TAIRVLYN: CNY 2009 - eve & 1st day

CNY this year was pretty busy. My grandmother is in Penang this year for CNY and due to her recent health condition and op, many of my outstation relatives made an extra effort to come up to Penang to celebrate CNY with my grandma. So this year very “lau juak”.

CNY eve (24th Jan 2009)
went to church in the morning, was worship leading. Was good to see some old friends who were back in Penang to celebrate CNY. Been ages since I last saw KM & KH.. after church, rushed back to inlaws place for reunion lunch. Its been a yearly tradition for my mother in law to cook for reunion lunch AND dinner. Reunion lunch – we had ‘sharksfin’ soup (loads of crabmeat), scallops, baked prawns, chicken, and fried tang hoon , fried vege and fish maw soup with abalones. Yummy.
Reunion dinner – we makan-ed 2 rounds. First was at my inlaws place. Had steamboat. After dinner at my inlaws, we crossed over to the mainland to my cousin’s place in BM for another reunion dinner. my ah mah was there together with all the relatives. My cousin has a huge house in BM, so her place was the best place to fit all of us in! hehe…. There was so much food there….steamboat, roti jala, curry chicken, ‘hong iu bak’, ‘joo hoo char’, loh bak, salad, tuna baguette, cheese cake, trifle cake, junk food, etc! what a feast! Haha. We had a good time catching up with each other and the kids had a fantastic time running around in the huge garden. Rachel enjoyed herself so much. My little cousins are no longer little, all of them have grown up, some in college, some in secondary school! Makes me feel so old. Rachel was the youngest kid there! Hehe. Then we also had a simple tea ceremony, each of us took turns to serve ah mah tea as a sign of respect and to thank her for the many years of love and care. It was an emotional moment and a beautiful one… after that it was home sweet home. By the time we got home was close to midnight! Rachel fell asleep in the car….
Forgot to bring camera so don’t have photos of the reunion dinner.

1st day of CNY (25th Jan 2009)
Went over to inlaws place around 1030am. 3rd uncle’s family was also there visiting. Spent some time chit-chatting with them.
After that, went over to my parents place. Yeay! Rachel gets to collect ang pow from jee-ee and jee-teow! Hehe…. Had lunch there, then rachel napped. So since she was napping, all of us decided to take a snooze too! the weather outside was so hot, didn’t feel like going out. After rachel woke up, then all of us got ready to go visiting. Went to kuma’s place first. After that went to my ah mah’s place. Spent some time there….rachel was having fun playing in the garden, kicking the ball, running all over the place. She was wearing a purple cheongsam, but that didn’t stop her from running all over the place. Play until she was sweating all over… after that, we headed to shane & win’s place (which was nearby my grandma’s place). Had dinner there, and then rest and relax. After that, balik rumah.

Photos of the 1st day of CNY:

@ ah kong & ah mah's place..my first ang pow....noticed how i glued myself to mama coz there were visitors (3-cik kong's family) in ah kong & ah mah's house. i shy ma...