Celebrating Chinese New Year in Sweden (Final Part) - Reunion Dinner!

Reunion dinner is the most important tradition to us Chinese, before we usher in the new year.  Since this year's Chinese New Year's eve falls on a Saturday, I won't miss this chance to have a REAL reunion dinner this time!  The past reunion dinners were just normal dinners with my family on weekdays.  This year, I invited Shuping and her family, who stayed in Sweden this year instead of going back to Taiwan, and of course our "adopted" family - Mavis and Fredrik.

Mavis, Shuping and I decided on the menu a few weeks before.  We decided on sweet and sour pork, chicken wings, fried wanton, loh han zai (罗汉斋) and steamboat.  Shuping made fatt gou (发糕) and carrot cake (萝卜糕).  Mavis and I made yee sang (鱼生).  What a spread!

Child laborers... well, they weren't really suffering if they were listening to the iPod and radio while working right?

Sweet and sour pork in the making and the good stuff for the steamboat was boiling in the background.

Shuping's fatt gou looked good and I particularly like the red date ones!

A lot of food!

Carrot cake was good!

As usual, the boys stayed out of the kitchen for safety and sanity reason - so us women won't go crazy having to chase them around!  Sorry, my kitchen wasn't big enough!

Ivan and Philart!

Not sure what Jovan was trying to do here.... magic trick??

Our yee sang was a success!!! Well, actually nobody else knew how the real deal tastes like since it is a Singapore and Malaysian dish, but the result was quite authentic! (ok ok, maybe the corn flakes was a little weird but we couldn't find the cracker we need and I was too lazy to make!)

Explaining to Shuping about the yee sang tradition we have in Singapore and Malaysia....

"Loh ah! 捞啊"

Here's a kawaii picture of the beautiful Mavis in her beautiful cheongsam! 

I think our reunion dinner was a success and this is the first time after so many years that I really feel the Chinese New Year mood.  Thank you my dear friends and family for helping to create this wonder memory for me and also letting the children experience the real Chinese New Year mood!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

新年快乐！

GONG XI FA CAI!

恭喜发财！

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Sweden (Part II)

To really get into the Chinese New Year mood, I roped in my best pal, Mavis to bake some new year goodies.

Angel and I made kuih rose....

Mavis made peanut cookies and pineapple tarts. She made her own pineapple jam!!! 

The boys talked about everything under the sun and Polly "supervising" Mavis while she was rolling the pineapple jam into balls....

Jovan and Ivan are glued to Minecraft...

I made tacos gratäng for dinner and "forced" Mavis and Fredrik to watch Melodifestivalen with us! ^.^  It was a relaxing day and as always we talked till late and the poor couple had to bicycle home at around 2am in the cold!!!

Our family really enjoys spending time with Mavis and Fredrik, we're so comfortable with them that Lars and I realised that we may have "accidentally" adopted both of them...! :D

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Sweden (Part 1)

Growing up in Singapore, Chinese New Year was always buzzing with activities.  Chinese New Year songs were played all over the little island, goodies stacked along every walkway outside every shop, buying new clothes, new shoes, getting new haircuts, baking cookies..... so much to do! And most importantly, it was always HOT in Singapore.

So when the scenery I see when I look out of the window is this...

It is quite easy to forget that Chinese New Year is just around the corner! Especially when there is no public holiday, nobody playing Chinese New Year songs.....

However, when you're a parent, you'd do anything just for the kids.  Especially in our situation.  Our kids have no recollection of celebrating CNY in Singapore (the 2 bigger ones I mean), their memories are made up of old photos taken on a particular year when I remembered to take out the camera. To make sure that they don't forget that a part of their roots belongs to that culture, I try to remind them in my own way.  And the first way is to get into the CNY spirit and up go the decorations!

I gave Angel some red packets and showed her some YouTube videos and she came up with these!  Good job!

But that was all she did!!!!! So I had to roll up my sleeves and made those which I wanted to give to my friends.  

I "parked" Ivan in front of the computer with his minecraft world (or "minecrap" according to Chris....)....

And I threw Chris the tablet for him to watch his children's video on YouTube....

And get down to work! (ok, I originally planned to have the tablet in front of me, so that I can watch videos and craft at the same time.... forgetting that I have a big "plaster" whom I need to distract, if I ever want to get anything done!)

I also brought out some previous years decorations and put up some new ones which my dear friends sent me all the way from home!  

It's the year of the snake! These are so cute, though they look kinda like baby dinosaurs...

Bought 2 pots of flowers...

After changing the curtains, even the shadow reflected on the wall looks Chinese New Year-ish!

I think the apartment is ready for CNY now!