The Milk Bar: I'm Finally Starting The Year

We arrived back from Malaysia on Monday and jumped straight into things. The month away from the internet was surprisingly refreshing - I didn't suffer any withdrawal symptoms or even miss it. Apart from occasionally remembering to Skype Richard, I was happy to be offline.

I might have already missed a whole month of the calendar year but maybe I'll go by the lunar calendar instead. That way, I'm only two weeks behind. I can't say that I'm rested after a six week holiday, in fact, I am exhausted from single parenting for the past month, but I am definitely enthusiastic about starting the year. Adrian is two years old now and a little bit more independent. I want to seriously work on my own things again - bank account balance, stamina, brain capacity, and of course, this blog. Lets see if I can get back to daily blogging.

So for this first post of the year, here are the highlights of our six weeks in Malaysia.

We had a mini party for Adrian's second birthday. Many of my extended family were already in Ipoh because of Christmas so we invited them all to the house for noodles, roti canai and a banana chocolate cake. This is a photo of Adrian with all the ladies that were present. I'm still asking around for anyone who took a decent family photo of us.

Richard was only in Malaysia for about two weeks and for one of those weeks, we were in his hometown of Penang. We spent time with family there as well as a few fun days at one of the beach hotels.

The main reason for our visit back to Ipoh was for the whole family to make a big deal of Chinese New Year. Almost everybody was back. My grandparents are 89 and 94 and the whole family coming together for a big celebration means a lot to them. When I was a child, my grandmother would invite the lion dance to her house. Thirty years later, she is too old to be bothered with the hassle of it and I invited them to our house instead. I LOVE watching lion dances, the loud drums and firecrackers always put me in a festive mood. And, it has always been a dream of mine to have them come to our house in Ipoh.

In the photo above, the two lions are peeling and arranging the pomelo, mandarins and peanuts. Supposedly, its good luck to eat these things that the sweaty 'lions' have prepared.

This trip was intended to be all about my grandparents. While I did spend a lot of time with them, I left with the feeling that I still didn't spend ALL my time with them. Aaron and Adrian are still too young to just sit around and chat with old people, and, at this age, thats about all my grandparents can do. In the end, I was over at their house a lot of the time, but each time, it was only for a short period of time. I hope that I'll get another chance to do this in the future. Here is one final photo of my grandfather, Adrian and I.