Reflecting

It's New Year's eve.

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I'm not the type who'd reflect much about what happened during the year. My mind's a total blank at the moment.

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What DID I do this year?

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Hmm..... I can only think of four events :-

1) Egypt/Dubai Vacation in Feb/March

2) Climb Mt Kinabalu in July

3) Anniversary in Cat City in October

4) Christmas Musical in December

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Presents from Hubby

This year, dear hubby didn't wrap any of my presents. I am not sure if he didn't have the time OR simply wanted it to be the perfect gift.

Like when we were dating (many moons ago), he gave me my gifts in little post-it-notes of vouchers.

First gift : a piece of jewellery

On Christmas day, I was in Jusco in the afternoon to do my nails and had to wait for half an hour for my nail polish to properly set in before I could drive back. During that short period of time, I went to one of the jewellery shops with Neela, Jason and Joelle to look for a ring. I guess it was my "che kai" way of dressing and unkempt hair that made the jewellers thought I was there to only browse. With the help of Jason, I managed to choose 3 rings that I like.

In the evening, dear hubby took me to Jusco to choose my ring! I was nicely dressed and my hair properly combed. The lady who assisted me earlier, didn't recognise me at first, and had the guts to asked if I was the same person who came earlier. She was all smiles when she knew that she was going to make money out of me!!!

Second gift : a red gown & two blouses

We went to Soong Sisters to pick out my gown. I bought two other blouses too.

Third gift : cash

I just banked it in today! :)

Gotta save up more $$$. Times are hard.

Painted Nails

It all started when I saw Sze-En's snowman themed finger nails on Christmas eve. Plus that fact that it only cost Esther RM15 to get that done for En.

I found out that Joelle will also be painting her nails in Jusco and made plans to go with her on Christmas day.

Joelle, even though she was feeling sleepy from the lack of sleep the night before, was excited about getting her nails painted. It was a treat for her. She started off looking curiously as Alisha painted her nails. Soon, she got tired and even tried to sleep while waiting for her nails to be dried.

After Joelle, I did mine. Some of my nails were too long and I had forgotten to cut them earlier. Because of that, I asked Alisha to do a manicure for me before painting my nails. The manicure cost me RM33. Gulp!! It was my first time having it done and I guess I didn't mind paying for the experience.

I chose a "midnight" scene because of the coming New Year. I was surprised when Alisha told me that it cost RM45 instead of RM15. Sigh!!! I figured that I went all the way to Jusco to do my nails, I wouldn't go back without the polished nails.

So, there I was, sitting on a chair for at least 45 minutes (!!!!), having my nails done.

I am not sure whether it is worth the time (err.. it's difficult for me to sit still for a long period of time) but my nails turned out great!!! :)

Presents

Christmas is always known as the season of giving (and of course, receiving). We'd take time off to go Christmas shopping. Then lose sleep to wrapped the gifts. And on Christmas day, we'd be ladened with several big bags of gifts to be given out.

This year was no different.

I had list of names. I stressed myself out going from one place to another to buy the right gift. And came back with lots of things to be wrapped.

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While shopping for others, I also bought some Christmas presents for myself. I believe that I am entitled to spend some on myself because I'd been doing so much for others. :)

A notebook cooler. I've actually bought one earlier this year but it was quite cumbersome to cart that from one place to the other. The one above is more portable.

Shoes. Looks nice but when I wore it on Christmas day, it wasn't as comfortable as I thought it would be.

Ear-rings. Yeah, being a girl, fashion jewellery is still important no matter how many birthdays she's had.

Pasta cookbook. I seem to have a yearning for pasta cookbooks. Not sure why cause all I ever cooked were bolognaise and alfredo. Perhaps one day I'd do something really different

Books. I chose a different author this time. I haven't read any of her books before and the title and cover looked interesting. I know I shouldn't judge any book by its cover but after reading the back cover of the book, I was hooked.

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For your information, I slept at 4.30am two nights ago because I was reading one of the books.

I spent most of Christmas eve wrapping the gifts and tagging them. I slept at 3.30am because of that.

Christmas morning came and I gave out the presents ..... and received many in return. It's now 3 days after Christmas and the 95% of the gifts are still under my Christmas tree - unwrapped!!!

Christmas Eve Dinner

Every year, ever since I got married, we'd have two Christmas Eve dinners to go to. This year, Rajen's side of the family decided to celebrate Christmas in Penang.

My parents opened their home for us to gather for a family reunion (although we do get to see each other every week in church, it's nothing like having good food and fellowship in a comfortable setting)

It was a pot bless dinner where every family brings one dish. We planned to asked someone to roast a whole lamb but when we called up about a week ago, Mr Foo (who has been our lamb supplier since 2002) said that we were a little too late. He did mention that he needed at least 14 days notice for each order.

Thomson was supposed to get a roast turkey from SU Club but was disappointed to find out that they don't sell stuffed turkeys anymore.

Mum was a little disappointed when she was told about the lamb and turkey.

That night itself, Rajen and I went to Kensington to have dinner with Jo and Jeremy. We found out that Kensington do have a promotion on roast turkeys and we placed an order for our dinner party.

The next day, mum told me that Aunty Terry managed to order a roast turkey from Cold Storage. Aiks!!!! Somehow, we forgot to tell her that we had already ordered a turkey from Kensington.

We ended up having TWO turkeys for our family Christmas dinner do.

Aunty Lily made beef rendang. Smelt GREAT but I couldn't eat it cause it would send my blood pressure to the roof.

Aunty Chris made garlic bread and mashed potatoes (yummy!!!!!!)

Aunty Sally made apple crumble (yummy!!!!!)

Sharon made the salad (yummy!!!!)

Eunice made her award winning brownies :)

Mum cooked several dishes. :)

With slightly more time on my hands, I decided to make jelly and mushroom soup.

So, as you can imagine, there was enough food to feed an entire HUNGRY army.

Let's see... who came?

The Yeoh clan (about 30+ people), Voonf Fui's side, Rajen's mother and sister, Bro Chow and an elderly couple. Altogether there were more than 50 of us.

Jason of course, had the honour of carving the turkey. Without him, I think we'd just serve turkeys on two plates and everyone would make a huge mess carving them.

About 1/2 an hour before midnight, Rajen and the children had a question and answer session. Some of the questions asked were:-

Brian : How many presents are there under the tree?

Mae-Z : How many years did it take for the Bible to be written?

Sze-En : Count the number of snowflakes on the Christmas tree

Joelle : How many things are there in the world? (Answer: 100 billion)

How many stars can you fit into a star? (Answer : 2,000)

Joelle was so cute. Most of her questions do not have a definite answer and she made them up.

We did a countdown for Christmas before everyone headed back home. I was supposed to help my parents clean the place up but I managed to "escape" from it cause I needed to go to Rajen's mum's place.

Well, it's always good to have two other sisters who could help mum when I can't be there :)

Oh yes!! Another thing. Uncle Norman asked me where David was and for a moment, I wondered, "David who?" Then I realised he was talking about David Tan, my brother. What I heard earlier from Eunice was that we forgot to invite David when we were planning for this dinner. He needed a few days notice to arrange time off from work to be with us. Thus, David wasn't there at the party. :(

Christmas Decor at MidValley and The Gardens

Every year, I would take time off to go to MidValley just to see how the whole mall is decorated. This year, I was so pressed for time that I only could go to MidValley on the 23rd.

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I picked Eunice up at 8.35am and we drove up to KL. This is my very first time driving to KL and I was feeling rather nervous. Eunice was my guide and err... to tell you the truth, she was not a very good navigator (actually, Eunice admitted that fact to me). We were near the parking zone and she suddenly said "Go up". I was confused as to whether I needed to turn left to go up or turn right to go up. Even with her unclear directions, we did reach the mall with no problems at all. Our plan was to get to MidValley before 10am and we got there 15 minutes early. Parking was not much of a problem.

This year, MidValley had a circus theme. We took many pictures of it.

We saw an elephant, a tiger and some other 3-D fake animals. Immediately I thought of our Kidz Safari which we might be having in June 2009. How nice if we could just recycle all these animals and use them for our kidz safari.

We also went to The Gardens and their theme was .... bird cages. Reminded me of the fact that for our Christmas Musical, we needed to get bird cages for the "temple scene".

We left MidValley at 3.30pm - our scheduled time. Once we came out of the parking area, there was a huge traffic jam. We were moving at 10km/h and at times, we had to stop for a long period of time. I was worried that we might miss our Seremban turning and had to make one whole round again. I kept asking Eunice when I could turn off from the inner MidValley circle and onto the main road to Seremban and Eunice kept saying "Go until you cannot go anymore" .... "Huh??" What was that supposed to mean??

We saw a signboard saying "Petaling Jaya and Bangsar, turn right" but Eunice didn't think it was the right one. After being stuck in the jam for 15 minutes, we were worried that we might've made a mistake by not turning off at the PJ/Bangsar exit. We drove on .... got stuck, drove a little, got stuck, moved a little... and finally saw the signboard for Seremban. Phew!!!

We arrived in Seremban at 4.45pm.

Mother-in-law's Tree

Every year, ever since I got married to Rajen, I have been decorating my mother-in-law's tree. Over the years, I've collected a lot of Christmas decorations. I spend at least RM400-500 on it every Christmas season. Yeah, waste of money, some might say, but each year, the deco got better and better. And because I'd normally decorate both my and my in-law's tree late, I'd normally get the deco at a 70% discount.

This year, I decided to try out a white theme - for the first time. With all the discounts in different places, I managed to only spend less than RM300 on white-themed ornaments, which is really a good deal.


Eunice helped me a little (mostly by taking out all the ornaments from the boxes and cutting away the price tags) so that I would be able to decorate the tree within 1.5 hours.


My white-themed tree turned out better than I expected. I used lots of transparent good quality ornaments to bring out the sparkle in the 500 bulbs that were on the tree.




A picture of my mother-in-law with the Christmas tree

Last Minute Christmas Shopping

As usual, I waited until almost the very last minute before I went for my Christmas shopping. I had a long list of names and I had no idea what I should get them.

On the 22nd, I accompanied my mother-in-law, sis-in-law and Rajen to the shopping mall in Ampangan. I haven't been to that mall in years but Rajen's mother thinks the clothes there are much cheaper than the ones in Jusco.

We went grocery shopping first, then lunch at Windmill.

The second part of the shopping was difficult.

We needed to get from the ground floor of The Store to the 2nd floor. Rajen's mother was in a wheelchair and we needed to figure out where the evelator was. We found one in the mall but there was no connection from the main mall to The Store on the 2nd floor because the furniture shop closed it off.

What we did was to go up to the 1st floor using the elevator and from there, go into The Store and used their escalator.

We took a while to get onto the escalator. Rajen was right behind the wheelchair while Viji was behind Rajen. I was infront, holding on to the wheelchair until we almost reached the 2nd floor. That's when Rajen asked me to let go of it. The moment I let go, it went off balance for a little while but Rajen was quick enough to put it back in place.

I was the 1st one off the escalator. When I turned back, I saw that the weelchair got stucked and Rajen was trying in vain to push it off the moving escalator. Viji, from the back, tried to help by pushing Rajen. It took me a few seconds to realise what was happening before I reacted by pulling the wheelchair from the front. Immediately, the three of them were pushed forward.

That was a really scary episode which I hope will not be repeated.

It was a good thing all three of them didn't fall backwards.

Anyway, after that, Rajen's mum got some clothes for Rajen's christmas present. I know, at the back of Rajen's mind, he was trying to figure out how to get his mum down to the 1st floor. I was thinking hard too. There was NO way we would've done the same as how we came up.

I told him that the best way was for her to get off the wheelchair and go down the escalator like how we normally do. The only problem was that I don't think she would be quick enough to take the next step the moment her foot touched the escalator. I could just imagine her falling down the escalator.

I told Rajen that it would be good if someone could just stop the escalator so that his mum could walk down slowly.

Well, that was just what we did.

Rajen's mum, though was slow and caused a small people jam on the escalator, made it down safely.

After that, Rajen took his mum and sister back while I picked up my mum and Esther to go to Jusco for MY Christmas shopping.

We were there from 5pm - 10pm. By then, I was feeling so exhausted and zombie-like AND I was 90% done with my Christmas shopping!!!! Yes!!!!

Even though I was so exhausted, when I got back, I started decorating my tree until 12.40am.

For me, it was a very productive day. :)

Homemade Cookies

Christmas isn't complete without the smell of homemade cookies coming from an almost ancient oven.

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For as long as I can remember, mum makes cookies twice a year. Once is during Chinese New Year and the other is at Christmas time. We used to help her. We still do. I'm pretty sure we didn't cause her any trouble at all. :)

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This year, because I was super busy with the Christmas Musical, work, etc, I didn't really help out much.

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Eunice and I planned to make biscuits the weekend before Christmas. I only managed to avail myself for a couple of hours on Saturday, but I made sure I kept the whole day free (save for church service in the morning) on Sunday.

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When I went over to my mum's place on Saturday, Eunice was already there, in the midst of baking the 3rd or 4th tray of cookies. I quietly helped her. En was there too and one of the first things she said to me was, "Are you here to help or to cause trouble?" And my!! did she say it ever so sternly. I suppose many people asked her that question when she wanted to help and ended up playing with the dough most of the time. Er... actually, she had been a great help, especially when she wasn't feeling tired and cranky. She was given a specific task as the "oven checker"

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On Sunday I went to my mum's place right after lunch. My sisters, mum, Tusi and Min Chee were also there, making cookies. It was "pineapple tarts" (one of the most tedious cookie to make) day and I've decided long ago that 5 people were needed so that making this cookie won't feel so draggy.

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1 person to roll out the mixture and mould it with a cookie cutter
1 person to put the pineapple onto the nicely shaped dough
2 persons to "pinch" the perimeter of the tart
1 person to check the oven and place the cookies into the container
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MinChee was feeling rather adventurous and volunteered to mix the dough. After a few minutes, mum came into the kitchen and saw the way MinChee was doing it. Mum said that it was wrongly mixed. Poor MinChee, she felt so bad that she mixed it the wrong way. I assured her that it will turn out alright.

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MinChee refused to roll out the mixture and mould the tart. She said that she tried it before and it was difficult. She wanted to do the most mundane job - putting pineapple jam onto the tart. I challenged her to do the most tedious part - to pinch the perimeter of the tart. She told me that she was lousy at it but I urged her to try it out. Secretly I wanted to make sure that there was another person who would help me to pinch the tarts. She tried the first one. It came out err... a little funny. I encouraged her to try a second time. By the 3rd time, she wanted to give up. I told her that for starters, hers wasn't all that ugly. By the 10th try, she was doing it well. :) Behold! I have another person to help me pinch the tarts!! YES!!!!

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En, being her adventurous self, tried rolling and moulding, putting the jam onto the tart, and finally, pinching. Well, the pinchijng part didn't go too well. Even after her 7th try, it still looked weird. But at least she tried her best! She was really disappointed that she couldn't do it well. Perhaps in time, she would perfect the skill.
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We finished making the tarts at 5.30pm and proceeded to make the gingerbread house/man. One of the house parts was almost burnt because the fire was a little too strong. Surprisingly, it was still very soft. The rest were hard like normal crunchy cookies.
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We used icing (which "I" made!!!!) to piece the house together. The one that was soft, couldn't really stand properly and we had to place a pair of chopsticks on the inside so that it wouldn't crumble down. We tried our best in making it stand properly but in the end, it still curved inwards a little.
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When Esther (the icing lady) and I (I held them all together) were finished with the jigsaw and the house was properly up, we got Mae-Z and En to decorate it with marshmallows, almonds and some edible colourful star shaped decoration.


We only (almost) finished decorating it at 12.30am. Both Esther and I were exhausted and sleepy. Towards the last part, we were too tired to hold the trees upright for 10 minutes while the icing hardened.

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Mum came into the dining room and saw the mess we made. There were icing and other stuff all over the table AND floor. Mum was a little mad and started "scolding" us for causing the mess. Esther, by then was cranky too. And thus, a mini civil war began. Sparks flew. I was caught in the middle. Both Rajen and I tried as much as possible to help with transfering bottles of cookies over to Esther's place, while Tusi quietly mopped the floor. The last straw came when mum decided she doesn't want the gingerbread house to be in her house. Well, she didn't exactly say it, but we knew she wanted it to be in Esther's house.
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Rajen was given the task of carrying the gingerbread house to Esther's place, and he did it very slowly, because the house was still quite fragile.
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Finally, it was in Esther's house and the battle of words subsided almost immediately.
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It was really a tiring day for me as I stood most of the time when I was making cookies and decorating the gingerbread house. The soles of my feet were sore and my whole body was badly in need of a good massage.
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Nevertheless, I went back feeling cheerful and contended.

Book Hunting

Last Saturday, Rajen and I brought Mae-Z, Brian and Joelle to Jusco to shop for books for their Christmas present. Joelle browsed around, saw a book on dinosaurs, took it off the stack of books and sat at one corner to read. She was so engrossed with the book, going through it page by page. She was very certain that she wanted this book.

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Brian and Mae-Z however, took a longer time to choose their books.

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Brian ended up getting a 4-in-1 pack, which A. Chris scolded when she found out. At the back of the pack was written "For ages 7 and above". She thought that it's meant for children aged 7, that the font size would be 18 and there would be very few words and lots of pictures.

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Later, when we opened it, we found that it was also suitable for 9-10 year olds (depends on how much one reads, I guess).

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Mae-Z couldn't make up her mind. She wanted a book on nature but didn't want pictures of bugs to be in there. Then she chose a book on sea life, but was afraid of the pictures of the corals and weird looking sea creatures.

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After 1.5 hours, she gave up and didn't choose any book. Perhaps the bookshops in Jusco do not have a good collection of books...

Joelle, engrossed with her dinosaur book

Post-Musical Christmas Party

We had a Christmas party for those who responded during our Christmas Musical. Carols were sung before Pastor shared a short message.

Bibles and tracts were given out

Games were played (for the children only). Juliet was the games master

Children having fun stepping on each other's balloons

Refreshments were served