The Year That Was 2006

Since it's early 2007, I thought I'd recap the year 2006 and do it mostly in pictures, with some explanation. One year ago, Abang was only 2 years 9 months old while Adik was a mere 5 months old.

January 2006 saw us looking after 4 newborn kittens (born 22/12/05) after their mom, a heavily pregnant stray, found her way to our home. She had 2 boys and 2 girls and just for larks we gave them very traditional Malay names - Abu and Harun for the boys, Salmah and Tipah for the girls.

(Once they were weaned, we decided to give Salmah, Abu and their mom to PAWS and keep Harun and Tipah. Salmah and Abu were much 'cuter' so greater likelihood of getting adopted. Tipah was generally not in the best of health so we thought it best to look after her. She died though, sometime in May.)

That's Harun in the cage and Abu in the food bowl, while Salmah (left) and Tipah (right) try to get through the glass door to play with Adik.

There was also a trip to the Butterfly Park in KL and later that month Abang started kindergarten. Chinese New Year saw our family continuing the age-old tradition of visiting my mother's uncle and his family at Overseas Union Garden (OUG). We do that every year on the first day of Chinese New Year.

In April, we celebrated Abang's birthday at Megakidz. He had a blast, as did many of our friends' children who had to be pried away from the play area after the party!

The following month, Abang, Adik, Nenek, my auntie and I took a trip to Brunei to visit my parents. The boys had F-U-N! The grandmothers (remember, there were 3 on this trip) had even more fun buying kain ranging from regular inexpensive stuff to the phoo-shey silk. Ok, I admit, I bought a couple of pairs too.

Most of the time there we just drove around to see the sights and did some shopping.

Then in July we managed a family trip to Langkawi, made even more interesting when Abang came down with a fever that morning we left for the airport.

August saw Adik turning 1 year old! We held his birthday party at McDonald's although he was more interested in just playing while Abang was the one who wanted to blow the candles, sit on the birthday chair and be the Birthday Boy again.

The end of August saw us making yet another family trip, this time to Kuantan, as well as a "Merdeka Walk" organised by Abang's kindergarten to celebrate National Day.

Cuz celebrated his 9th birthday in September, also at Megakidz (I was told the venue changed many times!). See how Abang insists on being right in front of the cake? Somehow he managed to elbow his way past all the older and bigger boys.

The next few months were fairly uneventful, the boys were playing, swimming, doing regular little boy things. Except, of course, when Abang was admitted to hospital because he couldn't stop vomitting. Before you know it, the school year is over, Abang is dancing away at his kindergarten concert and it's practically the end of the year already!

Time flies when you're having fun, right?

Or, "Time's fun when you're having flies," one frog said to the other.