Disneyland

I bet it wouldn’t rain from the look of the sky, even though the weather forecast said it would.   I decided to go to Disneyland.  This one is only ½ the size of the Tokyo one.  At least that’s how I remembered it.  It’s funny when daddy took Livie to see the princess and tried to take a picture for them, Livie refused to do so.  I was waiting in line for Dumbo while they did that.  Then Livie told me a secret:

“The princess is too ugly and she didn’t look like a princess.  That’s why I didn’t want to take a picture of her.”  Poor princess, luckily she wasn’t around to hear it.

Ladybug Story

Adrian had to write a story about ladybug with some words provided in the worksheet.  The words are: black spots, help farmers, tastes bad, any colour, and some other words which I don’t remember.  He said it’s hard because he didn’t know much about ladybug.  So daddy tried to help him.  He said, “Why don’t you say the ladybug is like superhero to help the farmer?”  Then here’s Adrian’s story:

Geronimo Stilton is a ladybug superhero.  He helps farmers a lot!  He has a black cape and retired.  He cut his cap in black spots and glue them on his back and invented ladybugs.  The end.  Fun fact: ladybugs can be any colour.

Ocean Park

We had had a lot of luck with the weather within our trip in HK.  Not too stuffy, and not too hot.  It’s the day for Ocean Park.  We invited a friend and her 15 month old daughter to go with us.  Fortunately we tuned Livie’s clock with a nap yesterday, so she was able to sleep to 7am this morning.   Last time when I was there was 12 years ago.  It had changed so much.  I’m so happy to see Adrian taking good care of the baby.  He had matured a lot after this trip.

We took the Ocean Park cable car together.  Adrian was so excited that he started to walk around in the cable car.  Ho and I were very nervous because we’re both scared of heights.  To add to the excitement, we got stuck for a couple of minutes in the air because there were some maintenance crews needed to climb down a tower.  Luckily we saw them climbing down so we knew that was the reason, otherwise, it could be a quite frightening experience for us, just me and Ho.  The kids didn’t care.  We just had to keep reminding Adrian to sit still.

Chatting with Livie

Another early morning for Livie.  This time after doing her homework, it’s still too early to wake up the boys, so I tried to brush her teeth and change her, getting ready for the walk and breakfast like what Ho and Livie did the other day.  While we were in the washroom, Livie and I were chatting again.

Olivia: When your tooth and gum are itchy, it means that your tooth is falling off.

Me: Who told you that?

Olivia: Adrian did.  He knows a lot because he’s in Grade 1.

It’s nice to see that she admires her brother so much.

Me: Livie, aren’t you happy to see yee-sum (aunt Jennifer) today?

Olivia: Yes.

Me: What do you think she would have bought?

Olivia:  I wish she would buy another mommy like you.

As you can tell, she’s a real brown noser.

Remember Adrian loves Tempo?  He loved it so much that today when he saw the bulk pack on shelf while we were passing by a local pharmacy, he insisted on buying the big package to bring back to Canada.  That’s the first souvenir he bought in HK.

The next day, Adrian kept complaining about too tired and wouldn’t carry his own backpack.  That’s when we found out that he had filled his backpack with the whole 30-pack Tempo in there!  Of course later on Livie wanted one package for herself too.  So our hotel room was filled with about 70 little packs of Tempo for rest of the trip.

Peak Tram

Livie woke up at 5am this morning again.  After entertaining her for almost 2 hours, finally Ho woke up and took her out for a walk and picked up breakfast on their way.  When Ho ordered 皮蛋瘦肉粥 lean pork congee, Livie said, “瘦肉?  (lean meat)”    She pointed at her body and said, “It’s like me, 瘦肉(lean)”

We visited the Peak by Peak Tram today.  The kids were tired but excited.  Livie almost fell asleep but when I told her mommy was scared of height (of course I wasn’t that scared, just saying it to distract her), she held my hand all the way in the tram, saying,

“It’s ok mommy, just hold my hand.”  I was so touched.

澳洲牛奶公司 (Australian Dairy Company)

Today Livie still woke up early, but we all woke up to go to the famous 澳洲牛奶公司 (Australian Dairy Company) for breakfast.  It sounds like an office but it’s actually a Hong Kong style café.  Not only their steamed milk desserts are famous, their scramble eggs are superb too.  A picky eater like Livie even told us that she couldn’t stop eating the eggs.  Everything’s is fast in Hong Kong.  Waiters, customers, and the food.  It’s almost like the waiter just turned around to get the plate of food after he took our order.  Livie said, “快過新城市. (It’s faster than New City).” – A HK style café in our neighbourhood in Toronto.  When we stepped out of the café, I asked the kids, “香港係咪樣樣嘢都好趕咁呢？”  They didn’t understand what it meant so I asked again in English:

Me: Do you find everything is rushed in Hong Kong?

Olivia: Yeah!  Like Russia!

Since we’re so early today, we went to Langham Place 朗豪坊 to visit the longest escalator indoor. After visiting a few stores, Livie told me, “I like the stores here, they all said, “隨便睇！” (Please feel free to browse around).

Good girl

This is the 3rd day of our visit in Hong Kong.  Same as yesterday, Livie woke up first.  This time at 7:15am.  I vaguely remember she got up and got a drink of water.  Then when I really woke up, I realized that she had already brushed her teeth and started doing more worksheets!

I'm so touch!

We went to Harbour City and let them play in and arcade with  indoor playground.  Then we took the kids to Toys R Us.  Livie saw some Lego type of toy and started putting something together.  When we asked her what it was, she said it's a roller coaster.  She did such a good job that the promoter even put her finished work on display with the others.  We took so pictures.  I'll post them when we return to HK.  When we asked Adrian what he was making, he said, "I'm making something that I don't know what it is."  Again, very deep...  Ha!  :-)

Tempo

Still the second day in Hong Kong.  We managed to meet up with some of Ho’s high school friends for tea yesterday.   We also had dinner together.  Adrian’s nose was quite stuffed up at dinner time.  One of Ho’s friends, Uncle Yellow, gave Adrian a pack of Tempo facial tissue.  Adrian said it was the softest tissue he had ever used.  Who knows that later in the trip, Tempo became a very important part of the vacation.

Conditioner

Second day in Hong Kong.  Both kids are still suffering jet lag.  Livie  fell asleep while we're having afternoon tea with Ho's high school friends.  Luckily there are strollers available for guests at the mall, so I didn't have to hold her for the whole time.    Then she woke up and Adrian took the spot and fell asleep while we went shopping.  I have to say, for the amount of sleep they'd gotten, they had been behaving super good.

Since we don't like the shampoo offered at the hotel, we went to buy shampoo and conditioner to bring back to the hotel.  The conditioner was mainly for Livie because her hair is long.  Adrian was so happy that he wanted to take a shower right after we returned from dinner.  He came out and told me that he mixed the shampoo and conditioner together (home made 2 in 1?) when he washed his hair because he wanted his hair to be clean and soft.  He also put the condition on his body also because he wanted his skin to be soft too.  Until then we realized that we had never told him how to use the conditioner.  He didn't need to use it when he was in Canada.

Homework

This is our 2nd day in Hong Kong.  Livie was the first one who woke up.  She woke me up at 5:45am and asked for water.  I gave her the water and told her to get back to sleep.  After half and hour, she woke me up again and said she couldn't sleep.  What a lazy mom I was, I asked her to keep an eye on my watch and wake me up when the long arm reached the number "9", which is 25 mins later.  

Livie: Is this the one? (She was pointing at the fast moving second hand)

Me: No, it's this one. (I was pointing at the minute hand)

Livie: But that one is not working!

Anyhow, she was so good that she waited all the time (checking with me a few times in between), and asked me what she could do after.  Since it's still early and the boys had not awaken yet, I told her to brush her teeth and do some homework.  She happily went to the washroom while I prepared the worksheets for her.   She was very focused and quiet while doing the worksheets.  She actually finished 3 sheets before Adrian woke up! 

She's such a good girl...

Black Forest Cupcakes

Two nights prior flying to Hong Kong, haven't started packing, lots of laundry to be done, tons of food in the fridge to be cleaned up, yet realized I organized a baby shower for my team member the next day at an odd 12:15pm lunch time with an ice cream cake as the treat.  That is so improper!  Will people eat ice cream before lunch?  What should people do from 12 noon to 12:15pm?  I decided to make some cupcakes, so at least people can grab it and save it for later. 

I didn't even buy any ingredients!  I do have some cocoa powder and whipping cream at home.  So I decided to use the GB Black Forest recipe to make cupcakes.  Oops, no cherry pie filling!  Ok, I have strawberry jam.  Since we used the whole recipe to make 4 black forest, I used half of the recipe thinking it should be enough for 36 cupcakes.  I could only do 20 and they are small ones too.  I already reduced the temperature from 380F to 355F.  I saw that the batter rose within 10 mins.  Then I started smelling something burning after 4 mins.  I quickly took them out. 

All the ones baked with non-stick dark muffin pan were burnt on the outside.  I carefully cut them out with a paring knife.   I was cutting and mumbling to myself, "only if I had booked a later time for the shower..."

I cut the cakes into halves, jammed them up and save them for the morning.  Luckily I have some whipping cream and for whatever reason, I bought some stabilizer long time ago which came in handy now.  I whipped 2 cups of cream to fill the cupcakes.  The recipe is so good that even after the sides were cut, they are still very moist and soft in the centre.  I assembled the cupcakes this morning and finished them with chocolate sprinkles.  I'm happy with how they look.  I'm not as stressed now:-)  And I managed to move the shower to 3pm.  Everything went well!  Yay!  Baking is a stress relief for sure.

Very Deep

Adrian has always been a thinker.  He is more advanced than other kids in this area.  Ho told me that Adrian recently said to him that he felt like he's living in somebody's dream.  Just that the person hasn't awaken yet.  Ho almost wanted to tell him that maybe his parents are the somebody. :-)

Then yesterday he asked us again, "What if we don't even exist?"  Oh man, he's only 6 years old.  Any philosophy major out there can help us out?

Strawberry Shortcake - Baking Arts Week #12

It's our last class in Baking Arts!  I'll be so lost!  Too bad I couldn't find my little camera that morning so I missed the chance to take a picture with our instructor Chef Amjad.  I'll miss him a lot!    After watching those Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen shows, it's a relief to have a nice and approachable instructor like Chef Amjad :-).  Hope our breakfast bread instructor will be as nice and helpful as him.

I took this cake to a dinner party at night.  It was too dark in the house so we couldn't get very good pictures.  Ho's hands were not steady enough to do clear shots, he must be anxious to try the cake!  The strawberry tuxedos were done by me and Chef Amjad.  I did the shirt and jacket and he offered to do the bow tie and buttons for me.  They are so cute!  I got so many compliments on the cake, which made the $600 course all worthwhile.





This is a better view of the layers.  I took it after everybody had their piece.

Mango Mousse Cake

Another cake I brought to the Saturday dinner party.  Not as pretty as the Strawberry Shortcake.  Didn't have time to wait for the mousse to be chilled and I didn't have the 8" springform to keep the mousse and mango mirror from dripping on the side.  

I'm quite happy with the mirror.  Very easy to make.  Yet I will modify the mousse recipe next time.  The gelatin wasn't enough to keep the mousse from falling.  The taste was good though.  Ho likes the sponge cake a lot.  very easy to make.  I'll keep the recipe for other layer cakes too.

Again, didn't have good lighting for the pictures.  This is already the best shot of all sliced views we could get.



After standing for 4 hours in the baking class, I went home straight after to make “san tsin bao” n this mousse cake.  Managed to leave the house for party at 6:50pm.  Then stood by friend’s stove to pan fry the bao until 7:40pm.  I stood for more than 11 hours straight started from GB class!

Honey Molasses Cocoa Bread

http://scentofspice.com/blog/2010/02/honey-molasses-cocoa-bread/

When I first picked up this hobby of baking, I meant to make every recipe a healthy one.  Since I don't have enough experience to create my own recipe yet, I always search for low sugar (but not with artifical sweetener) or high fibre recipes over the internet.  While sugar is easy to adjust, the big challenge of high fibre baked food is the taste of whole wheat flour.  Home baked ones have stronger taste than those ones we bought in stores.  I was hoping the molasses, cocoa, and coffee in this recipe will be able to cover the whole wheat taste.

The dough was hard to knead even with the machine because of the fibre content.  The dough hook stumbled a few times.  I had to stop it periodically to ensure it won't overload the motor.  I was worried at the beginning because the dough appeared to be quite dry. Yet after adding all the milk and butter, it finally turned smooth.

It's a very heavy dough, it still proofed and rose properly though.  It's hard to shape them to a perfect ball.  The seams wouldn't come together.  I just left them at the bottom.





The colour is not as dark as the pictures provided with the original recipe.  I don't have super dark cocoa powder, maybe that's why.





When I split the bread last night, it was very moist and actually looked a bit mushy.  It was right out of the oven then.  I waited until this morning to look inside of another one.  It's real bread to me.  It's almost like it was still baking by itself after I took them out from the oven.



The taste is good.  The spices did cover the whole wheat taste a lot, I'd like it to cover more though.  Now I can taste coffee and molasses, but not cocoa.  I think I'll add more cocoa, remove the coffee, and brush with egg white and yolk next time.  The yolk will help to brown it more.  So far this is the best whole wheat bread recipe I have found.  It's a good foundation for me to experiment with different ingredients.  Ah... it'll be tasty to add raisins too.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Last night Livie was pretending to be an emcee of a show.

Olivia: Waiting for the gentlemen!  Welcome to our show...

Me: Livie, it's "Ladies and Gentlemen", not "waiting for the gentlemen"

Olivia: No, the boys are all late.  The girls are here!

TV

1)  My brother-in-law, Francis, was explaining to Livie that TV from long long time ago used to be black and white only.  Adrian asked,

"Was the world in colour?"

2) This one happened about a year ago. Adrian, Ho, and I were having lunch at a restaurant with lots of TVs.  Adrian doesn't like watching TV with real people in it (still doesn't).  He's worried that there will be violence showing any time.  Yet he will peek every now and then to see what's going on, or if there's nothing happening, his eyes will keep staring at it.  That afternoon the TV at restaurant was showing some TV serious with a man and a woman from maybe 19th century.  The man was chasing after the woman in the woods.  The chase lasted for quite a few minutes with no dialogue at all.  I said, "咁悶，都唔知佢講乜！(This show is so boring, I don't even know what it's talking about)" .  Adrian said,

"梗係啦，佢都唔講嘢！(Of course!  They're not even talking)!"

Fruit Flan - Baking Arts Week #11

If I have to rate all the goodies we had made in Baking Arts at GB, so far with one class left, this is my favourite.  I mean, they are all good but I like this the most.  Not too sweet, the shell is so good.  Chef Amjad said he was the first one in the industry to put a thin sponge cake between the custard and fruit.  I think that's a brilliant idea.  The fruit won't slide everywhere when we dig in.

Can't believe this is already the second last class.  I don't want it to end!  Well, I'll be taking breakfast bread with my niece after I return from Hong Kong.  The class starts on the very next day after I get off the flight!  Hopefully I'll be able to wake up for it.

Morning Greeting

Livie woke up extra early this morning. 

Me:  早晨! (good morning)

Olivia: 早晨，媽咪! (good morning mommy)

Daddy was up too.  Then Livie had to go to bathroom. 

Livie said:  未叫daddy呀。(I haven't greeted daddy yet.)

Daddy: 係喎，叫啦。(Oh yes, say it then)

Livie:  Daddy!

Daddy:  Daddy乜嘢呀？(Daddy what?)

Livie: Wipe my bum bum!

I ate a turtle

Adrian is in Grade 1 and they started to have creative writing in class a few months ago.  They have tests on it in class too.  Students will be given a set of words to create a story with.  They can decide on the title.  I'm not sure how much time they are allowed for each story, but since they only need to write about 4-5 sentences, probably the time limit is about 15 mins.

Last week Adrian brought a test folder back home for us to review.  Teacher wrote a comment on top. "Cute!"  The set of words are: turtle, family, spoon, eat, and something else.  I forgot.  Title was "I Ate A Turtle!"  Here's the story:

One day, dad was hungry.  Yuck!  It's a turtle!  Dad went to bed for 100 hours!  He woke up and said, "I'm free!"

Nightmare

Livie woke up middle of the night calling me last night.  That's right after Adrian woke up from a nightmare.  (They were overtired and over excited from the party in the evening.)  When I went to work this morning, all 3 of them (including daddy) were still in bed because they were so tired from waking up at night (yup, the whole family was up).  When Livie woke up in the morning, she called me at work to explain that she had a nightmare too.  She said mommy went to somewhere they didn't know.  Livie was in a deep dark forest with Adrian, Daddy was there also trying to take them back to school.  Then a witch came to catch them.  Therefore she was calling for mommy for help.  Later on, at our favourite chatting time - shower for Livie - she told me the second part of the dream, (ha, didn't know there's a part 2)

Olivia: I was thinking about Eleesha all night long last night too.  She was with us in the forest with other kids.  We were all crying waiting for you to save us.

Me: Was daddy crying too?

Olivia:  No, he knows the way, he was trying to take us back to school.

Me:  What about Eleesha's mommy?

Olivia: She was with us.  Then we heard some footsteps sounded like someone walking in high heels.  We thought that was the witch coming to catch us.  We were so scared.

Me: What happened after?

Olivia:  The footsteps were yours, you came to save us.  Then we were very happy standing around you and hugging you.

:-)  I like it, mommy was the heroine who came to save them.

Red Blanket

The kids come to our bed to "sleepover" every weekend on Saturday.  It's long weekend so we let them do it an extra night.  I asked if Livie wanted her red blanket.

Olivia: Why do you know the word "red"?

Me: Because I learned?

Olivia: From me?

Me: From school.

Adrian: How old were you?

Me: Kindergarten, oh, maybe grade one for the word "blanket".

Adrian: You were at our age when you learned "red blanket"?  Yeah mommy was at our age when she learned red blanket! .......

I didn't type the rest because Adrian and Olivia were happily talking about it for awhile.  Kids, they got excited so easily.

Smart Kid

Many people think that Adrian is pretty smart.  He is very observant.  Here are 2 examples:

1) He was watching a TV show about dinosaur this morning.  He told me that he knew the dinasours were computer generated because there was no footprint on the ground after the dinosaurs ran by.

2) When he was 3 years old, he was riding with me in the car on a highway.  He asked me why it was called a highway.  I explained to him that because the road was built high above the ground and the cars driving on it were all in high speed.  He added:

"Also because there is no traffic light?"

Mascarpone Cheesecake with Almond and Walnut Crust

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/mascarpone-cheesecake-with-almond-crust-recipe/index.html

My brother-in-law Francis likes soft cheesecake.  I did some recipe search online and found that many of them require mascarpone cheese.  It's on sale at a store so I bought one for whenever I can get a good recipe.  Then I forgot about it.  2 days ago I saw it in the fridge, oh no, the best before date is coming soon!  So I found this cheesecake recipe to try it out.  I like it with hazelnut drizzle too.

Even though the comments on this recipe already said it's not as sweet as the other cheesecakes, but I still reduced the sugar to 1 cup only.  I also added walnut powder because I only had 2/3 cup of ground almond at home.

I don't have a pan large enough to hold my 9" springform pan in water bath.  So after wrapped the springform with 3 layers of heavy duty foil, I added only a little bit of water in, then fill another deep pan of hot water and leave it on a lower rack.



I carefully make sure I don't over beat the batter after adding the eggs.  Yeah! No crack!  But got some small holes from bubbles.  I can live with those.



I left the cake in the oven over night to cool it down.  It separated from the ring quite easily without tearing the side.



The idea of mixing Nutella and whipping cream is so convenient and tasty.  It covered the holes too.

Finally got a good take of the slice.



The texture is soft because of the mascarpone cheese.  However, the flavour is not what I was looking for.  Ho found the taste different from other cheesecakes he had eaten.  He didn't like it though.  It's too early to say, because after leaving it in the fridge for a few extra hours, he said the cheesecake tasted much better!  I once heard that cheesecakes had to be "seasoned", i.e. you have to let it sit in the fridge for at least 24 hours.  The longer the better taste it will have.  It's proved to be true now.  It was a good decision to reduce the sugar.  I like the sweetness level of this cake, especially with the hazelnut drizzle.  Everything is just right.

I still think that the cake looks very pretty by itself. :-)

Good Friday Breakfast

Good morning!  It's Good Friday, kids always wakes up earlier on no school days.  Livie wants pancake!  (Thank God for instant pancake mix.  I love this buttermilk one which needs to add water only.  :-) )  Ok, of course mommy will make pancakes for Easter long weekend.  Here you go!

Adrian wants syrup.  Ok, no problem!

The Loudest One

Both Ho and I came from big families.  Our kids got used to the busy environment and loud noise. They are loud too, especially Adrian.  We have to remind him to lower his voice all the time.  Today he was playing with 二叔 Uncle Francis.  Adrian was very hyperactive and reacting loudly again.

Francis:  Are you the loudest one in your class?

Adrian: No!

Francis: Who's the loudest one then?

Adrian: The teacher!

Yeasted Banana Bread

http://technicolorkitcheninenglish.blogspot.com/2008/11/yeasted-banana-bread.html

After 2 not so satisfactory experiences of bread baking, I'm more determined to bake a good loaf of bread.  Yee Sum Jennifer made this bread for us which was so moist and tasty, I decided to try it myself.  I forgot her suggestion to double the banana to 2, but followed the recipe completely.  The result was really good.  Finally I can make bread successfully!  Thanks Yee Sum!

I suspected the main reason I failed in the last 2 tries was time (well, I didn't really fail, the bread were ok, but I want them to be totally without the smell of yeast).  I started as soon as I returned from work this time and let the dough proof at room temperature.

Yeast started to foam.  Time to add flour!

I was supposed to proof the dough for 1.5 hours, but I went out to pick up groceries.  I left it in the bowl for 2 hours.  Kneaded a few times to get rid of extra air and put it in the loaf pan.



Wow, after one hour, the dough was so big that it almost overflowed from the pan!



Oven picture again!  It almost touched the heat wire :-)  I covered it with foil after taking this picture.



My first loaf of bread!  Looks kind of irregular shape.  I forgot to knead it to a cylindar shape before putting it in the loaf pan for second proof.



After one hour, I took it out from the pan and let it dry on the side.  Bottom of it was quite wet.



I heard that freshly baked bread is not as tasty as bread baked the night before.  This became my kids breakfast the next day.  Not bad eh?

Funny thing was, I was so happy that I wanted to bake another loaf for my mom immediately.  Adrian wanted to help so I let him pour the flour in for me.  I was talking and measuring at the same time.  I miscounted the flour and ended up with a loaf of sunken top chewy "thing"!  It's in my garbage bin now.  Sorry mom, you'll get the bread, some time later!

What did you say?

Bath time is Livie's and my moment together.  Noise of the shower may cover our words sometimes, but it will never cover our laughter.  I was giving her a shower today, I was amazed to hear Livie speaking some words in Mandarin.

Me:  Livie is so smart!  You are very good at languages*!

Livie: Mommy is .......... (she was mumbling in the shower), mommy is so pretty.

Me:  Uh?  What did you say?

Livie: Mommy is pretty.

Me:  Thanks, I could hear that one but what was the sentence before that?  Mommy is what?

Livie: Ugly?

:-( I still don't know what she was saying in the first sentence.

* (Livie's Cantonese is even better than her brother now, these are all peer pressure.  Adrian's best friends all speak English, Livie's best friends speak Cantonese)

Retirement and Buzz Lightyear

Adrian discovered that daddy's boss decided to retire recently.

Adrian: He's retiring?  Is he rich?

Me: Yes.

Adrian:  Does he have a hundred dollars?

Me: Oh, I think he has a lot more than that.

Adrian: Does he have eight hundres dollars?

Me: Of course!

Adrian: Oh he's so lucky!

Me: Why would you think that?

Adrian: He can buy 8 Buzz Lightyears!

Livie's drawings

Livie loves drawing.  She uses lots of colours and she likes to draw anything related to her family.  I don't know where she picked up all the colouring skill.  She actually can use one crayon to colour from light to dark shade.  I'm sure she'll do even better after she starts her art class.  The studio only accept 4.5 years or older.  I'll let her try after Easter. 

She always gives us her drawings as gifts.  Here are a few she gave me.

She told me this is our house.  The pink top is the roof, the heart is the door.



You can tell she's a happy girl.  The characters are all smiling.  I think they're skiing or surfing in this one.



A card she wrote for the family.  She actually wrote this on the envelope of the card.  Notice the "tail" on Daddy's "Y" and Family's "a"?  Livie thinks that all cursive ends with a tail.  She thought she was writing cursive letters.  On the back of the envelope she drew herself there.  So cute. 

Adrian's First Science Project

I posted this on Facebook before but I will start including these on my blog too.  This was from end of November 2009.

Adrian is now in Grade One.  It seems like he had grown up so much suddenly.  He's taking French, computer, and he has science projects to do too!  This is his first one: Look for items in your recycling bin and build and object with one of them.  Present it to your class and explain function(s) of the object.

Instead of taking one item, I got several for Adrian to choose from.  He ended up using them all.  I was expecting him to make something like a boat, a car, or a plane.  But he made this:

Adrian told me that it's a shopping mall.  The plastic egg carton are the windows, paper sticking out from the soya milk box is smoke from chimney, tissue box is the lobby and the cans are revolving doors on the side.  I have to say, I'm quite impressed.

Here's the side view of the "mall".