Christmas 2009 with 1B18 !

This Christmas was going to be exciting ! We were anticipating a very special guest into our cozy family of friends! Gavin, I hope you are not frightened by us ... hee hee

It was also quite a pity that ACE cannot be with us for this Christmas. Hope they were having a good time too in China !

Christmas morning started slightly later for us as we slept like logs.

We woke up slightly earlier before the boys. I have given tots of what to eat for breakfast and have bought some stuff from Cold Storage earlier. The boy woke up later. Ok, this was the funny part ... I saw 2 young boys and 1 old boy sitting on around the dining table with a hungry face that said " where's my food?" while I stirred up a storm in the kitchen. This was such a typical scene that I could not help giggling to myself within.

Bacons, sausages, baked beans and eggs were served while the hungry ones dug in.
The boys continued with their PSP battle.

Strangely, after 30 minutes later, the boys came out from the room and said they were ready to bake muffins. I thought that they were pretty disciplined and must be quite enthusiastic about muffins making. I was wrong, their PSP's batteries have depleted and they could no longer continued with their game. While charging their PSP, they could make time for muffins making.... lol.

Anyhow, we still have fun dressing up the muffins with m&m chocolates, hersley chocolates, colourful decorating rice ... unfortunately the second batch turned out to be to be rock muffins and have to be discarded.


Shifting the self-raising flour with an exaggerated expressions from Ryan !


Muffins ready to be put inside the oven !


The end-products !

After having so much meat for breakfast, we went vegetarian for lunch !

Time flew by quickly, we were surprised that by the time we have eaten, it was passed 3pm !! Strangely, where were our guests ?

We welcomed our first 2 guests, Shark and Garrick. Garrick is also new to us, he is Shark's nephew. He was pretty scared of overly-friendly Jojo initially but was warmed up to him soon. I was glad that Kim and Garrick played with Jojo yesterday night ! I could see a happy doggie running about the house and occasionally resting to take a break.


Garrick and Kim with Jojo

Soon afterwards, Tiang arrived with her bags full of groceries to cook spaghetti. Then came BC and family ... then LL ... We were thinking what we should cooked first ? We decided to start with the fishballs, sotong balls and chicken wings first. We would leave this frying stuff to our mommy BC ! The stuff were nicely fried at the right temperature and non got burnt. Good job, BC ! We were teasing LL that she would be the next person to take over frying job ! However, I could imagine LL throwing the ingredients from at least a foot away from the wok and screaming her way through ! Not forgetting that BC also cut the ham into thinly slices !


The good thing about cooking in the kitchen while the rest loitered outside ? Yes, we got to sample the food first ! However, Dean still got a chance to sample 2 chicken wings before he "decided" whether they were nice or not ! BC liked my mom's marinated chicken wings a lot and went to her for the recipe ... hee. I could tell that my mom was very happy that her self-marinated chicken wings were popular amongst us !

Next, we helped out on the spaghetti's ingredients like washing and cutting of the sweet-smelling vegs (what's that by the way ?), shelling of prawns, etc. We were most impressed with Tiang ! She cooked 2 types of spaghetti, tomatoes based and pepper-based ! I must say that she was pretty kool because I could not detect any stress on her while many of us looked on ! What was most impressive were that both spaghetti turned out to be very tasty ! My personal favourite was the black-peppered one. Surdap ! Tiang, you cannot escape being the main chef now for our future gathering ! So now, start thinking of new main dishes to cook .... bahwah wah !


Soon, our special guest, Gavin, Fang and Kimberly arrived. We were introduced to Gavin and some of us were apparently familiar to him through some concert many years ago. I was very sure this was my first time seeing Gavin.

Gavin and Fang were in-charge of chocolate fondue with colourful fruits like kiwi, strawberries, mangoes, grapes etc. Thought it was a great Christmas item for them to prepare .. why ? Coz desserts were sweet sweet meh :)


Now we presented our Pot-Luck items to the very best !!! Yummy yummy yummy ! CK has also prepared ice-jelly the night before ! And the boy's contribution was the muffins they made this morning ! Shark bought a yummy cake & nice way of sausages presentation by Fang !



































































We were contemplating whether we have enough time to make Tiramisu as it would require 2 hours of chilling. Luckily, we proceeded as BC was really looking forward to see how Tiramisu were made ! LL has been tasked earlier (hmm... by me) to lead the Tiramisu making session. I thought she did a good job. Somehow, the Tiramisu making session attracted even Dean to stir the mixture ! Shark (LL's Tiramisu Assistant) and LL did most of the stuff while the rest of us hovered around them.



We chatted, laughed, shared, cracked jokes and took quite a few photos together.











Check out the boys playing WII



Photos taken with Jojo. He looks like a baby bear to me in some of the photos











Presents Time !



Cutting Tiramisu ceremony