Happy New Year!

Christmas 2014

 

Christmas Day with the family. Unfortunately, grams was a little under the weather to join us for present opening, but that meant we had a second present opening session later on when she did feel better. A very casual, relaxing day spent together as Christmas Day always is. There was more grubbing with a relatively big feast cooked by Dad. This year, amongst so many great presents from family and friends, I got four more cookbooks to add to my collection : Momofuku by David Chang, Cook with Jamie : My Guide To Making You A Better Cook, and Julia Child's Mastering The Art Of French Cooking (Volume I and II). Here's to always learning and eating great food in the new year! 

Hope you're all having a Merry Christmas too!

So This Is Christmas...

I only managed to sneak a few photos here and there amongst the chaos of a Christmas Eve party. And that's perfectly fine with me. Just a few to spark my memory when I happen to flip back to this in the future. Instead, I was soaking up all the fun of pigging out on delicious food, playing with the kiddies, participating in the most epic gift exchange, and just being with my bestests and closests.

We have less and less friends showing up or staying for these parties because of the babies, and some traditions get lost or forgotten as the years go by, but new friends appear and definitely a whole lot of fun watching the kiddies explore the party scene with their curiosity. This Christmas, we made a massive amount of Christmas cookies again with crazy gingerbread designs (like football players, Bruce Lee, Batman, Buzz Lightyear, nurses - to name a few). I spent a lot of the Christmas Eve party entertaining and being entertained by S, who was still mildly sick from her kiddie cold or flu. Still, she was a ball of energy after a piece of cake and chocolate, and was bouncing from aunties to strangers and back to aunties. She jumped on me a few times and did not hesitate to smear her snotty "present" on my sweater and jeans. People pointed out all the "stains" on my outfit at the end of the party, but I really didn't care. Cuz it's S. And I love her to bits. She's so crazy cute. Especially with her bopping pigtails.

The epic gift exchange was upped to $15 this year, which brought all the gifts to a whole new level. However, nobody seems to remember to give the newbies to the game a heads-up that our secret santa white elephant exchange does not really comprise of silly, but infact, very practical (usually household) items. This always leads to great laughs when someone opens a funny one (like a teenage mutant ninja turtle camera or a telescope). Too much excitement caused wine glasses flying! (reaction caught in one of the photos). The volume of our voices go up several notches during the exchange game, which made S scream out, "LOUD!". Not that she was protesting... but that she also got to join in on the fun of ... yelling. All the while, R was sleeping so soundly in the next room, and didn't even flinch all night. I have a feeling R, S's baby sister, might have a calmer temperament compared to S. (But hey, who knows. R is only 6 weeks... ).

I'll just let the very few pictures I took tell the story of fun, excitement and laughter that we all experienced during this very happy Christmas season. 

Merry Christmas, everyone!