Abel the explorer

Carrot cake

This is my go-to carrot cake recipe. I usually bake it for the playgroup. It's pretty easy and doesn't use any butter.
here's the recipe:

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
21/2 cups grated carrot
Icing sugar or cream cheese icing

Sift flour, baking powder, abking soda and cinnamon into a bowl. Stir in sugar. Beat eggs and oil together. Add egg mixture and carrot to the dry ingredients, stirring until well combined. Pour mixture into a baking paper-lined 20cm ring tin. (I use a silicon mold) Leave to stand for 5 minutes. Bake at 180 degree celcius for 35 to 40minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Leave in a tin for 10 minutes before turning on to a cooling rack. When cold, dust with sifted icing sugar, or ice with cream cheese icing.

To market, to market he goes..

Caught Abel playing dress up alone. Still clad in his pjs, he took one of his hat and took my hat and walk around pretending he's going somewhere. Next he moved into the playroom to his car and started driving.

playground at Clyde bay wharf

Here's why I think this playground is very neat, it has its own climbing frame that links to slide and the pole, and a separate frame thingie for skateboarding(bottom corner right) and a sand and water play thingie (top left) amongst all the feature. The boys had so much fun there.

To the resuce...

After our gelato treat, we found this neat playground and here Noel reenact his fireman rescue scene many times. He kept going down the pole and even chat up another mum on the playground about his mission.

Day 3 Wellington Pt 2

The boys in the bus coming down from Mt Victoria towards the city. We got real hungry and managed to find a little art studio cafe to have our juice and big sandwich. After that, we walked towards the wharf.

New World supermarket and various other community bodies installed this street art thingie featuring the All blacks from way back in the 60s.

Noel found a ball and kept himself amused while I tried to read the caption on the street art.

Signs

Noel is into studying this sort of picture. He always make a point to stop and study them and tries to interpret them for me be it on the supermarket trolley, in the public washroom, playground, etc. Here, we were walking on the waterfront and he requested that I took a picture of this warning sign for him.

Mt Victoria by Bus

3rd day - The weather was sunny and crisp, you wouldn't think there was hail here yesterday. Oh well, what do I know about the weather in Wellington? Here, the graffiti made a pretty good background.


Noel with his pumpkin patch stickers at the bus stop waiting for our bus to Mt Victoria. I had to keep telling him No, that's not our bus for every bus that pass the stop until finally our bus arrived. Going on the bus was definitely a highlight for Noel. It was $3.50 per way and it was about 15 min drive.

So we arrived and had to walk up these stairs to the top of Mt Victoria. The view was pretty spectacular.

Noel posing on the big rock .

Noel took this pic of me and Abel of the view from the platform.

From afar, I saw the All Blacks sign. Does it remind you of the Hollywood sign?

All legacy..

okay so we didn't get to take picture with the All blacks team but Noel wanted to take picture with the all black mannequins on the official merchandise shop.

Wellington Botanic Gardens

The cable car museum is located adjacent to the Wellington Botanic Garden. A kind Romanian visitor helped us capture the photos from the hilltop. Then we went for a quick stroll to the Botanical garden. We only covered the Australian Native garden and some alpine type garden. Then it looked like it was going to rain or worse off, hail ! so we got into our cable car on time to avoid the hail.

Cable car museum

Not wasting any time, after we got back to the hotel and had a late lunch, we decided to head out this time to the cable car. At the very last stop there was the cable car museum where one gets to see and touch and sit on the original cable car from the early 20th century.
Noel here checking out the old cable car. The chair was slanting and has a belt that people held on to so they don't fall out of the vehicle.

Oops, it's hailing outside...

when we finished exploring Te Papa, we decided to leave but couldn't. The rain has turned into hail, the grounds outside were all white. Since Noel had his gumboots on, I let him checked out the hails. We eventually walked back to the hotel when it has stopped hailing. My whole shoes was just soaking wet from walking on the hail covered grounds.

Te Papa - the national musuem

On the 2nd day of our trip, we went to Te Papa musuem. It is prob 10-15mins walk from where we stayed. Noel looked at the giant collosal squid for quite some time. It was very interactive, and it also showed the video of how the squid was captured, then studied by all the experts of the sea creature. I can't help but marvel at this huge creature.

Then, the boys went into a kid's area. This time, they went into the heart of a Blue Whale. It was like a mini maze for them.

We could stayed here all day if we wish. Noel checked out the microsope, magnifying machine, the rafflesia flower (artificial,of course) while Abel checked out the puzzles. There were many mums with little kids in this room.

We then went to this new interactive area. We could take picture of ourselves and it can be collaged on a big screen. Picture would stay for a few days on the screen. We could also go through the archive or database of pictures that people have sent into the museum.

Wellington Waterfront

I find Wellington CBD very easy to explore and very nice to explore (minus the hilliness). It has nice shoppings, and also playgrounds are very accessible.
Just 2 minutes from where we were staying, there is the waterfront. The boys almost don't want to leave the playground. Noel kept going up to that white lighthouse slide which is really high and he was really enjoying himself.

B is for BeeHive

We walked down Lambton Quay to the BeeHive, the parliament complex. He asked for his Burger King before we got to the Beehive.It was quite hard explaining to Noel the purpose of parliament. He asked things like what's a beehive? What is parliament?

Here Noel showing his big brother's love :)

Parliament grounds

Noel sat on one of the big column of the parliament building. The boys found going up and down the steps real interesting.

So carefree where they could run all they want on the parliament grounds :)

Off we go..

In mid-Sept, me and the boys went to Wellington for a few days holidays. It was good fun, the weather was crisp and sunny most of the time when we were there :)

Reading time

Picture is taken on Father's day week. The boys love their daddy to read them when he gets home from work. Abel started to take real interest in books (identifying things, pointing etc as opposed to chomping off the side of all his books) when he's about 1.5 years old. Now he loves his Wiggles book and Thomas the train book.

Bird Hat

Here, the boys made hat with feathers at Playgroup. Noel made the hat mostly by himself. He chose his own feathers and position his feathers all over the hat and chose the colour of the eyes. I helped Abel made the hat mostly. He just wanted to hold the brush containing the craft glue.

p/s: The hat template was pre-made for us.