Baa… baa….. it's the year of the goat! People here call it the year of the sheep. Whichever it is, I hope that it would be a great year for everyone. We hosted two dinners at home and then poor K fell ill having ate something wrong and has not had much appetite. He's slowly recovering and getting better each day.
What could be more apt to arrive (or rather, be collected from our post office) on the day before CNY.
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| They are….. homemade pineapple tarts! |
Felt the love all the way from Punggol in Singapore to London. My aunts and my 90 year old grandma made them over a couple of days and together with my childhood fav
kuah balus. What a pleasant surprise!
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| Time for tea then |
For my reunion dinner with K, we decided to have the easy option of a hotpot dinner at home since we were both working on that day. Meanwhile I had received quite a few nice photos of my family reunion-ing at home. So sweet, and no prizes on who was the centre of all attention :)
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| Agree! |
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| What a blessing to be carried by great grandma who is 90 years strong! |
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| Before dinner started |
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| Amused to see both of them looking at each other here. 4 generations in this pic, yo! |
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| Back in London, this was our little reunion dinner |
Of course, this being baby Sarah's first CNY, I had so many cute photos of her. Too adorable, what can I say. Melts heart….
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| CNY Day 1 outfit - she was figuring what that big round thing is in her hand |
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| CNY Day 2 outfit |
I managed to work from home on Thursday which was great because I could FaceTime my family back home. K was too, and we think he might have drunk a can of beer gone bad because he was fine until probably near dinner time where he said his tummy didn't feel good at all and he was running to the loo. Our guests were here and after we did the lo-hei, he said he needed to lie down. And so he did for the rest of the night. :(
We had a sumptuous dinner with contributions from everyone. Ken and Yiling brought their two kids, Edward and baby Emily. They decided to leave early to let K rest.
I was really worried about K and wondered if we should cancel hosting our second dinner on Friday night. We had invited the Geesons and the Ghosh's over for a home cooked Chinese dinner, with the intention of K cooking up a storm because he had the day off. He spent the day in bed again, poor him. However because we bought all the ingredients, we both thought dinner should go ahead. Luckily I managed to knock off early and managed to rush home to cook up a storm. We had some leftover dishes from the night before, and I managed to cook some "add-ons". Marketa said she would come and help too. I had asked everyone to wear red. Marketa and Gabby were too funny - they went to M&S and bought a bag of small clementines each and gave me the whole bag wishing me "Happy Chinese New Year". I even tried to look for CNY songs on Spotify to liven up the mood.
Overall a huge success and thanks to the girls who helped me clean up. I explained some of the significance of the dishes, such as the Chinese leeks and the yusheng to them and Gabby went straight for the leeks.
We had a game of poker afterwards. Call it beginner's luck or over consumption of Chinese leeks, Gabby actually won GBP50! Sadly the Ong's lost GBP30.
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| Gabby is now officially the poker queen amongst us |
Marketa and Rahul stayed over since it's gonna be quite a trek home. The next morning I made a kaya toast breakfast together with half boiled eggs (this time making sure I time properly), and it was very authentic indeed. We then brought them out for a morning walk, to the nearby Eltham Palace. The sunshine was pretty deceiving because it was really cold after a while. We took a few photos before heading home. They caught the 1.06pm train back, and since then, K and I have been lazing around at home, feeling so glad it's the weekend.
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| Grounds of Eltham Palace |
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| Eltham Palace |
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| Bright sun! |
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| Lazing in bed - BLISS |
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