The Family FECS Star Award Night

A few days ago, I wrote a post about encouraging and building the self-confidence of your children. Below is one way we build the confidence one another at home.

Once a year, we have our family year-end retreat, when we take stock of the year, review our goals for the year past, reflect on what we did well and what we can improve. We tell each other what we notice that person has achieved and what can be improved. After all, everyone needs encouragement once in a while. Even Daddy FECS will ask me, "Honey, tell me a list of things you like about me :-)... (this is especially so after episodes when I have listed a list of complaints about him, such as about him falling asleep, when reading to the kids... oops, I am still learning :-P)"

Then we tally up the number of achievements, and the one with the highest number of achievements will be awarded the Trophy, which we called the "Family FECS Star Award".

For the year past 2018, Mommy FECS has made 8 achievements, Daddy FECS has made 9 achievements and our Little FECS has made 15 achievements. So the "Family FECS Star Award" trophy went to our Little FECS. The Man of Honor , aka. Daddy FECS, was invited to give the award to our Little FECS.

We listed down the achievements of our Little FECS for 2018 and shared it with him:

1. A very loving and caring brother to Baby FECS. For example, play with her, cooking with her, bathing with her, he is a treasure to Baby FECS.

2. He has been very responsible with the house key, that he is now allowed to carry with him. For example, he haven't lose the keys.

3. He has been wise with his pocket-money. For example, he doesn't spend all the pocket money in school, and told us that he doesn't have to buy the tidbits every single day, as it is not very healthy and he would spend all his money, if he done so. Thus, although we didn't expect it, when I ask him if he needs more pocket money, he said to me that he still has sufficient money.

4. Completed the highest number of rounds (7 rounds) during the school Sport's Day among the lower primary classes.

5. He has been responsible for crossing the road. For example, he is walking to school every day and crossing the road. We commended him for being careful at crossing the road and taking our advice on road safety seriously.

6. His enthusiasm at Scouts. For example, we told him that we are truly amazed how he can be so enthusiastic at all his scouting activities, week-after-week and keeping up such a good mood. That's something Daddy FECS and Mommy FECS are not so good at... and can learn from him. We are well known party poopers...

7. His self-discipline after school. For example, we commended him for his impressive self-discipline. Because I work full-time, I am not there to monitor him at home, when he comes home from school. He will come home from school alone. He would eat the leftover in his lunch box, bath, rest, watch the Danish' news for kids DR-Ultralyd, play the piano and do his Chinese homework (he usually would have finished his Danish homework in school already.) Quite often, when I come home, he would be sitting doing his homework. Most kids his age would probably be playing computer games.

8. Good cook. For example, he is good at making breakfast i.e. pancakes, oatmeal, etc. and he is good at helping mommy to cook, i.e. peeling and cutting carrots and potatoes, etc.

9. He is good at playing with his cousins.

10. Practiced well for piano and played for his classmates in school.

11. He has improved a lot in his swimming and actually said he looks forward to the weekly swimming lessons, which is a complete change from a few years ago.

12. Attained a very high standard of Danish short essay-writing in 2018. I don't expect him to be able to repeat this in 2019, but this was a bonus in 2018.

13. Selected to be the first person to make a presentation for everyone in his class.

14. Positive feedback from yearly parents' teacher meeting.

15. Excellent grade in his school yearly report card both academically and in the area of character development.

We listed his achievements down in writing, so that one day, when the going gets tough, if our kids feel down against the hard knocks of life, he can go back to this list and be encouraged. But we are also careful to stress that we will love him regardless, even if he hasn't achieved all the 15 things we observed. 

We didn't set out this Star Award Night with our Little FECS in mind. He won it out of his own merits. 2018 is an exceptional year of achievements for him. We hope he can maintain it, but we don't expect him to be able to repeat the same sterling performance in 2019.

We close with a word of prayer to thank God for his blessings in our lives in 2018.

 Dadddy FECS' giving out the award to our Little FECS

 Our Little FECS making the signature scout sign, when receiving his trophy

Our Little FECS, the recipient of Family FECS Star Award 2018 :-)

P.S. He is wearing the scout scarf for a year, as he is working on getting a stamp for it.

Our New Year's Eve 2018 Family Night

After a hectic time of Christmas holidays with visitations, we decided again this year to relax and just be as a family for the new year's eve. It is a day, where we reflect over 2017 as a family, give thanks for 2017, get ready (this means cleaning and tidying up the home) and plan ahead for 2018.

This year was actually our Little FECS first new year's eve celebration with us. The other years, he had been going to bed at the usual time at 8pm. Today, our Little FECS agreed to take a nap of two hours from 3-5 pm and then another three hours from 8-11 pm, in order to be allowed to stay for countdown to the new year, and we were very glad that he did. 

We ordered in sushi for new year's eve dinner at home from Letz Sushi. It was all sold out from Sticks n Sushi this year. We had our new year's eve dinner at 5pm, when our Little FECS woke up from his nap. Baby FECS joined us for dinner. She loved sushi.

During dinner at 6 pm, we listened to the Queen's speech from our iPad. It was a touching and reflective speech, where she touched on inclusivity, that each person matters and a tough year for the royal family with the prince consort's health. I felt that I have learned a lot from her speech and something that I could reflect on and take with me to the new year. 

After dinner, we put Baby FECS to bed and then our Little FECS. We cleaned up after dinner and also did a bit of spring cleaning of the utility room. Before we know, it was almost 11 pm. Daddy FECS then went to wake our Little FECS up.

We made fruit juice (melon and pineapple) and chocolate milk for the family time. We also had the tradition Danish new year cake for the family time.

We started with reading the Bible from Proverbs. Then we each took turn to pray. It was a very touching and meaningful prayer from Daddy FECS. He touched on thanksgiving for Baby FECS, who is a miracle that came into our lives, for our Little FECS who has grown, helping to take care of Baby FECS, making breakfast for her, while the two lazy parents sleep (oops, that showed how bad we were), for our Little FECS has surpassed Daddy FECS in Danish at age 8, for his father who is getting better and daily life is back to norm after treatment, for a wonderful extended family vacation in Barjols in October 2017.

Thereafter, we went through the 2018 calendar for the major events we can expect in the coming year from January to December. We are very excited about family visitation from Singapore this coming June 2018 from my mum, C and R.

Thereafter, our Little FECS read the Danish story that he wrote in December.

Thereafter, we read a book together. We selected the book, "The Sixty Minute Family" by Rob Parsons. Daddy FECS read the first chapter. We will continue this book for our Family Time in 2018.

As Daddy FECS finished chapter one, it was 10 minutes to 12 midnight. We got ready for the countdown with our iPad tuned to the clock at the town hall.

We stood on the sofa, and the clock struck 12, we jumped and shout "Gud bevare familien FECS" in Danish and "God bless the Family FECS" in English.

Then Daddy FECS and our Little FECS went out to make some fireworks. I stayed home to be with Baby FECS, who was fast asleep.

After seeing the fireworks, we continued with our family time with setting goals/new year's resolution for the new year. Daddy FECS led this session and he guided our Little FECS set his goals. We all set 2-5 goals for the year, and we will review them at the next Family Night. 

One of my goals is to learn to be a better encourager to my hubby and my children. I will learn to improve by listening to podcasts and e-books. Another of our goals is to be a better communicator i.e. how we can speak kindly to each other in the midst of a hectic daily life with young children. By God's grace, we came across a course for couples from a Danish church http://www.sorgenfrikirke.dk/event/3587011 and we have already signed up for it. We will have our in-laws come to our place and stay with the children, while we are at the course.

After setting our yearly goals, we watched a short video clip on the New Year's Eve countdown in Singapore. The fireworks was amazing. By the time we finished, it was 1.30am. We were sleepy and didn't get to browse through the photo album of our Little FECS, when he was a baby.

We had dragged our comforters down to the playroom and all three of us had a sleepover in the playroom.

This coming year, we have decided that we will have our Family Night each Saturday of the month. So the next one will be on 3 February at 8pm. We have found a way to make it work. Because Baby FECS is so small, it is rather stressful, when she joins us. We have decided to hold it at 8pm, after Baby FECS has been put to bed. And from our experience today, it would help on the day that we have Family Night that our Little FECS take a nap of 2-3 hours in the afternoon.

31 Dec 2017 (1Y7M15D & 8Y9M26D): Setting goals for 2018

31 Dec 2017 (1Y7M15D & 8Y9M26D): Setting goals for 2018

31 Dec 2017 (1Y7M15D & 8Y9M26D): Entering 2018... thinking of near family in Singapore... watching fireworks from Singapore...

Danish Seasonal Activity Calendar for Kids

Although there are no mountains to climb in Denmark, it is richly blessed with idyllic green meadows and the four seasons. Denmark has lots of things to offer kids, and it is very often free. Many of these activities are actually simple joys of enjoying the natural fruits of the Danish land. Here is seeing Denmark through the eyes of a kid with a Danish Seasonal Activity Calendar I have made for our kids.

Calendar format credit Chastine's vuggestue, which has been very good in making a weekly plan in pictures, so that we can show our children who could not really yet talk or read, and talk about it.

This helps to give me an easy overview of what seasonal (mainly) activities greater Copenhagen has to offer, for kids along with the address (to be keyed into GPS) and website.

Note: This calendar is tailor-made for our family. It is not so neat and may not be suited for everyone, as all the places are chosen within reach from our home.

An activity that looks a little out-of-place according to the theme of this calendar takes place in March. As there aren't so many seasonal activities to do in March, which is the month that J's birthday falls on, we choose to go and watch a movie instead or visit a museum :-)

The Chinese festival celebrations also don't belong to this calendar, but it is placed here for the convenience of our family :-)

Annual Spring Cleaning

I realize that picture perfect posts can sometimes give a false picture that our lives are always sweet and rosy, in order and without any struggles... and often this is also what we feel about other people's posts.

Here is a picture of our everyday lives... a potpourri of both the fun and the mundane...

We didn't manage to do a thorough spring cleaning before Christmas. Today is a public holiday. Mr. FECS really have a desire to do a spring cleaning. So we used it do clean up the store room under the staircase. I woke up late around 10.15am, after staying up late for the New Year Eve yesterday. We had brunch. Mr. FECS made freshly baked buns. Then we did Chinese and piano, before we began our spring cleaning. We tried to make a competition to see who can find the most pile to stuff to give away or throw away, but that wasn't that successful. J did clean his little cabinet that he used for storing the crafts he made in school. We didn't have the time to make dinner, so we just made tomato soup with the Philip soup-maker and some bread with smoked salmon, lettuce and spinach... still rather healthy and nutritious, I hope.

Soon Our Little FECS (6Y8M27D) got bored, so I tried to occupied him with Lego and others:

We decided to work on the messy store room. We emptied out the store room into the living room. Here is a picture of our living room just as we started our spring cleaning. Amazing how it can fill the whole living room!!! We talked about moving to a bigger house, but we are trying to restraint ourselves. If we have a bigger house with a basement, most likely, we will just dump stuff that we don't use in the basement. It will be a very expensive "rubbish dump." It is better to just throw/give away all these stuff that take up space. And if we have a basement to clean up, it will certainly take us longer.

Here is how our storeroom looked like after being emptied out:

We started at 1pm, and we were done at 11.30pm - it took us almost a whole day to clean up. Here is how our storeroom looked like after cleaning up. It is amazing how the little storeroom under the staircase can contain!!! We really don't need to move to a big house with a basement for storage space. We just need to throw out or give away stuff that we don't use.

Here are the stuff we accumulated over the years to be given away:

It has been a very cosy day to spend our day, believe it or not. It is very relaxing just to be home, being together as a family, cleaning out stuff and feeling good after getting rid of all the clutter. We have made it our family tradition to do this. To be honest, I used to complain about using the whole precious day just on cleaning up, but I have come to appreciate it and see its value. And when Mr. FECS is happy, I find that I am very happy too. Thank God for a productive day. IT is nice to sit back and relax over a cup of tea, after all the cleaning and hard work, and things are spick and span. So this is the way we spent the first day of new year. Not very exciting to many others, but something we enjoy :-)

Yearly Family Tradition Planning Tool (Ms Excel)

The year 2014 is coming to a close... as we are busy with all the bustling of Christmas, it is easy to slip into new year, without making a yearly plan. It is not easy, and I wouldn't say that we have succeeded, but I am trying encourage and cheer my family along :-)

Look back at the year, how is your family doing? What would you like to improve? What would you like to immortalize as memory? Are there anything you would like to include or change as part of your family tradition....?

According to the book "7 Habits of Highly Effective Family" by Stephan Covey's Habit 3: Putting First-Things-First, and we all know it, that if we put in the big stones into the "jar" first, we would have no problem fitting in the rest pebbles, sands and water.

I love this video which illustrates the message very well:

I am trying to put this into practice, although I am not always succeeding (I always want to much, and squeeze in too much into our schedule.) One of the ways we can do so is to have a common family calendar. Take out your 2015 family calendar, and start plucking in the dates for our family traditions and activities, before the new year begins.

7 Easy Steps

Here are some easy 7 steps from on our experience (or should I say experiment :-)):

1. Decide

Pray for God's wisdom, consider and decide on what traditions you want to keep for your family in these 5 major areas:

1.1. To celebrate (birthdays, festivals) (orange)
2.2. To cook (special dish) (red)
1.3. To do/make (activity) (purple)
1.4. To go (outings) (green)
1.5. To do something crazy & fun (blue)

I color coded them for easy reference, but you don't have to do it.

2. List

List them down roughly and briefly first (See * below for a complete sample list)

3. Year Plan

Transfer the list into a year plan covering the 5 main areas mentioned in point 1. 

Click here for an Excel tool that I have created that may help you. I have also included a sample Family Tradition plan. Yours does not need to look like ours. (In any case, ours is too full. I need to cut down selectívely at some point.) The most important thing is to have a few activities that you could call your own family tradition.



4. Family calendar

If you don't have a common family calendar yet, buy or create a shared family calendar. It can be on-line copy or it can be hard-copy. We prefer hard-copy and we bought ours from Føtex for 100 DKK:

5. Mark down the dates for the "big stones"

Put first-thing-first: Mark those days and dates down before each year begin. These will be the biggest stones.

6. Fill in the rest of the "pebbles" and chocolate milk

Fill in all the rest of the social engagements around it - the smaller pebbles

You can also organize a family retreat at a hotel somewhere and have this in the family retreat agenda. Have fun and a wonderful 2015 ahead :-)

7. Review your Family Calendar each week

We review our family calendar during our Weekly Family Meeting Night (WFMN) to sychronize schedule and smooth out conflicting schedule. For more about WFMN, please read my posts here:

http://www.familyfecs.com/search/label/Weekly%20Family%20Meeting%20Night%20%28WFMN%29

The "7 Habits of Highly Effective Families" is available from Amazon:

* Sample list:

Jan - Bake banana chips
Jan - Make Chinese dumplings
Jan - Sledging, ice-skating or skiing
Jan - Annual Spring Cleaning
Jan - Shop for new clothes and shoes
Jan - Sleep in washroom

Feb - Harvest pine nuts from pine cone
Feb - Make sweet Chinese rice balls & Steamboat
Feb - CNY lanterns & decoration
Feb - Read a story on CNY
Feb - Do lion dance
Feb - Wear new clothes and shoes
Feb - CNY Reunion Dinner - Steamboat
Feb - CNY dinner Singapore Club

Mar - Make popcorn
Mar - Make Chinese Popiah
Mar - Read a story on Easter
Mar - Read a story on Spring
Mar - Write a birthday letter to our Little FECS
Mar - Yearly Movie Day (3D film or cinema choice of J)
Mar - Star-gaze at Rundetaarn
Mar - Play water-gun together

Apr - Make stenalder brød
Apr - Make Chinese black bean soup
Apr - Buy seeds & plant vegetables and herbs at our balcony
Apr - Read a story on Easter
Apr – Nature walk to see white “Annemone” and yellow Easter flowers
Apr - Easter - Attend FIBC Easter Family Service with Daddy :-)
Arp - Visit a farm
Apr - Sleep in walk-in closet

May - Make homemade noodles
May - Make homemade muesli
May - Make Japanese sushi
May - Tea time with mommy
May - Annual Boardgame Day
May - Take a course together (e,g, cooking, tennis, etc.)
May - Walkathon/marathon for charity
May - Cycle to McDonalds for breakfast
May - Annual Stuart Day - horse-riding
May - Play tennis
May - Rent a caravan to sleep in (instead of a tent)

Jun - Make ice-cream
Jun - Make charsiew pork
Jun - Summer BBQ
Jun - Read a story on summer
Jun - Summer strawberries-picking & potatoes harvesting
Jun - Canoeing
Jun - Play tennis
Jun - Make snorbrød (baking bread over campfire)
Jun - Play with water-balloons

Jul - Make no-bake walnut cake
Jul - Make wantons
Jul - Tea time with mommy
Jul - Bi-annual spring cleaning
Jul - Picnic & swimming
Jul - Catch crabs at the seaside
Jul - Play tennis
Jul - Summer sleep in tent at the balcony

Aug - Make banana buns and jacket potatoes
Aug - Make egg dumplings
Apr - Read a story about Singapore
Apr - Sing Singapore National Song
Apr - Make Singapore National flag
Apr - Watch National Day parade on internet
Apr - Wear red & white outfit
Aug - Christian Summer Camp
Aug - Go on a cruise
Aug - Celebrate Singapore's National Day with the Singapore Club :-)
Aug - Go down to the lake for an ice-cream
Aug - Play tennis

Sep - Make mushroom sauce
Sep - Make Chinese mooncake
Sep - Read a story about Mid Autumn Festival
Sep - Mushroom-picking
Sep - Carry lanterns around the neigbourhood
Sep - Mid-Autumn Festival carrying lanterns

Oct - Make apple juice
Oct - Make apple chips
Oct - Chestnut crafts
Oct - Tea time with mommy
Oct - Chestnut-picking
Oct - Apples, pears & raspberries picking
Oct - Walk/Cycle in the forest
Oct - Sleep in kitchen

Nov - Roast Duck
Nov - Make pumpkin soup
Nov - Bake pumpkin pizza
Nov - Carve Pumpkin Jack-O-Lantern
Nov - Watch a ballet or orchestra
Nov - Annual Family Retreat

Dec - Christmas - Bake Gingerbread Men for grandparents and neighbours
Dec - Make Chinese black glutinous rice desert
Dec - Christmas - Advent Calendar
Dec - Christmas - Count down Christmas with books
Dec - Christmas - Set up the Nativity Scene
Dec - Christmas - Cut, buy and decorate Christmas tree
Dec - Christmas - Make acorn Christmas decoration
Dec - Christmas - Orange cinammon decoration
Dec - Christmas - Sing Christmas carols
Dec - Christmas - Skip a meal and pray for the poor instead
Dec - Christmas - Make a hamper for the teachers, children's home or old folk's home
Dec - Annual Family Planning Day
Dec - Christmas - Attend Christmas church family service
Dec - Christmas - Visit Tivoli Christmas market
Dec - Sleep on the floor to remember what they have endured Mary, Joseph and Jesus did that first Christmas