Celebrate!

There will be lots of photos here.  I like to look back and remember the various people and ways we have celebrated Chinese New Year.  Saturday night our good friends came over to celebrate Chinese New Year with us.  As I mentioned before, Kate was beyond excited.  She asked us every single day this week how many more days until Libbie comes over for CNY.  She LOVES Libbie.  She wants Libbie to be her sister!!!  It is so cute.

Kate, Harry and I spent a few afternoons this week decorating the house ...

 (yes, we have some overlap with some Valentine's decorations too)



The sun light was shining right on those tulips.  If you look closely you an literally see the ray of sunshine!



 The minute Libbie walked in the door, Kate handed her a red envelope.  She could not wait.







Last year, Dave made some Chinese food but this year we ordered it.

 And we ordered WAY too much!!!  But it was so good and we had leftovers for dinner last night too:)





Libbie and Hoot tried chopsticks:)

After dinner, Kate, Libbie and Hoot did some art with some Chinese New Year stickers.

Then it was time for the Lion Dance.  The Lion or Dragon dance is a Chinese New year tradition.  But it scares the bejeezus out of Kate!!!  Last year, she literally hid her face in Harry's lap and covered her ears the whole time. So, Kate had a very clever alternative.  The other day, I was upstairs doing laundry and Kate made her very own dragon COMPLETELY by herself.  I thought it was absolutely delightful.  She told me that she wanted  us to do our own dragon dance at home.  And we did....

(Kate and her Dragon)

Harry did the drumming (and we had some traditiotnal lion dance music on my computer)

Look at that sweet smile of Libbie's!!





I have to insert here how much I LOVE my little girl's ingenuity.  I love that she came up with a solution for a way to celebrate a part of her heritage even though she is terribly afraid of the loud public lion dances.  It honestly never even dawned on me!

Dave and Steven (the Daddies) were such good sports and I think they might be a tad embarrassed of their participation.

Here is a video of our lion/dragon dance...



After the dance, it was time for fireworks!  So at Christmas, Steven and Shelley gifted our boys a pack of firecrackers/works.  Let me tell you....my boys LOVED them.  They thought it was the greatest gift EVVER! Steven has some connections (all legal) and so he brought us some poppers.  And since fireworks are actually a CNY tradition, we did a few poppers and sparklers.



Yup, Harry has matches in his hands.  He was supervised.

We had such a nice night with our friends celebrating the culture of our daughters.