Just My Rambling

My little girl loves books. In fact, I always have one of her books along with me wherever I go especially when we eat out. That way I will get to eat in peace while she keeps herself busy with her book. Needless to say, both of us were very happy when we received 2 new books from Cedar Valley Publishing. The 2 books we received were “Let’s Get Ready For Kindergarten” and Let’s Get Ready for 1st Grade”

When I first flip through the books, I really love the fact that the books are very colorful. Kids love colors, so that is a major plus for the books. I also love the fact that you can write on the pages with a dry erase marker and then erase it easily with a tissue. That means Lil’ C can redo the activities in the books as many times as she likes.

Lil’ C is 3 ½ years old. So the “Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten” book is more appropriate for her. The topics in this book emphasize on early childhood skills such as alphabets and letters, colors, numbers 0-20, money, name, address and much more. Lil’ C is familiar with some of the contents but not all. We have been learning about money at home, so the topic on recognizing the different coins came in very handy for us.

The “Let’s Get Ready for First Grade” book is a little advanced for Lil’ C but she has already started to show interest in some of the content like the punctuation and compound words. She even liked the section on solar system especially since we just came back from a visit to the Flight Museum where she learned a lot about space. The topics in this book emphasize on the pre-first grade skills.

Both of these books have received numerous awards including winners of the 2008 Best You Can Be Award for Books in Education. So if you are interested in good books, go check out these books today. You can see sample pages on their website. If you purchase books from Cedar Valley Publishing, 10% of profits will be donated to charitable organizations.

Look what I found!! Freeze-dried rambutan!! I came across this while doing my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s a few days ago. I’ve seen freeze-dried mango and I know there’s freeze dried durian but this is the 1st time I’ve seen rambutan. Unfortunately I didn’t buy it so I don’t know how it taste. Anyone else tried it? Is it like the real thing?

A few years ago, we got a real tree for Christmas and we loved it. The fresh scent of the tree is so nice. Last 2 years, we didn’t get a tree because we were out of the country. This Christmas, we’ll be staying put, so we decided to get a live tree again this year. Instead of buying the tree from those temporary tree stalls, we thought we should at least experience cutting our own tree once. After all they do have lots of Christmas tree farms here so off to the tree farm we went.

At the Christmas tree farm, we were given a saw and then we were off on our own to choose our tree.  There were different varieties of trees.

The difference between the varieties are the needles. This is the Douglas Fir, I think. The needles are thin and pretty soft.

This is the Fraser Fir. The needles are shorter and stubbier. We ended up choosing Fraser Fir because it doesn’t bend easily since the needles are firmer. So when we hang the ornaments, the branches doesn’t droop so much from the weight of the ornament. 

After a long search, we finally found our tree!! The right height, right width, looks symmetrical, full bodied etc…. Saw…saw…saw….DH doing all the hard work.

TIMBER!!!!!

Tree’s all netted up and secured on the top of our car. Time to go…….

I’ve heard a lot about corn maze but never hay maze. We were at an October Festival last week and that’s where we found this hay maze.

It’s just like the corn maze except much shorter. I guess it’s more for the younger kids. Anyway, the kids had so much fun wandering around the maze and getting lost. Lil’ C was enjoying herself so much that we had a hard time getting her to leave. Why didn’t I ever had this much fun when I was young?? :P 

For the past 6 years, we were living in Florida. Weatherwise, FL is more like Malaysia - all tropical! No fall leaves or snow. I really missed all that but now we get to enjoy it once again. Even though we have mostly pine trees here which means they don’t change color, we still get to see some changing of colors. I’m not fussy, just a little will keep me happy! hehe…

Summer’s never complete without a trip to a local farmer’s market. I guess the farmer’s market is closest thing to a wet market in Malaysia except there’s no meat for sale. Local farmers & vendors setup stalls in a common area & start selling their wares. I love going to the farmer’s market ‘cos there’s always interesting things to see especially the arts & crafts. Usually those are all homemade & unique & cannot be found in a regular store.

Here’s one near my house. Each vendor has their own tent. Look at the onions!

Flowers anyone?

I love these carrots with the head still attached.  They look so pretty!

Lots of varieties of tomatoes. . .
 

You can get plants & herbs too. Those bunches hanging from the tent are dried lavender. They smell so good.

Not forgetting the fruits. Donut peaches & plout, anyone?

I was at the farmers market (will blog about this later) when I saw these cars!! Aren’t they cute???? Don’t they look like toy cars? 

This one is my favorite! It is only a one-seater & it’s an electric vehicle. It only has 3 wheels!! I think it can drive up to 40 miles before you have to charge it again.

This one is a pick-up truck.

These cars are suppose to be environmental friendly. I would love to have one of these but right now maybe because it’s new, the price is still kinda high. : (  Oh, this is not a sponsored post. : )