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Okay, so we have a wedding to go to this weekend. The girls and I have been through our closets and it’s official! We have “nothing to wear”!! Well, okay, we do have closets jammed with clothes but we can’t wear the same thing twice, can we now? I mean everyone’s seen it before !!

So we totally need some new dresses for the dinner reception.We’ve spent hours at the mall this past weekend, trying on stuff and trying on stuff. And finally when Raine found her criss-cross spaghetti top little black dress, we collectively let out a huge sigh of relief!

And then we were off again to help Skye pick out her little black dress! We were browsing at this store when I turned to Skye and asked, “See anything nice?” just as we happened to be passing by this door. Her response was “Yeah, nice font!”

The longer school hours this year is really taking its toll on my two girls. Not only do they have to be in school for 9-11 hours on some days of the week, in the hot sun, with only recess but no lunch break, they also have tons of homework.

As a result, they frequently have tummy aches from not eating proper meals at the proper times. Lunch time is now 3:00pm for us on days when they finish school at 2:30pm! I try to wait till they get home so we can all have lunch together. And even for me, after eating 2 breakfasts, my tummy is already in knots by 3:00pm, not to mention for the poor teens.

Their complexions too have suffered. My girls are so tanned now it’s ridiculous, and before they never had problems with pimples, etc, but lately I’ve had to buy these nose strips for them to remove blackheads!

They have to rush through their meals to get to the mountains of homework. By the time, they get through that, there’s barely any time left to study as it’s already past their bedtime. It’s so hard to wake them up for school the next morning. So school ain’t no fun no mo, like I say. I just can’t wait for my poor babies to be done.

You’d think that on weekends, I would be spared the annoying sound of my alarm clock. Well, I was… because I forgot to set it last night and I almost overslept this morning and woke up with a start.

Steev had to be at the driving school by 8:45am (yes, again!) but luckily I didn’t have to drive him to last week’s location. Raine had a movie date at the mall with her girl friends from school at 11:00am. Since everyone was going to be out, I thought Skye and I could hang out at the mall for lunch after seeing Raine off.

And of course, we just had to pick the last shopping weekend before Chinese New Year, to be at the mall. Well, I may be all done with my CNY shopping but apparently the rest of the world isn’t.

The basement parking was full within an hour of the mall opening and there must’ve been 100 other cars circling around like vultures trying to snag a spot. Admittedly I’m not a very good vulture so after half an hour, I decided it was time to call it quits, drop Raine off, pay a dollar’s parking for not parking and leave with my tail between my legs.

Skye and I then went to pick up some fast food before picking Steev up for lunch. He doesn’t quite relish eating at the dirty canteen near the driving school so he was going to have lunch at home and then have me drive him back out to finish the afternoon session of his driving course .

Now I’m home with a splitting headache from the mercilessly hot sun and trying to get a bit of work done on my computer before my cell phone starts ringing again for my taxi service. In an hour, I’ll be rushing out of here to pick up both Raine and Steev, and then go play vulture – again – at the grocery store.

Don’t you just envy my colorful Sunday? Please say you do.

If you’ve been following my tweets on Twitter, you might just have caught on to what happens in my house every weekend. Yes, my three teens would set up their laptops in a row and play their computer games.

It does get quite noisy as they cheer, jeer and laugh at each other. I jokingly threatened to send them for rapid detox for opiates, more like rehab for computer addicts, if they make too much noise.

My smart alecks argue that this is their family time . They’re too stressed out by the extended school hours this year, they say. They don’t get to spend much time together and this is how they destress and stay sane.

We’re having a very busy weekend here, quite a change from our usually laid-back ones. Raine and Skye were out of the house at the crack of dawn this morning on a cross-country run at school. They looked for all the world like they were going to climb Mount Everest with caps and sunblock on and heavily-laden backpacks of sandwiches and cans of sports drinks.

Five kilometers, a steep slope, scorching sun and 90+ degrees out can be pretty tough. But they had fun. Skye came home with a headache, sore muscles and bursting with exciting stories to tell – tired but happy Raine had introduced her to some of her friends.

Raine was nursing the beginnings of a sore throat and too tired to talk much. I too had a splitting headache from my grocery morning at Tesco where their specialty is to suffocate the customer with their barely-there air-conditioning.

Steev attended two farewell dinners for his friends who’ll be leaving for college in Tasmania and Australia next month. Tomorrow he’ll have his first taste of driving school – a full day of driving instruction. Not sure why it takes a whole day, it’s not like they’re teaching the kids to do rv repair !

It’s a very busy weekend but we’re having fun. How’s your weekend going?

There was a time when we hardly had any leftovers when we ate out. My three caterpillars would lick their platters clean. Lately though, that’s not been the case. It’s certainly not because the serving sizes have gotten larger. More likely, my caterpillars are past the chomping phase and waiting to morph into butterflies.

Forget weight loss products. With leftovers, Mom gets more than her fair share. And a new form of after-dinner entertainment is born.

After just four days at school, Raine and Skye tell me their shoulders are half-broken. Heavy backpacks are an eternal problem for schoolkids here. For years now, I’ve made the girls carry two bags, a backpack and a tote bag, to split the load because I don’t want them to grow up looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame! Not that the school will entertain any disability appeal for turning our kids into hunchbacks!

It doesn’t help that the school hours have been extended till 2:30 or four pm on some days (it starts at 7:30am). That’s way too many hours squished up in stuffy classrooms or out in the blazing sun in ninety plus degree weather.

When I pick the girls up from school, they look like zombies ! They’re hungry and tired, hair disheveled and totally unmotivated to do anything for the rest of the day. When I see their sad faces, I really feel for them. It’s a shame school is such a burden now instead of the fun it used to be.

Here’s an interesting question. Do longer hours make smarter kids, or resentful ones?

My taxi runs are finally done – for this year at least. Yep, I’m hanging up my steering wheel and driving gloves! Yesterday was the end of Steev’s finals and finally my days are free of schedules, alarms going off and me jumping in and out of my minivan 20 times a day!

Finally too, we can all go on that well-deserved vacation. We missed going to Melbourne with Hip2bDad a few weeks ago partly because Steev’s semester was still on and we usually bring the whole battalion along when we go on vacation.

The girls are so excited they started packing this morning and you can imagine the giggles and flurry of activity. There were clothes all over the floor, they were trying on stuff and putting them back and every 5 minutes, one of them was dancing into my room to ask or show me something.

Steev was in his room, totally indifferent to this whole festival of packing. I think it’s a guy thing. If they’re excited, they don’t show it. They pretend everything’s cool and under control. After all, the only things they need to throw together at the last minute are a few shirts, pants and underwear !

Our food bag is packed, stuffed with junk food the kids picked out. By the way, no prizes for guessing. Small hint, this is what we’re packing.

I’m not sure if I’ll have time to blog (will spill everything when I get back so stay tuned). I haven’t seen our agenda yet, the girls are still working on it. But I’ll definitely try to tweet (follow me there) when I’m not too busy sipping a fresh coconut under a palm tree .