Wow! Its already a week since we entered a new year!

My 10 yr old turned 11 on the 4th. Her final year as a child, I guess. No more child discounts next year 🙂

We went out for dinner to Fridays at the 360 Mall to celebrate. Just the 4 of us. Its her favorite mall, for reasons known to her alone. But we like it too. They’ve got some lovely settings in there. I feel its one of the very few aesthetically-done malls we have here. Click the name to check out the pictures for yourselves.

After dinner, we strolled around. It’s been ages since we visited this particular mall. They had some famous landmarks from around the world installed . It was supposedly on from the 17th of Dec till the 6th of Jan. We didn’t get to see all of it, though. And if you followed them on Instagram (I personally hate that app), you could end up being one of the lucky few who gets to win tickets to these destinations. So, we were just in time to see a few structures like these before they were removed –

The Big Ben was featured on their poster too. But we didn’t see it anywhere.

And there was a pretty half-wall with some plants growing out of it. Attached to it at the bottom was an infinity pool sort of granite block. Not sure how the water stays on it since its not a hollowed out block. Maybe its got holes in it. Anyhow, it looked pretty with the lights all around.

Spent some time around their fountain too.

Finally got home around 11.

All of us then cuddled up on the bed with wishful thoughts. It quickly turned into a poignant moment.

We didn’t want any sadness creeping in, but it did. She was sad her birthday ended. I felt sad too. And so did the better half.

Sad that she grew up so fast. Realized that she soon won’t be a little girl anymore. Wished we spent more time with her. Wished we spent lesser time quarreling and arguing over silly things. We talked about how much we rush about getting busy with unimportant things instead of taking the time to make some moments special. And then when special things did happen, we just let it pass us by without a second thought. Later wishing we could go back to it and savor it more. We vowed to never let it happen again. Vowed to never have regrets.

She’ll soon enter her teenage years. She’s already starting to get moody. A lot! And I pray that we will all be able to handle it well.

We will survive.

I’ve been seriously neglecting my blog. Life has been really hectic and the only free time I get is spent on trying to complete my afghan (still a really, really long way to go) and a few crochet-y gifts for X’mas.

This week we got ourselves 3 new aquatic pets.

My 10 yr old has been pestering us for a pet and her request for a puppy or a bird had been repeatedly turned down. As much as we would have loved to get her a dog, it was impractical. If I were a stay-at-home-mom, we would definitely have got one. But since I’m not and we don’t really have the time for one (and I personally felt birds would be a noisy affair), we got her fish. 3 of them. Which was perfect for us too (less hassle 🙂 ).

Here they are – 1 Siamese fighting fish and 2 gold fish.

She has been given the responsibility of feeding them and so far she’s been doing a good job.

Today we had some gorgeous weather and took a trip to the beach. Collected the little shells that you can see at the bottom of the goldfish bowl.

The 2 year old took a dip in the sea for the first time! He had always been afraid to go near the water, not wanting to even look at it every time we stopped by the beach. He never liked walking barefoot on the sand either. But today he did both of those! Become brave, I suppose 🙂

That’s the end of one busy but grand week.

Can’t wait to finish my X’mas WIPs soon and show them off to you too 🙂

Goodnight, Lovely People!