2011 is here. No travel plan this year though. Last year’s travel plans did not materialize because of hubby’s busyness with work. Business is not that busy. It is just that we do not have staff to cover for hubby when he is away. Maybe we will try to go some where near and new with the help of BIL’s portable gps this year. It will really be a challenge to travel with so many kids. I can’t wait for the day when we can leave all the kids behind and go for our 2nd honeymoon. This year we are going to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary but we will be stuck at home minding our beautiful children.

This year, we did not receive or give each other any Christmas present! Not even suunto vector which I planned to buy earlier for him. But we did buy Christmas present for our children, my MIL and maid.

We have a better gift from the Almighty coming our way pretty soon. I’m pretty excited, and scared too. Gift from God comes with great responsibility. Don’t like cannot throw or give away.

Good Morning World!

Nothing special on my birthday except the kitchen renovation started today which made me woke up early. I only had 6 hours of sleep. I hope I can stay awake during Harry Porter later this afternoon.

Still have no idea what my birthday lunch and dinner will be. Don’t think hubby prepare any surprise birthday gift for me. He does not know what I want and he won’t simply buy me things coz previous experience taught him not too! hahaha.

My children expected me to buy them a gift. I have not thought of what to buy for them. I need to save up to buy textbooks for next years. Not cheap as my soon to be 5yo son will be going to private kindy. His books alone is more than RM700. Two of his sisters will be in primary school and their books’ cost is only 10% of his!

Anyway, Happy Birthday To Me!

God has been good to us. When hubby steps down from full time service four years ago, he decided to take up business. Four years passed by and we have seen God’s faithfulness in taking care of our needs. When hubby was working in the church, he was given the opportunity to preach once in a while. In the new church, God has open up new opportunities for him to preach. Of late, he was asked to preach regularly in the church as the church pastor travels to minister to other churches.

As for me, preaching is not an easy task. It is an honour that every preacher should carry out with great care. And every preacher knows that there he/she needs to put a balance between giving a purely inspirational and a Word based sermon. Sometimes there is a tendency to preach a topic that the listeners would be happy to hear. Heavy topics like Bible Prophecy or last days prophecies are definitely not for the beginners. One has to do a deep study on the subjects to really understand it before preaching it to the congregations.

There are times when I see hubby at loss as to what to preach. But when God has given him the topic, then I can see the excitement in him when he prepares his sermon. May the Holy Spirit speaks and do the convicting to every listener when His Word is preached.

I really thank God for allowing me to fully breastfeed my 4th child till he is 1 year old. Today my baby turns 18 months old; 1.5yo already! And I am still breastfeeding him when he wants to sleep. I still have breastmilk you know.

We save a lot when we don’t need to buy any formula milk for him! Milk is darn expensive these days and I just changed his formula milk from Enfagrow (i think it is the most expensive brand in the market) to Dumex; the milk that hubby and I grew up with.

Besides saving our moolah, breastmilk keeps my baby immune system strong and keeps me slim! hahaha. You can find out more about the benefit of breastfeeding at breast-milk.org. I need to go do my Saturday chores now. Tata!

I thought I would need sleeping pills to help me sleep after being slapped with a huge debt left by my tenant. God is Good. All the time! I prayed for Him to send some money from Heaven to help us pay for the bills that was left behind for us to settle. Like I mentioned many times before, we hardly have any savings! Our children has more money in their bank account that us! Oh no! We did not bank in our money there; those are their Angpows’ money.

2 days ago, I received a long list of links order from an advertiser and more to come; not for my blogs but for the list of blogs that I sent to him sometime ago. This means that I will get 10% commission from the bloggers.

God actually sends money from Heaven! Halleluyah!

I have not receive any payment yet. I hope when everything is completed, the amount will be more than enough to pay for the outstanding bills.

Why arh, when people are in deep shit (pardon my language) and when their “own people” don’t want to help them. Not “cannot” know, “don’t want” to help them, they look for the Christians? Even though they hardly know the Christian. I think we Christians have made such a good impression on the non-Christians. They know that we will never say no when it comes to helping others in need.

So there is this lady; she was the owner of a Cosway shop here. The last we buy from her shop was like 4-5 years ago when I bought a bread maker from her. She knew hubby before that coz  hubby was a Cosway member through her and often buy from her when he was still practicing law; that was more than a decade ago. But she remembered that hubby is a Christian.

Recently she was in a big trouble. She owed 2 loan sharks a some of money. Her husband knew about it and kicked her out of the house. Currently, she is staying with a Christian friend. She borrowed the money from the loan shark to help a friend (not for herself know!!!). All these are what she told hubby. Hubby assumed that she is telling the truth.

When hubby told me that she called asking for help, I knew she wanted cash and only CASH; not prayer or a part-time job. Because that’s all that we can afford to give her. We need money too; for our roof (15k) and recently to pay TNB (2.5k). She is persistent in calling hubby.

A day after we were slapped with 2.5k of electricity bill left by my tenant, she called hubby asking for some cash. Hubby asked whether we can give some money to her. I did not answer him. I was very upset. I was thinking about how are we going to pay for the electricity bill and here a stupid lady (pardon my language again…very angry you know) who borrowed money from loan sharks wanted some cash. I felt like giving her a call to tell her that we have finance problem too. We too, need money! You want money, you work for it lar. I need a helper now. Come clean my house, I’ll pay you RM50/day! I don’t mind giving to those really in need; like those life and death situation.

So, did we give? Of course! We are Christian what. Must show good testimony. The best is to give when we have none. Remember the bible story about The Widow with 2 Coins? Luke 21.

Even though I am upset that hubby actually gave some money to her, I know deep inside that God will blessed us and help us settle our financial needs. We have Jesus, she has yet to know Him.

Maybe couples are tying the know today. In my kampung itself, there are a few weddings going on. Maybe Chinese went to register their marriage today too. Our Malaysian First Astronaut did not want to miss this perfect 10 date either. I managed to watch for a few minutes the “acara bersanding” on TV3 just now. Looks like our Malaysian First Astronaut wedding is more grand than the wedding of the Sultans. He has royal guests from all around the world and 100 astronaut came to his wedding too. Sungguh bertuah.

We planned to bless our part-time staff after our business loan has been paid up. We hope to be able to enjoy a decent dinner together but until today none of them can make themselves available for the occasion. I told hubby to just give them cash to replace that company dinner. But then, it is not about money. Everyone need money. We want this occasion to reflect how God has blessed the business and thank Him for His blessings.

A friend of mine asked me how do I decide to take the bold step to become a SAHM and living on a single income. All of us have so many financial commitments; homeloan, car loan, insurance, fees, utilities, petrol etc. To me, I was in a way forced to resign and be a SAHM because my No.3 does not want other people to mind him and to send all 3 to nursery cost half of my salary that was less than 2.5k; so it is more practical to just resign and mind them myself.

We have to live by our means; meaning do away with luxuries and live a simple life. I know most parents work for their children education fund but not us. Let them find their way like we did. Our parents did not have any education fund for us but we still managed to graduate with a degree and get a good job.

As a SAHM, we can get some income if we can find the time to do so. As for me, I might not have the time to be a Wholesale Insurance agent but I learn some skill like sewing and managed to sell a few bags which is sufficient to invest in some books for my children. Knowledge can bring them further than money you know.

After the 1st year of our Cyber Cafe business, we stopped operating on Sunday. We finally realised that business comes from God and we must put Him first in everything that we do. Even it means to close on the busiest day of the week to honor His day. By faith we did that and true enough, when we honor God, He blessed us! Our sales pick up since then. Halleluyah!

Anyway, even after 3 years not operating on Sunday, hubby still receives text message asking whether the shop is open or not. Most of the time by student who needs to complete their assignment, install document scanning software, or those having problems with their laptop.

This year is such a holiday blessing for us. You will know the reason soon. hehe. In July we went to Genting Highland, just last week we were in Port Dickson for a church camp and this coming October if God willing we will going to Cameron Highland to visit a missionary family. It may not be a Branson vacation. To me, as long as we leave our hometown as a family, it is a holiday.

I have a digital camera but it is a point and shoot digital camera. It has been with me for a few years already. I am thinking to upgrade to a better digital camera; a DSLR. You see, I got peer pressure. A lot of Mommmy bloggers already own a DSLR so I do not want to be left behind. I have yet to read any digital camera reviews because I don’t have the cash to buy one. DSLR is way over my budget. I am still not prepared to spend over 2k for a DSLR.

The date of the mission trip to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah has been confirmed. It will be a 4 days trip and we are so happy that we managed to get one of our ex-church members to help with our business. If we can have him for long term then hubby can plan to go for more mission trips which is his passion, his calling.

Yet again, I am stuck here with my own mission to raise Godly children. I thought marrying a soon-to-be missionary, I will be able to go for mission trip more often but I am so wrong. My last mission trip was to Sarawak a few months before we got engaged. After that, I’m stuck at home.

Anyhow, I am trying to help in anyway that I can besides praying for the team. I am hoping to be able to sell more Mr Plattie (Soft Toy) so that I can contribute to the mission fund. Unfortunately, I only managed to sell 2 Platties.

I did post my intention in FB but most of them “Like” my status and commented that I have a good heart. Don’t just “Like” and compliment me, support my good intention by buying some Platties for your kids lar.

This year, if God willing we will leave our hometown 3 times to go a weekend vacation. This will be a record breaker. Since I am married to my husband, we never get to leave our hometown more that twice a year due to his busyness with church and work.

Our family weekend vacation to Genting Highland is confirmed. We will be up there end of this month. This weekend vacation is sponsored by my dear advertisers. I have been saving up my USD for this trip for quite a while.

I was just telling hubby that after his mission trip to Sabah this September, we should make a weekend trip to Cameron Highland to visit a missionary family there. We have been telling them that we will visit since they left Kupang and started serving in Cameron Highland. This year is the best time coz come next year, we will be homebound.

So I suggested we go in October so that I can have time to accumulate my online income for this trip. At first I thought this weekend vacation will be cheaper than Genting coz we do not have to pay for accommodation coz we will be staying in their house but hubby said otherwise. We need to spend double that our Genting trip. Oh! The other half is to give them as love offering. A VERY expensive accommodation! I don’t think I will have enough for the other half and that I have to leave to hubby.

Last night, hubby suggested that we sign up for church camp which will be held this August. We will have the church camp at Port Dickson. Yippie! Another family weekend vacation for us.

After 9 years of marriage, I am thinner and he is fatter.

Nothing special on this 9th wedding anniversary. I left our children home around 7.15pm with maid and MIL and head to hubby’s shop with my Canon camera. Must captured our special day mah. We then left to the new Jusco for dinner and jalan-jalan. Hubby wanted to eat something that we often eat when we were younger. So we ended up at Kenny Roger’s. Being the only customer there, we were served with super shrink chicken (spring chicken?), over steamed corn and dunno how many times reheated baked bean. If I did not come with hubby, I think I will just walk out from the restaurant.

After dinner, we had a cup of yogurt ice-cream each at Kaizer. Yum! Then we just hold hands and window shop. By 9.30pm, we left Jusco then I headed home to our children who misses me a lot, especially my baby who refuses to sleep without me. Hubby came home shortly after that.

I breastfed Baby to sleep and I slept till the next morning.

The end.

We are almost there to finishing up paying our business loan. We are sure gonna celebrate God’s blessing with our staff and maybe buy one of those cool tv stands for the shop. Hubby loves watching TV.

However, that is not the end of paying to the person that loans us his money. The loan is interest-free. To repay his generousity, we are continuing to pray for God’s blessing on the business so that we would have extras to pay him some interest. How’s that?

Starting this month, I have resigned from cooking lunch and dinner for my family; more for hubby actually. Reason being, my almost 1yo baby wakes up earlier now which prevented me from cooking. When he wakes up, he wants his nen-nen and 90% of the time, I will doze off again for about an hour. By the time, I woke up, hubby needs to leave for work already. When hubby is not around, no one is there to help me look after baby while I cook and I can’t cook with a baby hanging around me at the wet kitchen; let’s say that the wet kitchen is not safe for baby.

Since my children and I have our dinner at my mom’s almost everyday and she always have left-over food, I suggested that she cook for all of us for lunch and dinner too. She can save money coz I will be giving her extra allowance for the food and there will not be wastage anymore. As for me, I have more time to clean my house, more time for my baby and more online time. I can even do healthcare job search if you want me too. As for hubby, he is enjoying good food and more varieties everyday.

I said “Almost” because, I still need to cook for my children’s breakfast.

How many of you can agree with me on the above phrase? I am not talking about incest! I am talking about your dad’s character in your husband.

The father is the first and most significant role model in a girl’s life. That’s the first man that they loved and look up too. Unconsciously, we will look for a man just like our dad provided he is a good dad.

I married my dad. My hubby manages our finance just like my dad; even my mom commented on that. My hubby does not talk much; just like my dad. My hubby leaves the household chores solely to me; just like my dad. Never once I see my dad sweeps, mop, cook or hang the laundry. My dad never bath us!

Thank God my hubby is not 100% my dad. He is not hot-tempered like my dad. He does bathe his children, mops, sweep, cook and hang laundry when I show my long face.

I see my hubby as the better version of my dad.

This “Family Planning” got nothing to do with making more babies or stop making babies.

For 2 Sundays, hubby and I got the opportunity to go out “dating”. Leave the children with my mom and we went to have our quiet dinner.

We took this opportunity to share and plan.

He shared about his business and his business plan. By God’s grace, we hope to settle the business loan by the time our youngest baby turns 1 year old.

I shared about our children; their education, and walk with God. I felt that I have a greater task than hubby. I am to raise godly children! This gives me goosebumps!

I shared about my thoughts; being poorer than my other siblings. Hubby made me realised that we are not poorer than them. We just don’t owe the banks and credit card companies a lot money. And we do have a house; 2 apartments to be exact. It just that we don’t live in them and don’t pay for the monthly installment thus I don’t feel like owning them.

Glad to know that I am more blessed than them.