Continuing The Peng Family Tradition

It is the time of the year to gather and with the passing of our grandmother, I think the cousins feel more than ever a need to continue to bond our families together and keep our lineage together... And I think one of the best ways a family can do that is to come together a few times a year and have certain family traditions....

And these are our Peng Family Traditions.. I write this down hoping that they will be passed on to the future generations in the Peng family...... and of course for all the younger kids , hoping they get to experience these lovely traditions as we did:)

1. CNY Gathering on the second day of the new year
   Over the many years, it has always been the norm that we will visit my paternal grandmother's house on the second day of the new year. The tradition was finally broken this year cos we decided to try and see if meeting up on the weekends will work better. It didn't. Hahaha... we will be going back to meeting on the second day of CNY the next year.
   
2. Potluck Parties
   Given the so many years and gatherings we have done, there is actually standard staples in our parties because my grandma used to be the one who will cook. THere will always be fishballs, fried sotong balls, fried chicken wings and soy sauce duck or chicken as the standard party fare. But as my grandmother got older and also sicker with dementia, our parties have slowly started to become Potluck Parties. So that is like the new tradition :)
   
   But some tradition never change... My DaBoMu will always be the one preparing the yusheng:) And many times my ErBoMu will make curry:)
   
   Maybe some day we should do a walk down memory lane party and make all the party foods that my grandma used to make.
   
3. Longan Dessert, MIni Soy Milk and Mini Milo
   At all Peng family parties, there will always be dessert.. and it is always longan or rambutan cans with ICE:) This current CNY Peng family party is no different  ;)
   
   In addition, in recent years, mini soy ilk and milo packs have become staples at our parties;)
   
4. Having A Game Or Two
   When we were younger, we will always either play DIao Yu or Ban Luck during CNY with our grandfather. He was a hawker who sold fruits and had lots of spare coins. So he will provide us with coins to play. If we won, the coins were ours to keep. If we lost, we lose his money. As he always will tell us, "输了算我的，赢了你们拿.."
   
   Happy to tell grandfather that all the Peng family cousins are finally old enough to play a game or two together!

Instead of grandpa, our eldest cousin (whom we nicknamed our 主席 is the banker:)

5) CNY Lou HeiIt is always a messy affair and my Da Bo Mu will always prepare lots of the veg and stuff... Since my family and my aunty are vegeterians, she also accomodate that by preparing vegetarian yusheng instead:)

Ace feeling tired after all the celebration:) haha

6) Kid's Corner
In the past, we always had a corner for us kids to gather and play games together. As the family got bigger, there is not much space to provide a corner for them... BUT, the kids still found a place to hang out together and play together. They were so excited about playing together they wanted to go downstairs and play like they did during the funeral.. but the adults were not keen to watch over them under the hot sun... hahaha.. so they did not get permission to go:)

That is us celebrating Hiong's BD  :)

Some other traditions not related to new year include....

7) Playdates and stayovers during school holidays
Those days, we did not really have much to do or occupy our time... and so every school holiday, we will either go over to my grandma's place for a few days or they will all come over to my house to stay for a few days. It was so much fun to play together during those few days...

My favorite memory was about how in those days, Triumph had just launched their BEEDEES line with a catchy advertisement jingle and we will keep singing it to irritate one of our cousins:) hahahahaha....

8) Breakfast orders
I am sure Ace can relate to this cos every weekend, his grandfather will ask him what he wants to eat for breakfast the day before so that he can buy it for him.

For us, we will gather together the night before and place orders with our grandma about what we wanted to eat for breakfast the next day cos we were staying overnight... Usually, our order will be Chai Tao Kway black with soy milk cold! Best breakfast combi EVER! Hahahaha...

So leh, for now, these are the traditions that we have.. hopefully, we can continue to keep them going ... :)

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