It is about a week+ away from Raya Haji so I suppose it is not too late to recap about my Raya Aidilfitri and puasa this year.
Highlight of my Fasting Month
The RefKayu (unfortunately, this is what we call ourselves - as per our Whatsapp group name) group has been talking about doing some charity work instead of our usual lepak session for quite sometime. It started with the idea of going to help out at a soup kitchen, but when Ramadhan came Anis & Suhaib thought of instead donating to an orphanage/ tahfiz school.
This small idea was initially to include us and a few of our small friends, but one day Anis got a genius plan of creating a "poster" about it so we can post about it on our social media and get others onboard too so we got Ain to design in and the rest is history..
From 7 contributors we ended up with 70 contributors! And this was excluding those who contributed clothes, food, etc. We managed to collect RM19,164 and alhamdulillah got to donate 62% of it in cash to the school/ orphanage..
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Berlalu lah sudah Ramadhan, sebulan berpuasa
Bila Syawal tiba kita rayakan, dengan rasa gembira
As usual, Raya has always been my favourite month of the year and for the past few years I have been lucky enough to have Raya so near to my birthday (in 31 years time Raya will fall on my birthday insyaAllah :D - I have been counting for this day since I was in Primary School.. #aisyaissues) so Jun-July has been quite festive for quite sometime in the past few years.
As usual also, since my mum is an orphan, we always go back to Daddy's side for Raya. This year we went back the night before the last day of puasa (sampai just in time for sahur #asalways) and then throughout the entire day of fasting the next day we were prepping all the Raya food for break fast and the next day.
On 1st Syawal itself the first house we hit after Raya prayers and breakfast were Mak Yet's @ JB. Mummy's siblings and their family would try to gather at Mak Yet's (for those in town) during first Raya and I always get so excited about the soto and begedil #teamrayaJohor
But of course....
I splashed the soup on my baju and this if before we took the picture (of course I went for the food first..)
After a few hours of talking, and the men coming back from Friday prayers we took the "family" shot and it was back to Kota Tinggi to continue beraya with my Dad's side of the family..
Keluarga Cikgu Esa
In total I think I spent about 4 days in Johor and then the celebration continues in KL -
Anis' Raya Do on one of the weeknights (after some of us watched The Incredibles)
An impromptu RefKayu Raya-Do at mine's because I missed Hariz's Raya-Do that day to cook for another Raya-Do the next day, so I made extra and invited them over
Walid's Raya-Do that Ain & I cooked for #sampaiskrgtakdapatlagithemassagevoucher
5-3 Raya-Do in KL with maybe 70-80% of the family members (this is only my mum's side guys..)
Lumikins is family too :)
(As I write this, Lumi just left us last night. We don't exactly know what happened to her as we found blood on the porch and her body outside the gate - she wasn't ran over or what, i.e. her body was flattened - but I know she's in a better place now and I hope I'll see her again when I get there. Thank you Lumi for all the joy you brought to our lives with your clinginess and cheekiness, we all love you ♥)
Keluarga 5-3, Jalan Zabedah
Had some of my closest friends over too -
They called themselves Aisya's Council of Elders which I agree, because they're the go-to when I'm going through something.. As seen here - them discussion some "issues" of mine kononnya..
But all in all, I had a wonderful sebulan Raya, actually ended it off with a bang in Bali - but let's save that for another post ;)
Here's a video of the last Raya celebration at home, complete with a Raya-Drama..
