Happy New Year! (This includes the christmas post)

It is 2011 already and I have yet to post about our Christmas! Gosh! How behind time am I and what a way to start the new year!! :P I guess I'll have to do a 2-in-1 post right here, right now.

Christmas:
We had a simple family gathering on Christmas Eve this year. We would always host the Christmas dinner in the years that we are not holidaying (read: almost every other year we are in the US). Christmas eve was a working day for most of our family (with the exception of the retirees and of cos the teachers! :P) I literally cooked up most of the food for the dinner that day. I was really surprised to find that I actually had a very relaxed time cooking this dinner. I kind of remember previous years where I'll get hot and sweaty by dinner that I can' eat anything anymore!

Anyway, this was the dinner menu that I prepared:

• Tossed pre-packed Garden Salad
• Roasted Turkey with Gravy
• Garlic Mashed Potatoes
• Ikea's Swedish Meatballs with Lingonberry Jam and the meatball sauce
• Mac & Cheese
• Apple Pie

This is ALWAYS the staple at family dinners cos they "old folks" just can't do the "ang mo chiak" :P And this was prepared my MiL.

• Curry Chicken
• Fried Rice

Other stuff brought by people:

• Chng Tng by the Ah Kor
• Log cake and Mince Pies from Cedele by Big Sis

These are the only pictures I took of the food that night. Everyone started eating as we brought the food out and I didn't have the chance to snap pictures at all!!

The Roasted Turkey

The carved turkey

On Christmas morning, the kids had fun digging into their stockings to find little gifts in there, and of cos, open up their presents under the Christmas tree. They already knew about some of the toys that were wrapped up there and they were already asking to open them everyday for 2 weeks prior to Christmas!

Look at all the presents under the tree and they all belonged to the boys

!

Small Fry was so excited over the tube of jelly beans he got in his stocking.

See that blue tower on the table, that was the new airport set from Fastlane that the boys got for Christmas. And that was the one toy they really wanted to open for the entire 2 weeks. We bought it at Toys 'R' Us HK and lugged the huge box back to Singapore.

It's been a great Christmas this year, nice and relaxing. No rushing around. And even though I did last minute shopping for presents for the children, it wasn't too bad. All I did was to pop into the Popular Bookfest and grabbed bargain books for everyone. I think these are really thrifty and wonderful gifts for everyone!



New Year:

The kids eating Christmas candy for the New Year! :P Just a note, these jelly candy lollipops are really darn sweet. Both our boys didn't finish theirs. Both of them went through about half of it and threw it out. :D I took 1 bite of their leftovers and found out about the sweetness!! I'm glad that our 2 boys are not huge candy eaters!!

It was a quiet new year's eve for us. We went over to my Mum's for a steamboat dinner, the children had a fun time playing with each other and then we went home. Kiefer fell asleep before we heard people counting down to the new year and the fireworks going off. Kieran didn't really know what was happening and simply wondered what that loud sound was. I put the first load of laundry of the year into the dryer at 12.09am (yes, I checked the time :P) and then send Kieran back into his own room again (I need to post about this soon too! It's been more than week since the boys moved into their own room) to sleep while the 2 of us watched Little Fockers till 330am. So this was how we started 2011. :P