Woo-hoo, Blogathon 2009 is here and I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it, … (sung to the tune of that Pointer Sisters’ song, “I’m so excited”).

It’s a one day event on July 25 and I’ll be up all night blogging for 24 hours straight, no sleep, just posting like crazy every half hour. This is my 3rd year at the Blogathon and I’m so addicted!

I’ll be blogging for the ASPCA again, just like last year. Those of you who read my blog know I’m the wierdo who won’t order ‘live’ seafood and who will chase a mosquito out of my car instead of just smashing it.

Yes, and I’m always up for something crazy to do, are you? Well, you can find out more about Blogathon 2009 here or register to join us. It’s really fun and it’s for a good cause.

If you can’t do without your beauty sleep, no problem, you can still earn some good karma by donating. Sponsor me here and I promise I’ll stay up all night and do the donkey work. Your donations will go directly to ASPCA, not to me, so you can be sure I won’t be going shopping with your money . I appreciate any and all donations, no matter how big or small.

I’ll be posting updates as we get closer to the date so stay tuned…

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So we spent a good half hour fussing over what to wear and making sure - no shorts, no t-shirts, no jeans, no sneakers. Finally we were all starched up (bleh, I feel old, Skye sighed when she looked in the mirror!), all set for the *drum roll please* …

Philharmonic, you guessed it! Yo, we’re cultured, we’re cultured! Just look at us sitting stiffly in the second best seats in the house in an auditorium of hoity-toities, tilting our heads to the symphony of violin, cello, tuba, clarinet, grand piano and xylophone (not the one on the letter X page of the kids’ picture dictionary, mind you )!!

The uniformed ushers, stationed stiffly at the end of each aisle, curtly told off anyone who dared touch their cellphones and cameras! So when no one was looking, I randomly pointed my camera skywards and clicked. Beautiful, ain’t it? Just looking up at the ceiling transported me to the far reaches of the Milky Way where planets swirl and violins play under an infinite night sky… and my eyelids grew heavy.

Okay, so if we were Philistines before, we’re cultured now! We sat through an entire hour and a half of classical music. Wait a minute, are snores part of a classical composition? But hey, whatever, we all enjoyed it and it was definitely well worth the excitement and dressing up.

We’ve been so busy having fun this past week I’m getting really behind in my posts. Yes, I said we had grand plans but we didn’t know they were going to be this fun, honestly .

Meantime I’m so excited about what we’ve got planned for today that I’m going to let you in on a sneak peak. We’ve got these… yes!

Five tickets for Steev, Raine, Skye, me and Hip2bDad (who’s going to grace us with his presence by skipping the last two holes of golf, yay!) to go to ……. er, can you guess what/where?

I’ll post the answer tomorrow as we’ve got another big event to go to right after this. But I promise I’ll sit down next week and spill the beans on all the exciting things we’ve been up to, so stay tuned…

The sun is out and it’d be great to get out of the house. If you’re mom with kids headed for the beach or a pool party, you wanna check these out.

Confession, I’m a sucker for coordinated collections. I learnt early on that since I have so much stuff to lug around when I go swimming with the kids, I’d better have everything in matching design so I can easily recognize my stuff.

I’m gonna need a Crazy Daisy Large Tote for all our swimming gear and a fresh change of clothes.

Knowing us, one bag won’t be enough for all our stuff. So my teen princesses will have to have their own Crazy Daisy Backpack.

And of course, we’ll need a Crazy Daisy Double Handle Cosmetic Case for all our creams, sun block and stuff…

… and a waterproof Crazy Daisy Shower Caddy for our 101 little bottles of hair shampoo, conditioner, body shampoo and hair brushes.

Not forgetting a Crazy Daisy Large Cooler for drinks and snacks. Having fun can make you extremely hungry, I can vouch for that !

Did I miss anything? Or anyone? Oh ya, our macho-macho guy wouldn’t wanna be seen in anything so sissy now, would he? Guess it’ll have to be this Check It Out Boy’s Towel & Sling Backpack.

Neat, eh? By the way, if you’re as big a sucker for coordinated collections as I am, I found these at Room It Up! They also have the coolest stuff for spring break and graduation gifts with free shipping on orders above $60.

Just as I was predicting in my earlier post that today, Valentine’s Day, might turn out to be just another day, we chanced upon something interesting at 1 Utama.

Steev and I saw a long line of people as we were coming down the escalator. On our way to check it out, we bumped into one of my ex-staff and chatted for a while.

I learnt they’re giving out free ice cream cones but we were going to give it a miss. I don’t encourage my kids to rush for food, not even if it’s free. It’s just so unbecoming, you know, like you’ve never eaten in your life!!

But since my ex-staff was obviously excited he got his for free earlier (no purchase required) and was encouraging us to do the same, I relented and sent Steev to line up.

Well, the chocolate Cornettos were yummy! Very sweet, just like Valentine’s Day should be . When the girls joined us later, they too went to grab one with my blessings.

So I mean, yeah, it was exciting! We felt so fat that when we got into the car afterwards, it sank under our weight . I hope we won’t need to employ car lifts to see if we killed the suspension .

Whoa, you wouldn’t believe the number of presents I’ve been buying lately for 3 weddings, a kiddy birthday, a baby’s fullmoon and 2 teen birthdays.

Maybe it’s time we throw birthday parties for the girls too so we can start collecting presents instead of buying them !

If you’re planning a birthday party for your kids, here are some great themes that’ll save you money. From now through January 31, 2009, Birthday in a Box is having a fantastic sale on birthday themes:

1. Thomas and Friends
2. Summer Delights
3. Star Wars III
4. Spy
5. Sports
6. Party Princess
7. Prince Phillip
8. Ocean
9. Hula Girl
10. Horton Hears A Who
11. Daisy Smiles
12. Cheetah Girls
13. Bowling
14. Beach Ball
15. Barnyard 1st Birthday
16. Wall-E
17. Finding Nemo
18. Cars - The Movie
19. Pizza Party
20. Kung Fu Panda
21. Monsters’ Party Theme
22. High School Musical II

There’s new themes out all the time, and you can also check out their bestseller themes here.

See, I’m not kidding, there’s just too many exciting themes to choose from, you just gotta have a birthday party !

If my kids saw these themes, I’d be busy planning a party too!

The girls have been counting down the hours to their guitar class, and meeting the new teacher, of course. We had no idea who he was or if he was going to be meaner than Mr Mean Goat himself *shudder*.

Well, I’ll let Raine and Skye tell you, in their own writing words (unedited):

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Raine, my 15 year old:

He’s better than stupid cranky old Mr Mean Goat. He’s an okay sorta guy who doesn’t keep asking stupid irrelevant questions and he doesn’t smirk nastily at us when we do the wrong thing. Plus, he can really play the guitar and he didn’t make us play stupid baby games.

Except.. he went a little too fast. He was like, “Okay, E minor is here. C is here. No, this way. Now G chord. This finger over here. This second finger on this string. And now D for donkey.”

OMG. :O

I felt like I was in an advanced program going 150miles per hour. And my poor fingers were switching from chord to chord like some freak and at times I didn’t even know which finger I was using. I thought my first finger was the third and stuff like that.

Boo hoo. Gonna have to ask him to slow down to above snail pace.

Skye, my 12 year old:

Newt (new teacher) is alright, I guess. He asked a few questions and started the lesson. He taught us the E minor chord, C chord, G chord and D chord.

He went too fast. Well, at least, he didn’t laugh at us like Mr Mean Goat or go, “See! Hah! See!”. He just told us if we were wrong and corrected us.

Newt played some songs when teaching us. But I was hardly interested in that because I was busy trying to correct my fingers and ignore the lines on my fingers. It hurts but I guess it’ll go away. Sooner or later.

Back to the point. He didn’t even mind when we asked him how to place our fingers for whatever chord that is for the hundredth time.

Psst! Newt said we could play some songs in a few weeks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So I’m happy and the girls are happy. Sore fingers aside, it looks like they’re still as enthusiastic as ever. It’s happy days and I’m looking forward to hearing some funky music soon .

Raine’s classmate is working at McDonald’s. If it were any other guy, I’d have said so what? But this is the young man who is sorta Raine’s unofficial ‘brother’ at school as he shares the same last name as us.

He likes to ‘bully’ Raine and the other girls at school, splashing water on them, snatching their food, pulling their hair, stuff like that. And he’s also the one who says I’m one hot mama.

Naturally I was curious. This cheeky 15-year-old, I have to see!! So when Raine suggested we go to McDonald’s to ’stalk’ him and give him a hard time with our order, I happily played along. Hey, I’m a sporting mom .

Turned out he was the guy making the french fries, not the guy at the counter so things didn’t go as we planned. Still we had lunch and spied on him from our corner table.

His seriously over-salted fries aside, he didn’t look like a bully to me at all. Maybe his behavior has to do with his parents being divorced. He lives with his dad and sister, and is pretty much left to his own devices. I can’t imagine how his dad could let him cycle on a major highway to/from school every day.

Not having a mom also means no homecooked food, I guess. Maybe that’s why he likes to pinch the girls’ food. There I go playing shrink again ! The more I looked at him, the more I felt a soft spot for him. Coming from a broken home myself, I can see myself in him.

Anyhow, he finished his shift shortly afterwards and the girls suggested we follow him as he set off at a deadly speed on his bicycle. We spotted him at the traffic lights way ahead of us.

Since I had to turn off to pick up Steev from college, Raine wound down the window and shouted to him while I leaned on the horn. Whee, that was fun! Poor guy probably didn’t have a clue who he was waving back at. We laughed all the way to Steev’s college. That was such fun!!

Today I made two big pans of pasta bake. Yeah, when you have 3 teens, you think B-I-G! Figure we’d bring French Fry Guy a slice over to McDonald’s. But Raine was too shy to give it to him as there was another guy from school working there.