MM: Something New for the New Year

Oh I'm so late to post this meme. This week theme is about something new that our kids get during this holiday season. Since we don't do gifts on Christmas, I had to wait until New Year came to create this post.

When I was a kid, my parents never put gifts under the tree on Christmas. Never talked about Santa's bringing presents either (Zwarte Piet was more popular those days). If they wanted to buy us something, they would do it long before December 25th and never wrapped them as presents.

It was their way to teach us that Christmas is not only about presents. They wanted us to focus on the real meaning of Christmas instead of being busy playing with new toys on Christmas day. However, sometimes they surprised us with some gifts after the season ended, usually on New Year.

When we grew up and had our own money to buy gifts, we still carried on the tradition even until now. We didn't wrap gifts for Christmas, instead we would do that on New Year. We would buy simple gift for everyone just to mark that a new season has begun.

Anyway, here's what we bought for our kids during this holiday season. We bought Evan some new outfits and a pair of shoes before Christmas. He loves wearing his new Avatar shoes. Today he got two additional gifts, Power Ranger and Ben 10 wristbands.

Eldrick also got some new outfits for Christmas and today his gift was a new baby rattles.

Everyone else in the house also got gifts today, including Evan's grandma and our two maids.

Click the button above to see other mom's story about this theme.
Thanks for stopping by everyone and have a happy new year!

We're Still On Holiday Mood...

How is your holiday everyone? Christmas was rather quite here probably because we had rain since morning, so most people (including us) prefer to stay inside rather than go out visiting each other. However we still could enjoy our family time on Christmas.

Started with an early Christmas lunch. I guess the cool weather has made us hungry and wanted to eat soon...

As usual we didn't exchange gifts on Christmas day, we will do that on New Year (while budget last, lol). Besides Evan still enjoyed the gifts he got on Christmas events at school and Sunday school, so he didn't really care about another gifts. So we just kissed and hugged each other.

When the rain stopped later in the late afternoon, some of our friends and cousins stopped by at the house to greet us. Some of them brought cakes and cookies. They were nice actually but I was too late to take picture when they were still intact.

Somebody just couldn't keep

his little hands off the cake :)

The next day, on Saturday morning we went to the cemetery visiting my father's grave. We let Evan helped my mom put some flowers on the grave. My father died two years ago when Evan was still 1.5 years old and we want him to keep his memories about his grandpa though it was not that much.

That's how we spent our Christmas this year. There was fun part but there was always missing dad part.

Anyway, today we're going to start our New Year's vacation. We're heading to Puncak, Cisarua today and plan to stay there until New Year. We decided to start our New Year's holiday a few days early to avoid the heavy traffic in the coming days. We heard on the news that people got stuck for hours on their way to Puncak during Christmas, so we wanted to make sure that won't happen to us.

Thanks for stopping by everyone. Have a good Sunday.

MM: Merry CHRISTmas to All!

It's Christmas day! Time for families to get together and enjoy the joyous season. How do you spend your time on Christmas holiday? I'll be busy later today so I made a quick post this morning to wish all my readers/visitors and MM participants a very Merry Christmas.

Christmas is always special for us and this year is even more special because we have a new member in our family. Last night the whole family, including the baby, went to church to attend Christmas eve service. It was Eldrick's first Christmas service and I'm so happy that he went through it very well. He just slept in his stroller without being fussy :D. After the service we went straight home. Evan and Eldrick were already tired but we took time to take some pictures together.

On Christmas day we are going to enjoy our time with the kids reading nativity story, watching Christmas DVD, listening Christmas CD, and off course taking pictures. As usual, we will also have some relatives and friends coming to our house to wish Merry Christmas. Some of them will be staying to have lunch or dinner with us.

I'll be off from blogging for a day or two, and will come back again soon with more photos after the festive is over. Until then...

have a blessed Christmas

and a happy holiday!

WW: A Smile To Hide The Pain

He fell from his bike less than 18 hours before the photo session, causing his lips to bleed and swell. We thought he would be too embarrass to show up at school with his lips still swelling in the morning, but we thought wrong! He still wanted to go and tried to smile.

And for his good effort he got extra presents from Santa when we met him again at the school's Christmas event the following week...

 

...a Santa's bag, full with gifts :)

Oh if you saw my WW last week, the first photo was the result of the long photo session!

Hapyy WW everyone!

School Time: Christmas Event

Yesterday morning we attended a Christmas celebration at Evan's school. Unfortunately, the event was taken place at school's auditorium with dim lighting, so it was difficult for me to get a good shot with my poor Kodak. The spotlights they used for the stage didn't help either. I really need to upgrade this camera soon, hopefully Santa heard this!

Nevertheless, I still have some rather decent pictures to share. Here we go... Before the event started we took a picture of him near the tree. He looked anxious, probably because he was going to perform later. However, once it was started, he was beginning to relax and enjoyed the event while waiting for his turn.

By the way, if you curious about his costume, nope he didn't perform as doctor Santa :) He and his kinder-mates were to dance hip-hop with song "Dari Pulau Dan Benua", the Indonesian version of Gloria in Exelcis Deo, with slightly different beats. Didn't he look like a hip-hop singer? No? Hmm, I'll tell his teachers then...

They already called their class, so time to go up on the stage. "Break a leg guys!"

It took some times for them to find their own spots on stage. Mind you, they were four-year-old kids who used to run around the school on daily basis, and being on stage didn't slow them down a bit. Their teachers worked extra hard to keep them stand still.

And what made it even longer to start was some parents asked their kids to pose for their own camera while they were supposed to be ready to dance. Well, I'm proud to say that (this time) I wasn't part of those parents! I managed to stand patiently waiting for their performance :)

And finally they danced... Ok, it might not look like they were dancing in the pictures, but you just got to believe me, "my boy and his friends were dancing hip-hop!"

 

The grand finale: knelt down at the end of the song...

At the end of the event, we took picture near the school's giant Christmas tree. And look what Santa gave to him! He got presents from Santa after mommy paid the bills off course!

 

With proud mommy and grandma

 

With proud nanny

Curious about the presents? Come back tomorrow then, I'll show you ;)

Thanks for stopping by and happy Sunday everyone!

WW: Santa Came To School!

Let's take some pictures with him! Ready?
Take 1...

Can everybody smile please!
Take 2...

 

Mr. Hari, your smile isn't wide enough!
Take 3...

 

OK, that's better.

Now with bigger group.
Take 1...

 

Take 2...
Take 3... Take 4... and so on

 

Now each kid on Santa's lap.
Take... oh I gave up counting!

 

Note: It was a long photo session as the photographer kept asking for retakes. Those Kinder kids got distracted by... us, parents, who were there chatting & taking pictures (yes, I was guilty too). The best results will be distributed during the school's Christmas celebration on Saturday, so come back next week to see them :)

Happy WW everyone!

A New Look!

The holiday season is here, and I' was in the mood for some Christmas decorations last night. I decided to start with decorating my blog first as it's a lot easier to do than decorating the house. Not a total blog makeover, only change the header and color combination to match the Christmas theme. So if you happen to be around when I was still working on it, sorry if it disturbed you :)

As for the house, I'm planning on buying some new Christmas items soon, hopefully sometime before Christmas, as the ones we have are already too old. Hope you all enjoying this coming holidays.

Our Christmas Holiday

Christmas holiday is over and New Year is coming soon, so I have to make this post quick before it's too late. This year we spent most of our holiday with relatives and friends. On Christmas eve we went to church together, the service started at 5pm. The kids church was full so Evan had to join us in the family service. 

Christmas day morning, we gave Evan a new battery operated car as his Christmas gift. He was the only one who got present that day since our family don't do gift exchange on Christmas, we usually do that on New Year. Then we took some pictures under the tree, like we always did every year. Evan loved photo session, he sang and danced around the tree. In the evening we went to my cousin's house to have Christmas dinner together with our extended family. I forgot to bring camera so no pictures from there.

On the 26th we went to my father's cemetery to put some flowers there, it's our new ritual since he died last year. Later some relatives and friends visited our house to give us Christmas hugs. We received many hugs and kisses that day and more gifts for Evan too.

With cousin Julio

Sunday afternoon we went to Bogor to visit my mom's cousin who got stroke years ago. We haven't seen seen her for months so we decided to visit her this Christmas to share our love to her.

With grandma Momo

We still had holiday on Monday due to Islamic New Year, but we did not go anywhere. We spent our day at home to rest because tomorrow have to go back to work :)

Merry Christmas!

As tomorrow is Christmas, our family want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and thank you for the hugs and kisses for Evan :)

Have a blessed holiday everybody. 

O Tannenbaum

Yesterday, finally, we had our old and modest Christmas tree standing in our living room, yes only less than five days before Christmas! Evan was certainly happy to see it.

And he couldn't stop staring at the lights...


Earlier that day a friend of us, a hairstylist, came over to cut Evan's hair. Evan has built a big trust in her skills so he just sat still on mommy's lap during the proccess.

Do You Believe In Santa Claus?

Do you believe in Santa Claus? The Macys asks you to prove it by turning yourself into Santa and spread the Christmas cheers around the world. Evan already has his proof, take a look.

Now he wants to spread the Christmas cheers to all of you. View his Christmas Greeting there'll be instructions to make your own e-card (you'll need to upload a picture). The result can be emailed to friends, posted on Facebook or embeded on a webpage. Unfortunately, the embed code didn't work when tried here, so if any of you know how to make it works, please kindly inform us.

The one below was my desparate way using Photoshop to show how fun it is, but it's nothing compare to the original with all the animations and Santa's famous "HoHoHo" and "Naughty or nice". Just try it.

So to all of you who believe in Santa Claus, it's time to grow up prove it! Be Clause and spread the cheers around the world. If you want to, you can email a copy to evan.keona@gmail.com as your Christmas greeting, Evan will love to see it :)
Happy holidays every body!

Decorating My Blog for Christmas

Now that I'm finished trimming this blog, I need to list all things I 've done to my template also give credits all sources whose works are used here. Some sites require me to do this, some don't, but I'll include them anyway, in case I will need it later. Here's the list.

UPDATED on Dec 17, 08: I updated this post to add more details.
Honestly, when I made this post I never thought that many people will be interested in this post even when this post is already not on my front page (now it's stuck on top of my popular post!) They had to be dissapointed when reading this since this was only a list of things I had done to my template. Nothing more, no tips or tricks. So I'm sorry guys if this is not what your looking for.

• New template. The new template I use is called The Professional Template. It is claimed by the designer as their best template ever produced for public use so far. Its original colors were grey and black, so as to give it a Christmas-look I changed the colors to green and red.
  
  UPDATE: In the original article some readers reported to the author that they found problems using the template even after it was revised. For me the only problem I found in the revised version was the comment-author at the comment section overlaped the comment-timestamp. It was due to the negative value of the comment-author top-margin, so I located this code at the HTML page:
  .comment-author {
  margin: -15px -15px 0px -15px;
  And deleted the first minus sign of the margin:
  margin: 15px -15px 0px -15px;
  Done, it's fixed.
  
  FURTHER TWEAK:
  Since I used a picture as the background of my blog, I needed to make some of my columns become transparent so my background become visible. Simple steps to do this are find the section you want to make transparent then add /* */ to its background line. For example this is what I did to my lowerbar. At the HTML page look for this section:
  #lower-wrapper {
  Then add /* */ to its background line to disable it:
  /* background: $lowerbarbgColor; */
  Done.
  


• Latest Blogger features. Somehow when I was editing my template in the Edit HTML menu, I accidently hit “revert widget templates to Blogger default”. As a result, I LOST the built-in Read more..." feature and the Label Cloud widget that I had previously added. The good thing is the latest Blogger features such as the embedded comment form, star-ratings and reader’s reactions are now available on my blog, cool! Do you want these new features on your blog too? Then try what I did Google for better tips ;)
  
  UPDATE: Although it was fun to have the star-ratings and reader's reaction features, they did nothing but slowing down my page loading time, so I disabled one of them: the star-ratings.
  
  Reminder: these 3 features did not come with the original template. Should you want it, you have to manually add them or do what I did. If you try to enable the embed below post comment-form at the setting tab without adding the HTML code, it won't work! And later if you decide to disable it after having the code on your template, you also need to delete the code, otherwise there'll be an empty box below your post-footer.
  


• Christmas header and banner. We can either Google for free Christmas banner/background images or look for tutorials to make one of our own. I did the later and followed tutorials from Eli Burford and Visual Design Core. Then I used this tips to put my corner banner on. Btw I made it in Bahasa saying "Soon it will be Christmas".
  


• Christmas icons. The cute Santa RSS icon on the left sidebar is created by Garcya. The Christmas social bookmark icons are from Fast Icon and I put them at the bottom of every post (honestly, I’m not sure if my readers ever gonna use them, but doesn’t it look cute in there?) Small icons at my menu bar and my bullet lists are from Deviant Art.
  


• Snapshots for comment author. As now I use the “embedded below post comment-form” I can’t see the commenter profile icon like in the “pop-up form”. It only displays the dull standard Blogger/OpenID icon, so I added Snapshots to make it more fun. If my readers use Name/URL to comment, Snapshot will preview their homepage. If they use Google Account, it will show their Blogger profile. Using OpenID will preview the RSS feed. Try hovering your mouse at my Top Commenters Widget list to see how it works.
  
  UPDATE: Be very careful when adding Snapshots since it will automatically generate preview of all links on your page which can be annoying. I only add them to my post section and top commenters widget.
  
  FURTHER TWEAK: I made a small change on the Top Commenters Widget. This widget is based on Yahoo Pipes and by default it will sort descending the commenters name base on their total comments. Then if it finds names with the same number of comments, it will sort them ascending by their latest comment date. I don't like the result of the second step because it makes my widget showing the same old names all the time while new names already came to leave their comments. So I changed the second step sorting method from ascending to descending. Now the widget starts to show new names on it.
  

There, I've listed them all. Do you find anything useful?

From the file: Christmas Day 2006

Unlike the year before, this time Evan did not mind to wear the Santa’s hat. He also willingly followed the tradition of “Christmas by the tree photo session”. As he was already 15-month young, he deserved to be introduced to another family tradition, which was “the Christmas gifts” and he loved it.

In the afternoon, his cousins visited him and they played together. There was something missing from that year’s Christmas photos though; no picture of Opa. He was in the bedroom the whole time and everybody had forgotten to bring him out to join the day.

From the file: The First Christmas

December 25, 2005 was the first Christmas celebration for Evan. He was only 3 months. In the morning, the whole house gathered by the Christmas tree to make our traditional “by the Christmas tree” family photo session. There was no camera on that day, so pictures were taken from a cell-phone.

Little Evan was curious about the lights coming from the Christmas tree. He was quite cooperative during the photo sessions. However, when a Santa’s hat was put on him, he immediately cried, hence only his Oma and Opa ended up wearing it.

The dress code for that day was red. There was a picture of train on Evan’s outfit as if it was the initiation of his fondness toward Thomas the train.

Christmas 2005 Photos