I'm a full-time mummy

I hope to share with you all the inspiring message from the story of a butterfly that I read recently. There's quite a number of versions to this story but the lessons to learn are the same.

"Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it. The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it had and it could go no further. The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand. But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly…

The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly. His kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.

If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.

In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly.

 

When I asked god for strength, he gave me difficult situations to face.

When I asked god for brain & brown, he gave me puzzles in life to solve.

When I asked god for happiness, he showed me some unhappy people.

When I asked god for wealth, he showed me how to work hard.

When I asked god for favors, he showed me opportunities to work hard.

When I asked god for peace, he showed me how to help others.

God gave me nothing I wanted; he gave me everything I needed."

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

Our family is a big fan of all things LEGO. Check out the robot made by our 7-year-old boy 2 years ago!!!

Our kiddos are constantly creating new things with LEGO, so I created an album on my Facebook fan page to share the pictures of Lego creations made by them, do feel free to hop over and check them out in my FB album. Also a while back, I reviewed some LEGO books and even wrote a post to share my personal tips on buying LEGO for your child.

Now, recently I heard that LEGO will be having an upcoming "Build Your LEGO Christmas Event" but unfortunately, as much as I would like to attend this cool event with our family and kiddos, I had to restraint myself from any public functions... images of birthing in public is not a comforting thought at this phase of pregnancy LOL and hence, I told hubby to go ahead with our kiddos (so that mummy can rest before baby #4 pops out anytime hahaha)

Now you wonder what is going on? FYI, with few weeks left to approach the season of joy and giving, LEGO® Malaysia will be hosting an exclusive "Build Your LEGO® Christmas" event at the LG Oval Concourse area at 1 Utama Shopping Centre from 9th to 20th November 2016, 10 am-10 pm.

If you want to find out more about the event, here is the info:

Date:  9-20 November 2016

Time: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

 Venue: 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Lower Ground Oval Concourse area

FB Link on the event: http://bit.ly/BuildYourLEGOXmas

Some of the exciting series of activities to look out for during the event includes:

• A mini cinema screening popular LEGO® TV series

• Dioramas of various LEGO® CITY and LEGO® Friends scenes, organised by three LEGO-certified user groups in Malaysia – LOM LUG LEGO® User Group of Malaysia, Synergy, and Asia Bricks

• A LEGO® Friends amusement park ferris wheel ride

• A free-playing area for children to build and display their LEGO® creations

• Meet-and-greet sessions with LEGO® CITY mascots, as well as a LEGO® Santa

• LEGO® CITY photo booths with props and costumes for fans to take memorable pictures

• Workshops for children to learn how to build their very own Santa sleigh

• On 19 November 2016, there will also be a special meet & greet session with LEGO® product designer and master builder, John Ho, the creative mind behind LEGO® series such as LEGO® Bionicle and LEGO® Star Wars Buildable Figures.

In addition to that, during the ‘Build Your LEGO® Christmas’ event, shoppers will be able to take home a free Photo Printout with any purchase of LEGO® Play Sets/ Play Materials (exclusive to all ONECARD Kids & ONECARD members), and 1 free pack of LEGO® Christmas Cards with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets/ Play Materials worth RM100 and above.

Additionally, customers who purchase LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM200 and above are entitled to one free pack of LEGO® Geoffrey & Friends Set (exclusive to Toys R Us Star Card members whose birthday falls in the month of November or December) and 1 box of LEGO® Santa’s Visit Set with any purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM300 and above.

ANY CONTESTS?

In case you are wondering, yes yes yes, LEGO® is asking children to save Christmas this year by designing and building Santa a new, modern, cool sleigh.

Hence, from 1st November until 4th December 2016, children can lend a helping hand to Santa by joining the Build Your LEGO® Christmas contest on www.LEGO.com/XMAS. There are suggested sleigh building instruction sheets available on the website which the participants can use to build and upload a photo of their very own LEGO® Santa’s sleigh with a matching description.

There are attractive prizes that you can win such as a total of 5 consolation prizes of LEGO® products worth RM200 each, as well as a Grand Prize of LEGO® products for a year worth RM2,000, which you can choose from your preferred theme. The Grand Prize winner will also have their winning sleigh featured in a final stop motion digital video aired in mid-December. How cool is that huh?

ANY OTHER OFFERS?

Yes, yes, yes of course there are!! Customers who shop at LEGO® certified stores and LEGOLAND will also be entitled to 1 pack of free LEGO® Christmas Cards with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM100 and above from 1 November (while stocks last), and 1 box of free LEGO® Santa’s Visit Sets with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM300 and above (starting 21 November, while stocks last).

Additionally, customers who purchase LEGO® products worth RM500 and above at LEGO® Certified Stores and online at http://brickmagic.asia also stand a chance of winning awesome prizes such as a LEGO® Star Wars Super Destroyer, LEGO® Star Wars Ewok Village, LEGO® Star Wars B-Wing Starfighter and many more!

Customers who shop at outlets such as Toys-R-Us, Hamleys, Box of Bricks, AEON, Parkson and Isetan will be able to enjoy one free pack of LEGO® Christmas cards with LEGO® Play sets / Play materials worth RM100 and above from 1 November, while stocks last. Exclusive deals are offered at Toys-R-Us, Hamleys and Box of Bricks where customers will be entitled to a LEGO® Reindeer set with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM200 and above from 21 November, while stocks last.

I received no monetary compensation for this review. I was provided with the press release kit in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.
 

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.
 

We have previously reviewed the Play-Doh party pack a while back and everyone enjoyed the experience so when our kiddos saw the Play-Doh Town Firehouse box on my office table, they went crazy excited and can't wait to open up the box to play with the new Play-Doh set!

In the Play-Doh Town Firehouse box set, it included a Firehouse set, firefighter figure with hat, puppy extruder, roof, flame stamper, water cannon extruder, axe, hydrant extruder, and 4 cans of Play-Doh brand modeling compound (color: yellow, neon orange, teal green and bright blue). After making them wait for few hours (testing their patience hehehe!)

I finally opened up the box and slowly assembled the items according to the user-friendly manual that came along with the box. According to the usage guide on the box, the Play-Doh Town Firehouse is for children 3+ years, just nice for our 3 krakens age ranging from 3 to 7.5 years old at the moment :)

Like every other Asian parents, I'm very OCD and concerned that it will be messy when my kids play, but the trick is to lay a good "foundation mat" around before they start playing. I like it when our kiddos play with the Play-Doh as I truly believe it helps to cultivate their creativity and helps improve their motor skills as their little fingers squeeze and mould the compound and watching them immersed themselves in their role-play world is just a sight to behold!

I took the opportunity to show our kiddos how to make the fiery flame sculpture from the flame stamper, a bit of yellow in the center bottom part surrounded by some neon orange Play-Doh and voila... fiery flames ready to be played with! I should've used more yellow but I decided to let our kiddos try and figure it out by themselves hehehe... As parents, we should know Play-Doh is a really awesome teaching tool! You get to teach kiddos to identify colors, to mix and create new colors (blue + yellow = green for example). Just gotta seize the moments when the teaching opportunities come along!

I also allowed our 3-year-old girl to experiment on making the teddy bear sculpture herself. As you can see in the pictures below, she took a slab of bright blue Play-Doh and stamped out the teddy bear sculpture. Awesome!

The nice part is our 3 kiddos were sitting quietly and playing together, not fighting and just enjoy discovering the cool things that they can churned out from the Play-Doh Town Firehouse set. What a nice siblings bonding and teamwork activity hahaha!

By the way, Play-Doh celebrates its 60th birthday this year! Whoaaaa!! 6 decades of awesomeness for many generations of kiddos! The iconic yellow can has expanded into more than 80 countries across the globe, with more than 3 billion cans of Play-Doh compound sold - that’s enough Play-Doh compound to reach to the moon and back THREE times! Cool-ness!

The Play-Doh Town Firehouse is available in all leading departmental, toy stores, baby shops and hypermarkets.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. 

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.