Celebrating the Year of the Tiger

Today, we went to our local Families With Children from China's Chinese New Year celebration. I believe this is the 6Th one Bill and I have attended (5 with kids, 1 as waiting parents). Once again, I always find myself moved to see so many families like ours, so many beautiful children and parents devoted to keeping a piece of their children's culture. There's something awfully endearing about seeing some middle age white man looking majorly out of place in a Chinese silk top taking a million snap shots of his daughter performing a traditional dance on stage. We are so very lucky to live in a community with such a large FCC chapter and so many resources. A local TV anchor hosted the event and she is a Taiwanese American. I introduced her to Andrew and I believe it was love at first sight for Andrew! We had a great time, saw many friends and took many photos!

Of course, I had to take a few photos of the kids in their silks before we went







We saw our friends who also have a son from Taiwan. These little guys were born 1 day apart in Taiwan, lived in the same baby hospital for their first 3 months and were adopted to 2 families who live about 10 miles apart. That never ceases to amaze me.




The Meyers have been taking pictures for years at the CNY festival. Of course we had to stop by and get our photos done.





In years past, some lion dances have gone on for over 15 minutes. This troupe was perfect. They were entertaining, good at the acrobatics, not too scary for the kids and they were much more efficient!



This is a local Chinese folk dance troupe that performed. The number was called "Red and Green" and it is my understanding that one of these beautiful dancers is in her 60's!

Picture Lily took..........

Here's a picture Lily took of Bill and myself last night. I think it's one of the best ones we've had done in years. Maybe she's a budding photographer?

Snowed In!

This morning I chuckled thinking that our local weathermen had made a huge fuss over nothing as we didn't have a single flake of snow in sight. Well, the weathermen certainly get the last laugh. We've got about 6 inches and I think we're going to get another 4+ more! Thankfully, we're all home safe and sound. Bill did a quick grocery run yesterday so were set. I'm actually looking forward to some quite, lazy, snuggly family time :) We did take the kids outside for about 20 minutes and ofcourse I had to snap some pictures.

Come on Spring!

Doesn't that look like what Andrew is saying? Today, when we had a small window of almost 40 degrees and sunshine I impulsively took the kids to one of our favorite parks. I didn't tell them and the moment we pulled into the park they both yelled "Yeah!!" We got in a good amount of running and playing for about 30 minutes and then we felt chilled enough to go about our errands. We're doing really well this winter, but we'll all admit we are ready for some spring and outdoor fun. Here's hoping that groundhog was wrong about 6 more weeks of winter.