This year the girls had a three weeks off for the "winter" holiday. The first week actually looked like it could be winter outside. Although the temps were still high, it was extremely dreary and overcast with rain and storms.
In efforts to keep in the Christmas spirit, the days leading up to Christmas were filled with shopping, Christmas cookies and crafts. Even had some friends over to make gingerbread houses.
We went to church Christmas eve and Christmas morning was a quiet, family affair. Santa found our new location and present opening was followed by a lot of eating, Skyping and playing.
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| Ashleigh helped make cinnamon rolls for breakfast. |
The weekdays to follow consisted of many fun playdates, sleepovers, and outings with friends. We even had our first reflexology foot rubs.
On the weekends, we took in a few of the local KL attractions. We started with Aquaria, the local KL aquarium. We were pleasantly surprised by what this little aquarium had to offer. Our favorites were the 90 meter under water tunnel complete with sharks, giant stingrays, and sea turtles.
Oddly enough, I found the nutria to be quite cute as it sat enjoying its carrot. I've seen them before out in nature. They were smaller and more rat-like and I didn't find them so cute then.
We decided to go to the School of Hard Knocks where we transformed a flat disc of pewter into a bowl using traditional pewter-crafting tools.
The finished products were completed with our initials engraved in it and we were given certificates of authenticity.
Lastly we were able to feast our eyes on this Guinness World Record holder.
It happens to be the worlds largest beer tankard (mug) which holds 2796 liters of beer. Cheers!
On New Year's Eve we decided to watch the fireworks from the comfort of our living room, in hopes that we were actually going to be able to see some of it. Thankfully we were able to see the majority of the ground displays, but could only see about 1/3 of the large fireworks.
The noise level was at 200%. The booms and bangs echoed off of the buildings and the massive traffic jam contributed a cacophony of continuous horn honking. It actually sounded like a large party was outside with everyone tooting their own party horn.
In fact, it was quite entertaining to watch the cars and the people on the street, which turned into a parking lot with people abandoning their cars in all sorts of places. On the left hand side of the photo below you can see a steady stream of people walking out of the tunnel having left their cars parked somewhere down below.
Another stop on our KL tour was the Lake Gardens Bird Park. Again, we were pleasantly surprised and had another lovely outing. There were many large, native hornbills around the park,
as well as some of the largest pelicans we had ever seen.
The male peacocks were showing off their feathers everywhere we turned.
We even got to pose with some of the birds. The hornbill on Anna's lap was a little intimidating, but all the birds were relaxed and only a tad bit heavier than expected.
Of course we couldn't pass up watching the local monkeys and their antics. We prefer to keep our distance since some can get fairly aggressive.
Plus this sign certainly didn't help our fear.
We wrapped up our break with a trip to the Menara KL Tower. The tower sits to the left of the Petronas towers, but our view is blocked by the office building in front of us.
A quick walk across the street and there it is! It's height of 421m, but it also sits on a hill so the views are better then the observation bridge on the twin towers. It's shape is inspired by a Malaysian spinning toy and is the 7th tallest telecom tower in the world.
The view from the top is quite spectacular. However, this photo was taken from the revolving restaurant, as the main viewing deck is full of cross beams and photo obstructions. When we left our home, the sky was still nice and clear. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the top the clouds had rolled in.
