"Mom, this is the best year yet" - A Chinese New Year Recap

Happy Lantern Festival Day! This day marks the end to Chinese New Year. Tonight the fireworks are LOUD! My kids running to the window (and not to bed). Thankfully the baby sleeps through it all!

WOW- what a Chinese New Year! I hope to capture some of the highlights in this very long blog post! Mei had finals and then was off school for almost a month. We caught up on English homework, had play dates and watched movies. It was fun to just be together.

Our dear Chinese friends asked if they could come over and cook a meal for us for Chinese New Year's Eve. We said, please do! Above is the whole fish being fried in peanut oil. It was so yummy!

Here is the chef!

Here is the 13 month year old

So I made some Christmas cookies to celebrate and put them on a Christmas plate! They were very good and somehow made me feel more "in the spirit".

Asa wanted to wear a tiger costume all night. Which was pretty funny since we were changing from the year of the tiger to the year of the rabbit!

Fireworks all day- and lasted to about 2 in the morning. Then they started up again about 5 AM and lasted until noon the next day. Again, so thankful my kids can sleep through this. You can buy fireworks here that look like a 4th of July display at home. It is really amazing to see (and hear).

Then it was off to bowling a few days later. Friends here (mostly girls, but sometimes boys) hold hands if they are good friends. Here Mei is holding her Chinese friends hand.

Us in front of the bowling pin! Kids not too thrilled about this picture.

The bowling alley is really a bar at night. Here is Joab one second later stepping right in a huge pile of you know what. SO gross. It was not the best way to start out bowling fun!

Our friends we went bowling with said there wiere stretches we needed to do before we could start!

A pink bowling ball for Mei!

Chinese New Year drum, advertisement thing

At the end of the holiday we gathered up 12 orphaned children and brought them to the sea. No, just kidding...these are the twelve kids of the three couples who ventured out to the far eastern part of the city where the ocean is! We wanted to have a little break from the city (and the fireworks). We had a blast. I think the kids did too!

Little kids in the front, a Daddy per bike and bigger kids helped to peddle in the back. We raced around and around the mostly abandoned park! It was so fun.

Daddy Bowman trying to find a ship at sea

Trying to look big

Yes, she is from the USA

No park in China would be complete with out a jumpy castle thing. The kids played and played on this.

Mommy Madson loving on Salome

Good vs. Bad Spider man at the hotel

I tried to pack us up (while Daddy took the kids to the pool). But every time I turned my back the baby was in the suitcase.



So, we get back from the hotel by the sea and my dear friend calls me. She said she has some chickens for me! The last time she went to her hometown she brought me back some very good semi organically raised local chickens that were FROZEN. I told her the next time she went home I would gladly take some more! So, when she calls me to say she has my chickens she also tells me this time they are ALIVE. And need to be killed ASAP.

I am shocked as I had not ever thought she would give me LIVE chickens. Thankfully I remembered a place at my veggie market that sold chickens. I walked over to the guy and asked if he also killed chicken. He looked at me like, duh...they have to die to eat them!

So, here are the four chickens. All in one bag.

Also, this is my veggie market go here about three times a week. They know me, love me, know my kids and generally make my life easier.

My friend's son wanted all the chicken blood for a soup he likes. Here is the blood collection.

So, bird is killed then thrown into this huge turning vat where boiling water is thrown into it. The feathers come out on the lower left.

I told him no thanks for the head and feet. All internal organs given to my friend for more soup? Not sure.

All in all it was not that bad to watch it all happen. Pretty cheap too! Cost about four dollars for him to kill, clean and chop four chickens.

The end of Chinese New Year is the Lantern Festival (think Tangled Movie- Birthday Party Lanterns). Well, it used to be really Lantern like a long time ago. Now they sell these really LOUD and corny lanterns on the street and light off a ton of fireworks. Asa gets to pick one out each year to take to preschool to show off. He LOVES this.

Thankful for great friends to share this holiday with and you for reading about it! On our Eve Dinner party Miriam turns to me and says "Mom, this is the best year yet". And I think she was right.