Celerating My Mother's 80th Birthday

This post is long overdue. My mom celebrated her 80th birthday on 6 January 2023. I am supposed to write about this sometime in January but I couldn't find time to be on Hive. So it has been exactly 2 months since that celebration and I am finally able to sit down and sift through some images taken that day and write about it.

Initially, I wasn't too sure if our family could make it to this celebration. See, we just returned from our Christmas holidays a week before and I was in no mood to travel so soon after the holidays. Plus, the fact that we aren't rich and couldn't afford superbly expensive airfares just made it worse.

However, after discussing it with my husband we decided to go for it since it was her 80th birthday, for crying out loud. We informed her about our hesitation and obstacles and she was okay if we couldn't make it but I didn't feel it was right if we were to miss it.

Not everyone has the privilege to celebrate their parents' 80th birthday, right?

So we decided to try the newly launched low fares airline, MYAirline. Despite purchasing our tickets at the last minute we managed to secure a good deal, not exactly cheap but still within our budget, well barely.

We departed from KL on the morning of 5 January, traveling on the earliest flight at 7am. We had to wake up at 3am to catch the flight. I barely slept that night because I was afraid to miss the wake-up alarm. However, we reached the airport and settled for the journey by 5.30am. We had plenty of time to grab a quick breakfast at the airport.

The flight journey to Kuching took about 1 hour and 50 minutes. We touched down at Kuching International Airport slightly before 9am. Prior to the trip, I had made arrangements with my eldest sister to pick us up at the airport.

Despite having our breakfast prior to departing KL, the kids complained of being hungry, so off we went to have our second breakfast at a nearby kopitiam (coffee shop). Right after breakfast, we headed to the birthday venue, a Chinese restaurant located not too far from Kuching Airport.

My sisters did all the birthday planning and arrangements including purchasing the cake, decorations, and stuff. Our family contributed little in terms of planning other than helping out with putting up the decorations.

A couple of pictures of us decorating the birthday venue. It took us approximately 2 hours to complete the decorations. The kids were excited they could help out too.

The birthday celebration were held in the evening of 6 January 2023. We invited 40 guests consisting of closed family members residing in Kuching. My mom comes from a large family. She has 10 siblings so obviously we couldn't invite everyone especially those residing outside of Kuching.

And here is her birthday cake. It was a 2-tiered cake decorated with real roses and baby's breath. It was a vanilla cheese cake made by a friend of my sister who is a baker. A lot of people thought those roses were fake but nope, those were real fresh roses. My mom loves gardening and other than orchids, she loves roses the most thus we included roses to pay homage to her passion.

And yup, that's the birthday girl. At 80 she is still a spring chicken 😁...just kidding 😆. My mom was born during WW2 or specifically during the Japanese Occupation in 1943. She is the middle child of 10 siblings. She is one amazing lady with a lot of talents in dressmaking, cooking, gardening, traditional crafting, and many more. I could write countless things about her but it would make this post super duper long.

She quit dyeing her hair black several years ago and we encouraged her to let it naturally turn white. And voila...she is my version of Queen Elizabeth 😄

Blowing the candles and cutting the cake. She loved the cake so much and impressed that we decorated it with real roses.

Say aaaaaahhhhh...that's my eldest sister feeding mom with cake.

Me with mom and my two elder sisters. I don't have a brother though and yup, I am the youngest sibling.

And a picture with mom, hubby and my brothers-in-law.

The whole family with my nephews. My sisters' kids.

Mom with her grandchildren. Only five of them and my daughter is her only granddaughter.

And a couple of pictures with some of our relatives. I don't include everyone's photos because they are just too many to include here.

I don't include pictures of the food too but it was a buffet setting with various yummy dishes including seafood, fruits and stuff.

I am glad we made this trip home to celebrate my mom's birthday. We stayed only for one night and took our flight home the following day. Even though it was just a short trip, I am glad we could be there with the family and had a great time with everyone.

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That's it for now. If you read this far, thank you. I appreciate it so much! Kindly give me a follow if you like my content. I mostly write about making art, life musing, and our mundane yet charming family life here in Klang Valley, Malaysia.

Note: All images used belong to me unless stated otherwise.

Thank you for visiting and reading my post. I hope you like it!

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