Year-End Turkey Dinner

It is the end of the year... time for New Year's resolutions and also for our family, a chance to continue the tradition we started since we arrived in Vancouver two years ago... to have a get together with our Malaysian friends.

Today we invited the families to our Turkey dinner instead of our usual undergrad crowd. We had En Aliman's family (from the Consulate General of Malaysia office), Fong Yen and hubby (she's doing her Master in UBC under UKM scholarship and coincidentally is in the same department as one of Mommy's auntie, Cik Ton... what a small world eh?), and, of course, Hayani and family... Since the number of people was small (plus no hungry teenage boys as usual), our menu was rather modest - one herb-roasted turkey, baked eggplant, potato-egg salad, grilled asparagus, and chocolate chip pound cake.

Ready for Guests

En Aliman and wife, Kak Ros, have 3 daughters - Amirah, Haifa, and Fatihah. Amirah is one year older than Melur, Haifa is born in January 2004 (slightly less than 2 months younger than Arman), and Fatihah is still a baby... Mommy and Papa were hoping that Melur and Arman would be practising their Malay language with Amirah and Haifa... But unfortunately, it was English all the way for the four kids. They seemed to be having so much fun playing together... and running around the house... upstairs and downstairs... upstairs and downstairs...

Kids Playing

It was also very funny since we used to make fun of Arman and Haifa playing together... But when En Aliman and family left, Arman said he doesn't want to play with Haifa anymore since she's still in pre-school while he is already in kindergarten...Basically, he is now too old for Haifa... right Arman...

All Done

All in all, I think we all had a great time... Hope to do this again at the end of 2009! ** For more pictures, check out this Facebook Album. Note from Mommy: Most of the recipes are available online at http://www.recipezaar.com. The pound cake is originally called "Nana's chocolate chip brandy pound cake" but Mommy substituted the brandy with orange extract... the result is amazing!