Happy Birthday, Grampy

Today, we headed to BM to have a belated birthday celebration for Grampy. We would usually plan to have the party before his birthday, but he had ran off fishing from the 3rd day of CNY up till the weekend. So we had it later instead.

Daddy cooked the meal as grampy had only a grand total of 3 teeth left (the plan was to have them all removed so that dentures could be made). And these 3 teeth seems to be more for display than for him to bite on anything! So since he needed soft food and the Covid cases were on the rise again, we decided to cook the food and bring it over. 

Dinner was lasagna, boiled new potatoes and some (bought) pulled pork.

We also had a cake for him. 

Family photo

Birthday "boy" blowing out the candle.

Mei-mei couldn't get over that he's call the "birthday boy" seeing that he's turned 80! Grampy only got to blow the candle on the third attempt after the two of you had a go with the candle!

Grampy, Nanna and Riley

Happy 80th Birthday, Dad/Grampy! We love you to the moon and back.

9th Day of Lunar New Year

 

Today is the 9th day of the Lunar New Year. It is a big day for the Hokkiens. Many people were up at midnight last night and lots of fireworks were let go. 

Today is also the Chinese New Year celebrations in school. You both got to wear home clothes for the celebration in school. 

Mei-mei all dressed up in her cheongsam

Blurry photo of Ko-ko all dressed in red

Tried another round in the car

This evening, Ah Ma cooked a feast to celebrate the 9th day, since the Ban's are Hokkien lang.

Second Day of CNY

Today was a lazy day. We just stayed at home and had leftovers for lunch. Mei-mei went with Chim Poh, 2 Kor-kor and Martin to visit her brother. You also got to play with Chim Poh's grand-nephew. Ko-ko on the other hand hid in the room to play computer games with his friends. Daddy and I got to catch 40 winks.

For dinner, it was Ah Ma's Hainanese Chicken Rice. A less elaborate dinner but still as delicious.

Ah Ma cutting up the cucumber for dinner

Kor-kor helping to fry the lobak

Dinner is served:

Ah Kong and Ah Ma freshened up a bit after dinner and headed back to Penang. Tonight's dessert was another round of longan laichee and seung wan yuen. And of course we finished up with our drinking session.

Pictures from Chinese New Year

 Here are more pictures taken on the first day of CNY:

Happy Chinese New Year

Unlike previous Chinese New Years (other than 2021), we didn't have to wake up earlier to make sure that we're all ready for the lion dance. Due to the Covid situation, it was decided not to have them over.

So we woke up, and got ready at a leisurely pace then headed down for breakfast. Then we handed out ang pows in record time; there were only 3 kids to give to!! Others dropped by later on. 

Then it was time to get ready to prepare for lunch. It was mee suah. 

The delicious soup cooking

Mei-mei helped with the lime for the chilies

Chim Poh busy in the kitchen

There was 2 fried egg masters this year

Lunch is served

Delicious

After lunch and cleaning up, we had our usual "photo booth" to take pictures. Will post those pictures separately.

We didn't seem to be as busy this year as we were previously. Even got to hang around the kitchen and chit chat. Rested in the living room. Play with the dog..

Tonight's special was the chu yoke yuen. 

Colorful ingredients

Mixing them up well

Took us a long time to finally finish frying them all up

Soup being cooked the traditional way.. over a charcoal stove

And this year we had Jane Ah Chim help out in the kitchen too. And different hands helping in the making of the lou sang. Here is their final artwork.. 

Impressive!! Can see that it is a tiger 

The tiger lou sang with the toppings and sauce

Then it's dinnertime. This year the chu yoke yuen took a little longer to prepare. So dinner started a little later. But of course the master chef, Kor Poh was super fast in cooking up the rest of the dishes. 

Kiddies 

Our dinner feast

Tossing the yee sang

Everyone in the photo

Tonight's dessert was the seung wan yuen. We had that after the fireworks.

All covered with flour and the traditional red dot

Yummy. In the ginger and pandan soup

And of course, our evening drinks