I'm a full-time mummy

What a hectic month!

As usual, every year in December, hubby and I will get busy cracking up our heads thinking of what gifts to give his business clients for Christmas. I have only started taking pictures of the gifts from 2008 and it was also the year we mostly DIY and made the gifts ourselves. We thought that it would be a nice gesture, with the added personal touch and feel to the gifts.

For 2008's Christmas, we bought some 3 feet tall Christmas tree, bought tons and tons of sweet treats ranging from mini packets of M&Ms, Toblerones, mini packets of raisins, and not to forget mini packs of junk foods. (yes, yes, what an unhealthy choice of food!) I still remember hubby telling me someone in the elevator asked him  whether the gift is for sale and whether he could order one too! (while hubby delivered the gifts personally to one of his clients)

Hubby set up the tree and prepared the box for the base while I helped out in stapling each and every treats to a wool string before hanging them to the tree branches and decorating them at the same time. Mind you, I was 7 months pregnant with Ben at the time, so it was quite a feat to be doing all this decoration then!

For 2009's Christmas, still not too far from previous year's sweet treats, hubby thought that we should give the sweet treats in a candy jars. So we bought some glass candy jars from Ikea, bought some Famous Amos cookies, bought tons of sweet treats again and stuff everything into the glass jars and wrapped them up in a nice fluffy red ribbons.

For this year's Christmas gifts, hubby and I thought of sticking to the same sweet treats idea but with a bit of a twist, in the sense that I baked some cookies as part of the Christmas treats. The original idea was for me to bake enough cookies to fit into 2 biscuit tins (1 large, 1 small) but after baking a few batches which could only fit into 2 big and 2 small tins, I gave up and told hubby it was really tiring and hectic for me to be doing all those baking with Ben around. As much as I wanted to bake all those cookies, I really had to accept the fact that I simply can't take this challenge...

In the end, hubby asked me whether we could put the few batches of cookies I made into all the smaller size tins while we put sweet treats into the bigger tins. I mulled over the idea and thought it's a good solution in the sense that all the clients will still get to try my cookies (although they are all squeezed into the smaller tins) and we are still able to give both the big and small biscuit tins to each clients at the same time.

Picture below are some of the bigger size biscuit tins which I stuff all the sweet treats like M&Ms, Toblerones, Cloud 9, marshmallows (4 different flavors), Cadbury's  & Merci chocolate, and many more which I can't remember. My head was only thinking 'I've gotta stuff all this in! I've gotta stuff all this in!'

And this is a shot of one of the smaller size biscuit tins, packed with my Shortbread Shape cookies. I packed about 6-10 cookies into each individually sealed plastic pouch so that it's easy for the clients to just take 1 pack instead of opening and closing to take a few and then letting the air into the tins making the cookies lose their freshness and crispness.

For the wrapping part, I stacked the smaller tin on top of the bigger tin and then I tied them with the fluffy red ribbons. Noticed how the ribbons ended at the smaller tins? Creative eh?

As for the greeting card to the clients, hubby came up with the Christmas greetings which I then copied and paste the text onto a template I downloaded from Microsoft. I then printed out the text greetings using color printer onto some A4 size papers. To give them an added ooompfhh with a tougher feel, I decided to recycle some greeting cards we got in exchange for a donation to a charity organisation. I cut the required size and glued the greetings to the recycled greeting cards. I even got Ben to help me glue some of the greetings text.

And this is how the final gift looks like!I present to you,

Christmas gifts for 2010!!

I don't think I will dare to attempt such a big scale of baking at any moment now, especially when Ben still needs my attention most of the time as I could only do my baking when he is taking his daytime nap (about 2-3 hours) or when there is someone taking care of him (such as hubby and my niece, Bonnie who helps out a great deal watching over Ben when she spends her daytime at our place after school).

In summary, it took lots and lots of planning and co-operation from the entire family members to play their part in order to produce this year's Christmas gifts. I would say, it was tiring but it was well worth it.

Now the next thing on the list to do is to get Christmas gifts for our 10 nieces and nephews (ranging from 3 year old to 16 years old) and our dearest Benjamin...

Time to crack our heads again...

We've been having our 11 year old niece (her name is Bonnie) over at our place for about 2 weeks now. Her dad would pick her up from school, make sure she had her lunch and she will normally finished up her homework before coming over to our place (about 5 minutes by car) and spends the day playing with Ben or just relaxing. Normally, she'll be either playing computer games or watching toddler bible action videos or Disney shows we taped for Ben or playing with Ben when he had his water pool activities or coloring activities.

About a week ago, she brought along her homework, which is to write a short essay about the person she admires and after deciding between hubby and I, she decided to settle on me! Since I'm practically at home and easy for her to refer and ask questions to, we went ahead with her idea and I helped her along by giving her  more details about myself, such as my age, that I'm a SAHM now and am taking care of Ben full-time.

She wrote the rest of the essay and when she's done, I asked her whether I could read it and it's so nice reading something that other people wrote about you. And particularly written from a child (cos I know children don't lie and what comes out of their mouth is total innocence and has no ulterior motives or whatsoever)

I couldn't resist taking pictures of the essay cos it's the only proof I'm going to have that I am the person she admires! (for now that is...) I've intentionally shade off her details and my whereabouts due to privacy concerns.

THe most gentle person she knows? Me?!! Awwwwwww...

And I am happy to have a niece like you too, Bonnie!

Thank you for spending your after school time with Ben and you've been a great help to us!

I read a blog post (I'm sorry but I couldn't find the post anymore no matter how hard I googled for it) a couple of years ago about this lady who prayed for her very very sick mother. Of how sad and heartbreaking for her to see her mother lying on the bed in pain. Of how she prays and prays for her mother to get well and yes, her mother did get well, but only for a while as not long after that, her mother fell more sick and in more pain before finally succumbing to her sickness. The post goes on with how the lady regretted and felt sad with her mother's passing. She realised that she should have prayed for God's will instead of hers. She thought of how God had planned for the way things are to be, only to be interrupted by her own prayers for her mother to get well, and eventually causing more sufferings to her mother.

When I first read this post, I asked myself how could God do this? And to her poor mother?  But after some serious thoughts on this, I realised something. You may disagree with what I'm going to say here.

I mean, think of it this way, if you know your beloved pet is going to die and you have no way to cure or heal it, what would you do?

Will you pray for it to have a swift and painless death? Or you would rather it just hangs on and you keep hoping for miracle and refusing to accept the fact that it's going to leave you?

Everytime something bad happens, the following came into my mind...

But we, as human, we think we have the power and the rights for things to be done our way.

We pray to God to spare the life of our loved ones, to heal them, to make them well again, to take the pain away, so on and so forth and we forgot about the part that everything is under the control of Him.

We think that God will listen and will answer our prayers. Of course God will answer our prayers! Read: Luke 11:10 (NIV)

But think again! Is it what God wanted? Is what YOU wanted, agreeable by Him? Read: Psalm 119:36 (NIV)

At this point now, you may say "Easy for you to say full-time mummy! You're not the one with the sick / dying / terribly in pain loved ones / friends / etc here!"

I will just like to tell you that it is not easy for me to say this but I did. Twice.

When my dad lies in the hospital bed drifting in and out of consciousness while the doctors are still struggling to find out what's wrong with him, I prayed for God's will.

When the nurses rushed in to resuscitate my dad as I stood outside his bed with my last memory of seeing the flat line on the heart rate monitor, I prayed for God's will.

When my mum lies in the hospital bed in so much pain that all I could hear was her troubled and difficult breathing through the oxygen mask, I prayed for God's will.

When the specialists stood next to my mum whispering to each other that her kidneys are still failing and that there's nothing much they can do, I prayed for God's will.

Despite how badly I needed to see my dad and my mum getting well and back on their feet again and for everything to return to the way it was, I prayed for God's will.

Despite how badly I wanted God to heal them and hoping that everything is going to be fine and dandy again, I prayed for God's will.

Read: Revelation 4:11 (NIV)

I pray that if it is their time to go, oh God please do it as swiftly and as painlessly as He possibly could.

I pray that if it is not their time yet, please God, let them get well again.

I pray that no matter what is the outcome, I trust that He knows what is right and what is best for ALL of us.

I trust and surrender to His will and will accept it no matter what is going to happen.

I told my dad and my mum I love them, I told them Jesus loves them and I told them to have faith and not to worry about us.

I am not asking for you guys to pray for God to end the lives of your loved ones just because you see them in pain and suffering. I am asking you guys to pray for His will. Forget about ours. You can pray for healing and everything, but remember to put God's will at the top most priority in your prayers. He knows what's best.

And please don't think that I want God to end my parent's lives. Just think, does it do anybody good if my parents end up suffering more (and longer) just because of my selfish need for them to get well and continue living and for everything to be a-oh-kay again instead of God's plan for them to move ahead and go up there and be with Him?

All I know is I am glad that my parents have got the chance to accept Him before they passed away.

I am glad that I'm able to tell them I love them and not to worry about me and the rest of us anymore.

I am glad and comforted that they are no longer in pain and suffering anymore.

I am glad that they are up there with Him.

So, please remember, pray for God's will to be done, not ours...