today has been a fairly busy day. the number one activity on my schedule – get groceries, did not get accomplished, but some other entertaining activities did.

charles had conference calls last night, so this morning when the kids were up at the crack of bottom and wandered into our room to say "we don't have school! can we watch television?" we remembered that we were supposed to be sensitive about the trip to the philippines being cancelled bla bla bla and so he said yes, stumbled into the family room, turned on the television and came back to bed. at 7.30 i got up, threw some froot loops into a bowl (the other saturday cereal, cap'n crunch is forbidden until i decide what exactly the cap'n is captain OF) added milk and declared breakfast was served. i stayed and watched television with them (scooby doo) and then declared that it was the girls turn to watch. dora it was! thankfully the boys didn't mind too much.

i decreed that as soon as dora had achieved her third goal and the mariachi band had played and we had recounted our fave part of the dora journey we would go to parknshop and let daddy sleep. the kids agreed. but charles woke up and then he made smoothies and then it was 10am.

the girls and i went into their room, tried on t-shirts and got rid of anything that was remotely small. ditto for shoes. then the boys room. it was vaguely depressing because i had done a top notch cleanse of the flat a few months previously before we moved. but i found two bags of stuff and sent it over to my friend weng, who is collecting for world vision. because she had people coming over all day long, she couldn't take her kids out, so i asked them if they wanted to come on a hike with charles and our family. they said YES PLEASE and so they came with us.

we took the car to the peak and walked round. took pictures of spiders, snails and all sorts of things. played in two playgrounds, ate in two different locations. had a good afternoon and ended up walking down from the peak. the kids had a great time and on the whole were very well behaved.

and while i was walking down with the kids, i got a text message from tara essentially saying "saturday isn't good for me to have the lantern festival. can we do it tonight?" that worked fine for me, but it was 2.30pm. tara and i had gone lantern shopping earlier in the week, but the kids didn't have new chinese traditional clothings, which is what they usually wear to the lantern parade. but hey, doesn't matter. tara called everyone in our building who would normally come, and by 5pm, most of us were there. i did none of the organising because i wasn't even supposed to be there! we were add ons! but it was fantastic.

one of the things we bought this year was flashing glasses. they are for the kids but they are wayyy too large for the kids and so i ended up holding or wearing them most of the time. love them! not when they are flashing, but still.

i made lots of glo stick necklaces, lots of glo stick bracelets and two glo stick balls and so on. we ate pizzas and ugh, the order got messed up and the hawaiian pizzas had creamy thousand island dressing. (this is trivia). we talked and ate and drank and laughed. it was a great catch up. we set lanterns in the trees, the night got darker, the full moon became apparent and then it was time for our lantern march. tara organised everyone, and we circled the playground, waved the lanterns and laughed.

cleaned up and here we are at home, the moon shining brightly in the sky and glo sticks shining on the floor and in still clutched tight hands.