Christmas in KL - December 26, 2007

For us, Christmas in Malaysia was obviously very different. For example, we swam in the outdoor pool here at our condo most every day. And, our artificial Christmas tree (on a table & all of 2' high) didn't exactly hold a candle to some of the 10' Noble firs we've had at our place in Keizer in the past.


Prior to Tracy and Reeve flying to Ohio, we had a "Christmas dinner" at our house on Dec. 9th and then celebrated Gabi's birthday one day late on the 11th since it was a school holiday - the Sultan's birthday. On the evening of the 14th -- the last day of school for Nancy -- we took Levi & Ramona to a Christmas concert in the beautiful KLCC concert hall, featuring a children's choir and the KL Philharmonic Orchestra.
From the pictures one can quickly discern that Christmas decorations, even in a Muslim country, are very much in order, especially if they encourage holiday shopping!

We celebrated Christmas with Levi & Ramona, Doug, Gabi and Rania here at our place on Christmas eve, and then went up to Doug's on Christmas morning to cook pancakes and bring Christmas dinner. It was great to have Levi and Ramona with us for the holidays.

Ramona invested much love and attention on the girls, becoming Gabi's favorite "playmate" for imaginary dramas about "horsies," Lego structures, stuffed animals and toy cars. Weeks earlier I had bought Gabi a white stuffed animal (a cat that she named Samantha) when we visited the KL aquarium. However, when Rania got a stuffed animal for Christmas (a cat that got the name "Tiger"), Gabi not only quickly decided that she preferred Tiger to Samantha, but also assured us that 1 1/2 year-old Rania was more than willing to trade. (How she knew that remains a mystery.)



Ron and Nancy's present from Doug and Tracy (pix at the top of this posting) was only one of the much-appreciated gifts that were exchanged. We obviously greatly missed Stateside members of the family, but were encouraged by frequent "visual-and-audio contacts" on our computer with Tasha and Mark, Marta, Daniel, Eli and Micah by means of Skype. - rw