[Holiday]: Chinese New Year Celebration

Well, as you would know, our main purpose of this trip to Singapore was to spend Chinese New Year with my family and friends. If you don't know by now, I am part Chinese (my mum) and mum is from Malaysia hence all my Chinese relatives are obviously not in Singapore. They are either in Malaysia or all over the world. So I don't have any chinese relatives in Singapore except mum of course and my friends. Hence it wasn't a big celebration of line-up house visitings, which was a good thing because I am not a big fan of that anyway. We did thought about driving up to Malaysia with mum to visit the rellies for Chinese New Year but there wasn't much time given our trip was only for 6 days. It would have been very rush-rush and exhausting for that matter.

These were only some of the food shown.. there were more not photographed as I was too busy eating! I had also forgotten to take a photo of the steamboat.. talk about priorities huh LOL

Mum was thrilled to bits that we were coming back for Chinese New Year this year as I haven't been back for that for almost 7 years. So, she went all out with the food for reunion dinner and bought a whole heaps of fresh seafood for steamboat and BBQ meat for grilling. Growing up, we had steamboat/grill at reunion dinner every CNY and this year was no different. Well, what could go wrong with steamboat? NOTHING. It's fantastic and because I don't get to eat it alot here in Perth, it was definitely a big treat!

First Ang Bao from Grandma

So we spent the first day of CNY chilling out at home and then John and I headed to the movies. Scarlett also received her first Ang Bao 'Red Packet' from Grandma. For my non-chinese readers, Ang Bao is a monetary gift typically given during Chinese New Year. It is usually given out by elders and married couple to children and single young people.

On the second day, we went to my girlfriend's place where she put out a steamboat feast for us. We chilled out at her place for couple of hours, eating, chatting, more eating and more chatting. I missed this!

Scarlett receiving more Ang Baos... and willingly wanting Ange to hold her.. LOL

Lovely steamboat spread Ange and Mark put out for us!

John and I were completely baby-free the whole time there as Scarlett was kept entertained by everyone. Scarlett isn't too bad with new people, since putting her into daycare has helped tremedously with her social skills although she does need 5 mins to warm up to new faces. She would usually give dead stares and suss out the new faces for 5 mins and then she'll be fine. However, we were surprised at how well she took to my girlfriends as they were able to straight away hold her, whisked her off somewhere to play, had her sitting on their laps etc. It was great!! Haha

 

Both Ange and Sharon holding her... no fuss..

Ange's mum was even able to hold her! Amazing!

And of course, there was my girlfriend's dog, Don which kept Scarlett amused and entertained. Don's a very scardy little dog but he's oh so cute! Scarlett kept her safe distances from him however if he got too close then she would start to freak. But Don was afraid of strangers anyway so it wasn't a biggie.

Look look! It's a dog!!

My girlfriends were finally able to give Scarlett her first year birthday gift as they were not able to post it! Apparently No gold jewellery are allowed to be posted!

So pretty on her!

Feasting! Couldn't get Ange in this pic as she was busy somewhere entertaining Scarlett! LOL

Family photo

Had to do this!

Happy Chinese New Year!!  I was so glad to be able to show John and Scarlett what it's all about. And I'm so so happy that I was able to spend it again with my lovely family and friends. It's been a blast!