Quick Recap

Ok, I'm on dangerous ground here. It's been almost a week since my last entry and I'm starting to feel lazy. But I have to say that my latest "Dear Diary" has been the longest so far. So that's an improvement.

First thing's first.. Good luck to my nephew, Daniel, who is sitting for his UPSR exams starting Monday till Wednesday. Sent him an SMS to wish luck the night before his exams. He's pretty cool about it all, but I know his mom would be the one to go frantic and all and would not stop badgering him to revise; especially his Bahasa Melayu. Daniel is more fluent in english than malay. I still remember when he was in kindergatten he came home complaining to his parents that the teachers were asking silly questions. He had to match words to pictures and one of the words was "Kancil". Daniel being a boy's boy was very into cars at that age. He said he couldn't figure out why there wasn't a picture of the Kancil car.... oopps!!

The night before Merdeka there was the annual concert at the stadium. As my house is close to the stadium, we didn't need to go and watch. We can hear them wailing just fine from the house.... even with the windows and doors closed!! The fireworks were really loud. Pretty, but REALLY loud. I can even feel my room rumble slightly. Nadiah simply CANNOT stand the fireworks sound. Everytime they have fireworks, Merdeka day or Sultan's birthday, she would start to cry and pleading with me to stop it. What can I do? There is no way to shut out the sound so we just had to grit out teeth and try to sooth her. This time she fell asleep mere minutes before the fireworks started. At the first boom she was jerked out of sleep but simply jammed in a finger in each ear and went back to sleep. Phew!!

Merdeka day. What did I do? Drove down to KL with Shukri and Nadiah. Left Alor Star around noon and arrived in KL about 5.30pm. Instead of going straight to the apartment in Bangsar, we decided to stop over at IKEA to get some stuff and have an early dinner. I love going to IKEA. Everything is so colourful and attractive. I guess the deco teams must be really good because the way they present the showrooms always makes me wish my bedroom is like that or the dining room or Nadiah's bed... well just about everything. We usually spend hours at IKEA but this time round we just grab the few things we needed and took shortcuts through the store. There were so many people that it was hard to walk around, let alone pushing the trolley with Nadiah in it. Nadiah loves IKEA too. She loves the ice-cream the have there. Mama loves it too... because it's vanilla, cheap and tastes yummy. Vanilla coz if the ice cream drips on her clothes, it won't stain. Not like chocolate!! It taste heavenly but a bitch to clean up the stain!! Cheap coz it's only RM1. Yummy coz it IS yummy!!

We were in KL for 5 days. Did my annual round of Raya shopping. Mostly stuff to get for Nadiah and her cousins and also for my in-laws. Since it was the last few days of SALES, I politely asked Shukri if I could go out shopping on my own... minus him and Nadiah. SO early Saturday morning, I prepared breakfast and lunch for Shukri and Nadiah before leaving the apartment to start my shopping experdition. Venue: Mid Valley Mega Mall. I was really early getting there. I mean, REAL early that I had to wait outside of Jusco while the man slowly open the grill to the store. When I got in and chose some handbangs for my makciks (which I had checked out the day before) and went to the cashire to pay... they were not ready! They kept sending me from one counter to another but none were ready to punch in the items. Blast!! When they say the shops are opened at 10am, they should be ready at 10am!!
Ok, so these are the items I got for Raya

• 2 pairs of shoes for Nadiah
  
• 1 pair of jeans for Nadiah (with a big red rose on the leg)
• handbags for Chik and Kak Yam
• T-shirt and shorts for nephew Amir
• T-shirt for uncle G
• 2 dresses for 2 nieces
• Blouse for mom-in-law
• 2 baju kebayas for 2 sis-in-law

Since they were having mega sales, I could not let the opportunity pass so these are the non-raya items

• t-shirts for Nadiah (these are RM10 a piece.. I love these!!)
• 2 trousers for Nadiah
• 2 batik blouses for myself and my mom
• 2 t-shirts for Shukri
• a belt for Shukri
  
• hopper balls for Nadiah and cousin Amir

Phew! What a day. These were all done in 4 hours. Nadiah ended up getting 2 shoes coz the first one was just nice size-wise and I'm sure it wouldn't last longer than two months. Since it's an old stock and they only have 2 pairs left at the shop and both of the same size, it was a gamble on my part when I bought it. So went out again later that day to buy another one. This time slightly bigger size. I always have trouble buying shoes for Nadiah. I usually never get it right. I don't know how many pairs of Mothercare shoes my mom and I have bought for her and she couldn't wear them. Plus she outgrew them really fast. We used to have to buy new shoes for her every 2-3 months. So we finally stopped buying her expensive shoes and got those from Bubblegummers. But they have really nice shoes and comfy and best of all quite cheap compared to Mothercare. So it works fine by me!