Bear Creek Mountain Resort

We always see the sign showing the direction to Bear Creek Mountain Resort along route 100 outside our apartment complex, but we never had a chance to check it out. Last Sunday, we decided to take a look at the resort after lunch. It was just about a 20 minutes drive from our home and we were pleasantly surprised to find out that it was a ski resort. There were lots of people there and most of them were well-equipped with their skiing gear. Daddy even commented that it has been quite some time since he saw so many people in one place. I guess this is partly attributed to the fact that we are staying in a suburban place where population is not so dense.
Anyway, let's check out the ski resort. Besides having some eateries that allow the patrons to overlook the mountain while they enjoy their meal, they also have a spa for people to relax in this mountain resort. Mommy was very keen to find out the details of renting the skiing gear. I cannot deny that I really feel the urge to go skiing after seeing so many people in their skiing gear.
However, our little Sheri is obviously too young to go skiing, so we just took some pictures before leaving. Hopefully, the pictures will serve as a remembrance for her that she has been to a skiing resort when she was just one year old.

Han's birthday

Auntie Jess and Uncle Jeff invited us to their son's two year old birthday party two weeks ago. The birthday celebration started at Junglefun, which was a huge indoor playground for the kids to exhaust their boundless energy.

Sheri loves animals, so of course, we did not miss the chance of putting her on those animals' rides.
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After all the fun and play, we proceeded to Uncle Jeff's house for some food and not to forget, the birthday cake as well.
A picture of mommy and Auntie Kuang Yi with Auntie Jess's son, Garrit.

Sheri's development at 1 year old

We brought Sheri to her 1 year old's check up last week. She now weighs about 21 pounds and she is 31 inches long. That brings her to 50 percentile in terms of weight and 95 percentile in terms of height. Yes, she is pretty tall in comparison to other kids of her age. Hopefully, her growth will be sustainable as mommy has given her good headstart. Anyway, we were relieved to hear from the pediatrician that her development is on track. In terms of her motor skills, she is fairly developed. She can feed her herself with finger food very well, and recently she is also capable of feeding herself using a fork. However, she is still learning how to walk even though we noticed a few days ago that she is learning to take a few steps forward without any support. Fortunately, she has been very enthusiastic in pushing her mini car around the house.

Mommy, daddy, I'm ready to push my car outside.

I have to commend on Sheri's effort in pushing her car outside even though the windchill made us feel that it was close to sub-freezing temperature.

As far as her verbal skills are concerned, we are happy with her progress so far. Besides saying 'mama' and 'daddy', she can also say a number of words like 'sit', 'cheese', 'dirty' and 'messy'. Sheri is quite an interesting child. She likes to mimic what we say to her. I always ask her to sit down to eat and to change her clothes, so she learns to repeat the word 'sit' after me. Cheese is her favourite food, so I made her repeat after me when she eats it. As for 'dirty' and 'messy', I guess I am also responsible for that as I always use these two words on her. Am I a bad mommy?

Sheri's first step

Our little Sheri is taking her first step in this world. Be sure to catch her two little feet trotting while she pushes her walker. Happy viewing!

A gift to our beloved daughter

In celebration of Sheri reaching the one year old milestone, we had compiled a collection of her photos from birth to one year old in a video. This will be a gift to our beloved daughter, Sheri. Happy viewing!

What a bookworm!

I don't know if it is in the genes from her daddy that little Sheri is an avid reader just like him. The first thing she does when she wakes up in the morning is to take a book to read. She never fails to surprise us with the way she reads the book. Even if we were to give her a book upside down deliberately, she will turn the book to the correct way. That's pretty amazing as mommy and daddy do not seem to recall ourselves reading at such a young age. Perhaps, kids are getting smarter nowadays. However, she has a perculiar habit of reading the book from the back.

Anyway, daddy is getting a bit worried about her excessive interest in reading as both of us strongly feel that kids should play more in their childhood years. Learning will take care of itself in the later years. Don't you think so?

Last day of 2007

How did we spend our last day of 2007? Actually, we did not do much on the last day of the year. We just went to Princeton to collect a kitchen gate from Oki's friend. This is little Sheri's greatest enemy as it would keep her out of the kitchen. Nowadays, she likes to go to the kitchen and look at her own reflection on the oven. Worst of all, she can reach out for the knobs on the stove when she stands up, so we feel that it is better to keep her out of the kitchen for her own safety. Since we had to drive 2 hours to Princeton, we decided to make full use of the trip. We had lunch at our favourite restaurant 'Penang', which specializes in Southeast Asian cuisine. I guess this does not sound very appealing to Singaporeans as they can easily find these dishes in local food centres. However, it is not easy to find all these local delights in the States, so mommy and daddy will always cherish every opportunity to dine in 'Penang' whenever we have a chance. We had fishhead noodles and tom yum seafood noodles. Yummy! What a great way to end 2007 with all these sumptuous local delights!

After lunch, we went to a Asian food market in Princeton to stock up our food supply. Even though it was very chilly in the carpark, little Sheri seemed to be very happy to feel the cold wind blowing her. After shopping, we went to collect the kitchen's gate before heading back home. Daylight hours are much shorter in winter. It gets dark at 4 'o' clock in the afternoon, so there is very limited outdoor activities that we can do in the winter.

After putting little Sheri to sleep at night, Mommy and daddy watched the 'Countdown' in Times Square on the television. We could not help but reminisced what we had gone through in 2007. It was an interesting year for us as we have certainly progressed from not knowing how to change diapers to taking care of a one year old baby singlehandedly. To us, this is a great achievement, and we would not have made it without constant encouragement and motivation from each other. Little Sheri also deserves some credit for keeping herself healthy and strong in her first year. Three cheers for the foo family!

Last but not least, we would like to wish all our family and friends a very 'Happy and Prosperous 2008!'

Night bus tour in Bethlehem-Christmas City

Last year, we spent our Christmas in the hospital as little Sheri was born on 22nd December. Mommy could still remember that she kept baby Sheri company on Christmas Eve night in the nursery. She was sleeping so soundly then. So, strictly speaking, this is Sheri's second Christmas even though I doubt she could remember anything on her first Christmas.

This year, we went to a family candlelight festival at the United Church of Good Sheperd on Christmas eve to experience some festive mood. Surprisingly, Sheri was quite well-behaved while daddy and mommy enjoyed the Christmas caroling.


On last Thursday night, Daddy suggested going for a night bus tour in Bethlehem, which is known as the Christmas city, to see the beautiful Christmas decorations.


As it was pretty cold outside, we waited for the bus in the waiting room.




This was the Welcome Centre cum Museum in Bethlehem. The guide who brought us on a bus tour was dressed in colonial Moravian costume. Little Sheri was still pretty well-behaved at first, but she was getting sleepy during the journey and started become cranky. Mommy and daddy were busy trying to quieten her down as we did not wish to disturb the bus ride of the rest of the passengers. I guess we learnt our lesson. It is not a wise idea to bring a 12 months old baby for such a tour as we may not be able to control her mood at times. After much struggling with mommy, little Sheri finally fell asleep on the bus and we could enjoy the beautiful Christmas decorations at last. According to the guide, there is a certain historical meaning in the Christmas lights that they put up. The view of the Lehigh Valley from the top of the South Mountain and the 81-foot-tall Star of Bethlehem were just spectacular. It was a pity that mommy's camera is not very good at capturing night shots. Anyway, it was a very memorable trip as it was something that we have not done it before and it could probably be the last time that we could share the joy in celebrating Christmas in Bethlehem-the Christmas city.

Studio Shots

Last Wednesday, we brought little Sheri to the Photo Studio in Baby'R'Us for her one year old studio shots. I must confess that it is not easy to take pictures of little Sheri. First of all, it is not easy to make her sit still on the same spot. Usually, she will start crawling to us once she sees the camera. Secondly, it is not easy to make her smile on request. Before we started the photo shots, we did convey our difficulties to the photographer just to give her some mental preparation that it might not be a easy task for her. I must admit that they tried their best to make her smile, but little Sheri just stared at them in bewilderment. Finally, mommy had to jog on the spot and made some animal sounds just to make our little princess smile. So, it seemed that we had to work harder than Sheri just to take some photo shots. Poor us!!!

How much milk powder did little Sheri consume in her first year?

Oops! I did not know that I consumed 48.5 pounds (22 kg) of milk powder in my first year.

I am ONE!

Last Saturday, little Sheri finally turned one! Mommy and daddy organized a small birthday celebration for her in McDonald at Emmaus. We were fortunate to have with us a couple of friends to share our happiness on this joyous occasion. We were deeply touched by their presence as some of them had to drive for a few hours just to attend little Sheri's birthday party. However, little Sheri seems to be suffering from separation anxiety recently. She feels pretty insecure when she leaves mommy's arms. Poor mommy had to carry little Sheri all the time during the party. Anyway, we still went ahead with the celebration. Hopefully, she will have fond memories when she looks at the pictures in the future.

Um! I'm hungry. Can I eat the monkey?

Happy birthday to Sheri!!!

Little Sheri loves animals, so mommy and daddy deliberately chose a zoo design with animal figures for the birthday cake.

Some memorable shots with our friends before we cut the birthday cake.

Oki and Ervina with their adorable son, Nathaniel.

This is Tao He, daddy's senior.

Sheri's playmate, Grace, and her mother, Gayl.

Jeff and Jess and their two lovable sons, Han and Gerrit.

Our Taiwanese friends, Lin-Shu and Kuang-Yi.

Mary and her two adorable sons, Dane and Nathan.

Our Korean neighbour with their two beautiful daughters, Je-En and Je-Young.


Finally, it's time to cut the birthday cake.



At last, it's daddy and mommy's turn to take pictures with our beloved daughter.

One last shot before we left.

Finally, it's time to open the presents at home.