Releasing Charmaine's wishes into the sky

I have finally gotten the full set of photos and videos of some of our outings from cyn only a few days back. Hence, here I am back to updating backdated entries.

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On the night of 14 July 2011 which was Charmaine's actual birthday, kh and I brought Cyn mommy and the kids to a very deserted place in Singapore to release their wishes into the sky. It was the first time the kids would be doing this and they did not quite know what to expect.

Charmaine was growing weaker by the week and I wanted her to experience a whole new way of making wishes which I was quite certain would bring her joy and hope.



This place was really deserted and we only bumped into a lone group of people throughout our whole time there.



The Chinese characters "许愿灯" up there translates to "wish lantern". Such lanterns are also known as Sky Lanterns, Kongming Lanterns or Chinese Lanterns.

We strolled along the brick path till we found the quietest and most spacious spot before setting down our "equipment" and got down to work. We had lanterns of the trio's favourite colours -- pink for Cyn Mommy, yellow for Charmaine and green for Jase.



Soon the kids understood that they were to write their wishes on the lanterns and release them into the sky while wishing and hoping and praying that their wishes would come true.



With Cyn Mommy's help, Charmaine quickly got down to writing all her wishes.





Jase didn't quite know what to write and wrote his dreams about being a pilot. He started drawing and decorating after that. He even helped Charmaine with decorating her lantern.

After that, Jase tried to make himself useful by running along the pathway and "catching" wind into the lantern.



The yellow lantern could not float and we found that one part of the glued edge had opened when we tried to pry the lantern from the stuck edges. Hence we got Charmaine to write her wishes again on the pink lantern since her wishes were the same as mommy's.





Jase added his little note to Charmaine on her lantern.





After all the wishes were written down, the adults started lighting up the piece of wax provided. The kids could not understand what we were doing and we had to explain to them the concept of how hot air rises to fill the lanterns and how the lanterns would bring their wishes up into the sky to be granted.

Finally, the kids knew what they were doing and got excited.



Video description:
The title up there isn't apt. It should be attempting to light up the wish lantern. Fortunately, we brought the right kind of lighters. Part 2 depicts our success in releasing the lantern.




Video description:
After a long time trying to get the "fuel" to light, we finally succeeded in releasing the green wish lantern into the sky.
"Make the wish come true please" uttered by Charmaine at 0:28 brought a little wrench in my heart whenever I watch this after she is gone.




Video description:
In this video, Cyn mommy was asking Charmaine what exactly she enjoyed about the whole wish lantern experience. She answered that it was mainly the drawing.


As a finale, we released Charmaine's lantern.



Charmaine was undoubtedly very tired even as she lay on her stroller and watch the lantern slowly disappear among the stars. Nonetheless we could all tell that she was really happy for that whole moment of seeing her lantern taking along her wishes with it.



Video description:
In this video, we released Charmaine's pink lantern. The video is about 5 minutes long with majority of it capturing the gradual floating of lantern up into the sky.
Scroll and listen to what Charmaine had to say from 0:15 -- 0:45, 3:46 -- end
PS: To clarify what Char said, I did not "cancel" my work. lol... Those days were either my off days or else then I took time off or leave.


Hope you kids enjoyed yourselves experiencing your first releasing of wish lanterns as much as we enjoyed our first in Singapore!