people would be less pretentious and use the slightest excuse to make money by throwing parties or dinners just to collect cash and gifts. It’s disgraceful !

I know I said we weren’t sure if we were going. The girls and I had been listening to their songs all week and we got so hyped up there was just no way we could’ve not gone to this one. The Backstreet Boys Unbreakable 2008 concert. Yes, WE WERE THERE last night!!

And we are so glad we went or we would be kicking ourselves now! Granted the crowd control wasn’t that great but we managed to come out in one piece!

Then the thing about it being free standing and how I feared we would get squished. Ungrounded. We secured a prime spot with an unobstructed view on a raised embankment between two huge puddles of rain water, and we were just ready to rock and roll.

The best news was I got my voice back. I’d lost it Monday, darned sore throat and cough, and had been drowning in all sorts of cough syrup to speed things up. So there I was, singing and screaming my lungs out, dancing, jumping and waving, partying with my 3 kids and behaving like one of ‘em crazy teens .

We screamed and waved wildly every time AJ or Howie or Nick or Brian sang solo or had on a different outfit, and we sang all the songs we knew, which was practically all of them.

We’d stood for 3 hours in the freakin’ thunderstorm, drenched to the skin, to see those guys. So there was no way, just no way, we were going to stand there like stones and not have fun!! Woo-hoo! It was such a blast. Didn’t I tell ya it’s hip to be mom??

Weddings are such a thrill for kids especially girls. They love all the pretty things about weddings - the flowers, laces, the dressing up.

Raine and Skye were saying how they’d love to organize a wedding for someone. I said, well, if you’re going to do that, you’ll need lots of Wedding Ideas, can you manage that?

Sure, they chime. I’m speculating on which of their uncles or aunts might be getting married soon . Cheeky mom!!

When the time comes, I’ll tell the girls about WeddingChannel.com, the site that is guaranteed to jumpstart anyone’s imagination about creating the most beautiful day of their lives.

You know, I wasn’t going to be doing any Chinese New Year baking this year because I’m just too darned beat from all the running around I’ve been doing since school reopened last month.

So I was just going to go with store-bought everything this year. We bake every year so the girls have grown up associating baking to CNY, and sure, they want to bake at least a simple butter cake this year.

Okay, I suppose I can handle that. So we went out and bought the ingredients. But they’re still sitting in the kitchen. We had some last-minute grocery shopping to do this morning.

And tonight, I’ll be cooking the reunion dinner. Luckily we happened to stick our heads into the deli and saw the lady packaging freshly-baked cakes into boxes. The smell was heavenly.

We were thrilled when she offered us some pieces to try. Yumm. We were immediately sold and I bought a marble cake and two butter cakes which were still piping hot by the time we got home.

We couldn’t resist and chomped down half of those cakes for tea. So we got to eat our butter cake without even having to bake it ourselves.

I took the kids to the temple this morning. Our annual trip to send in our food donations of rice and oil. Luckily I managed to snag two 5kg tins of cooking oil despite the brief shortage we had a few weeks back. I had to make two trips to the grocery store because they would only allow 1 tin per family.

My kids have been saving their allowance and pocket money to drop into the donation boxes. There are donation boxes all over the temple for the needy, the printing of sutras (the teachings of the Buddha), the release of captive beings (birds, fish, etc) and medical aid to various causes.

When they were much younger, this was like a treasure hunt for them, looking for these donation boxes to drop their money into. They still enjoy doing this. Now they each have their own favorite causes to donate to and they will drop more money into the causes closest to their hearts.

Compassion is an important teaching of the Buddha and it’s something I’ve instilled in my kids from since they were little. Compassion is a powerful thing, and probably one of the few things that can make all of the needless loss of lives stop but it doesn’t stop there. To us, compassion extends to all living beings, anything that has a life no matter how small or insignificant.

I love weddings. They’re so exciting to plan that I often wonder why young people these days prefer to outsource theirs to those all-in-one wedding houses.

Granted it’s a lot of hard work and time to organize such a big event but it’s also a great test of how well the couple can work together as a team.

I think you stand to save a lot from organizing it yourself too. You can just get a few quotes from hotels for their wedding packages and order bulk flowers from FiftyFlowers.com at great discounts.

In fact, you can order practically everything else online as well these days. I find they often have more variety and you can probably get better discounts too. Best of all, I think it’s the teamwork.