Christmas Eve Dinner

This year, we had extra guests for our Christmas Eve dinner. Chek Kong, Chim Poh and Kor Poh joined us. We finally decided to go with barbecue as this would ensure that the menu would be suitable to our guests' food preferences.

We planned the timing to cook and roast the food, but sometimes, things do not go as planned. The chicken took longer than anticipated (not hot enough). Daddy got a little stressed out. Look at his 3 supervisors:

Of course, I needed to take a picture of "the best present" we had under/near the tree. Can you guess which it is?

Finally the chicken, prawns and steaks were done and the salmon were slowly cooking in the grill. Daddy went up for a quick shower while the steaks rested and we prepared the dining table:

Our dinner spread

A family photo before dinner was served

We were all rather hungry by then. So everyone started tucking in the food. Soon, it was time for the salmon to be served. 

Salmon on cedar wood planks.. heavenly

After dinner, the two of you went out to roast some marshmallows. Ko-ko tried to get the fire hotter:

It was finally time to open presents. By then, Ah Ma said that she had a tummy ache and had gone up to her bedroom. Mei-mei failed to get her to come down again and join us. We had to send up two elves to get her to join us. She finally came down. 

No points for guessing who was the busy elf tasked (or volunteered) to distribute out the gifts:

This was made by Mei-mei for Kor Poh

I always love these quiet dinners at home with close family.

We managed to stay up till past 12 midnight to welcome Christmas. 

Cousins visting

This weekend, we had visitors. Ariesse, Vianna, Ah Pek, Ah Mm, Pek Kong and Mm Poh stayed over on their way back to KL from a holiday in Hadyai. 

Mei-mei was very happy to have 2 girls to play with. Too bad it was a short stay and we could not arrange for some stuff for you all to do outside of the house. Mei-mei could not miss another ballet lesson since she had already missed 2 and this Saturday, Miss Foo needed to assess if she could take the upcoming Grade 3 exams or not. 

So right after ballet, the 3 of you set work to paint the ornaments we picked up from Ikea. 

3 busy bees, painting

Ornaments you all painted: Tree (collaboration between the 3 of you), Vianna's round bauble, Ariesse's Santa Bauble and Evelyn's tree bauble

You all painted very beautifully and now we have 4 customised ornaments are on our tree.

Date with my darlings

 

I had several days of carried forward leave to clear. So I took today off and planned to bring the two of you to Project Rock, since Ko-ko has gone several times with his friends, while Mei-mei never had the opportunity to do so. 

Then, Ko-ko had afternoon plans with his friends at Jeanni's house. And so when Audrey wanted to come over in the afternoon for a play date, I agreed to that plan too. So we had an earlier start to the day. We planned to arrive at 10am, which is when Project Rock opens, unfortunately we were a little late to arrive as there was traffic jam on the way to Gurney Plaza.

Anyhow, just as we arrived, someone from Citibank called and I was on the phone, so Ko-ko did the registration for Mei-mei and I just needed to wave my card for payment.

As this was Mei-mei's first time, she needed to have a briefing before being allowed to climb:

Ko-ko just started climbing:

This was where you got stuck.. not sure of how to go up or down and Ko-ko insisted that you figured it out yourself. You dared not let go and jump off the wall:

Monkey Ban:

Two monkeys:

Mei-mei took this photo of her painful hands to show daddy:

Taking wefies while waiting for Ko-ko:

Ko-ko said we'll leave at 12.30pm, but in the end we left shortly after 12 as you both had painful hands and were quite tired too.

Went to quickly look at champagne flutes in Parkson before heading to Nando's for lunch. You were both so hungry, I had to order the free flow froyo so that you could eat that while waiting for the chicken.

Hungry Mei-mei

Grumpy Ko-ko

Showed daddy the photos above and he commented that Ko-ko never smiles. So we had to re-take another photo:

The chicken we ordered was half and half. Ko-ko kept teasing Evelyn that she was "Not so brave". After some thought she replied "Yes, Not so brave.. but VERY brave" 

It was a nice outing with the kids. After you both continued with your own activities, I went off with daddy to do some shopping on our own.

Santa's Elf at Work

This week seems to be a week of Christmas celebration.

On Tuesday, you had a round of celebration during Chapel. We have submitted the gift and you got the present (gift was from a child in the primary school, based on the lucky number you picked). You weren't too happy with the gift which was a box of pencils... but oh well it is a useful present.

All dressed up in "Mrs Claus" colours

On Thursday, you were assistant team leader for Girl's Brigade and you and Summer decided that you'd bring party packs. So here you are on Saturday packing the gifts before running off and asking me to stick on the stickers you had designed for the party pack. 

As for Ko-ko, you woke up this morning as I walked into your room. Gave me a shock thinking that you weren't feeling well. Turns out you just wanted to inform me that you woke up at 2am and realised you didn't wrap your gift for today's gift exchange!

I had to rush through the school breakfast and lunch packing as well as my own breakfast to go upstairs to wrap up your gift!

Hey.. while I'm typing this, it looks like I am the elf, not either of you!!

Christmas Gift Bag

We planned to get Yuen Ting a "slime starter bag" as a Christmas gift. Since the activator I ordered online arrived yesterday, you could give it to her in school before the break starts.

As I did not have a nice bag, I passed you this plain white bag (very useful) to decorate. As you wrote "Merry", I told you to be careful on the spacing of the words. And this is what I saw happened to the "Christmas":

There is the tiniest "a", but I don't see the "s", which you insisted is there

And then Ko-ko also pointed out that you missed out on the "T" too! Ahaha... 

Anyhow, I hope Ting Ting enjoys her present. 

Swimming Progress

Your swimming lessons are never consistent. Something or other usually occurs and you'd need to miss a week here and there. 

Well from being afraid to go underwater, you have overcome that fear. Now Uncle Adrian is teaching you freestyle but you seem to be afraid and stop everytime he lets go and tells you to swim on your own. Today's lesson was peppered with threats of bringing you to the deeper end where you wouldn't be able to stop and step on the floor of the pool *laugh*.

And halfway from my book, I looked up to find you all the way to the deepest end of the pool!!

Happy Birthday Daddy

We had an earlier celebration in Tong Hoi on Saturday. Ashley Ko-kor had secretly bought the cake all the way from KL. As for the 2 kiddies, Yvonne Kor-kor bought non-boozy cake from STG for Mei-mei and Martin. Ko-ko as usual, did not want any cakes. 

Love this photo taken of our family:

Happy Birthday to the greatest daddy and hubby anyone could ask for. 

We love you loads.

Celebrating 50 Years

Well, the main reason we headed back to Ipoh this weekend was to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Chim Poh and Chek Kong. 

So here we are in Tong Hoi having a feast. The photos were taken by Mei-mei:

Chek Kong stole the drumstick before Mei-mei could take a picture of the dish, so she needed to add another picture of the drumstick!

By the time the last 3 dishes arrived, we were all bursting at the seams! But we still had to have the cake and birthday song for daddy.. (nope we could not take a bite out of the cake!)