Every year we invite all our local friends who have adopted children from China as well as others who have some relationship to China and/or our children. This year we celebrated the Year of the Tiger on Feb 20. Chinese New Year (CNY) is a two week celebration. It begins with the first new moon after the full moon that follows winter solstice. CNY started on Feb 14 this year. It ends with the Lantern Festival which is also the full moon. It is always special to me because it is when we were in China meeting B.
We usually have crafts, especially since the children are getting older. The oldest one of our bunch is about 12 or 13 years old. The youngest is about 24 months. The party includes food, a lion dance, bubble wrap stomp (instead of firecrackers) and red envelopes.
J.T. decorating his craft.
Final result of some of our artwork. Many thanks to A.M. for lending us her wonderful Chinese stamps.
Food! We usually have traditional noodles, dumplings and less traditional foods - but delicious and creative none-the-less. We've gotten pretty good at making Nian Gao - Chinese New Year cake made with glutenous rice flour. We use peanuts and raisins in ours which add a little salt to our cake. This year we also did a chocolate chip-pecan nian gao.
Dumplings! People traditionally eat lots of dumplings for New Years because they resemble gold nuggets and that would bring prosperity to the family. Eating long noodles brings long life to parents. There are lots of fun Chinese New Year traditions, new clothes, not sweeping on New Year's Day so you don't sweep out good luck, fire crackers, etc., etc.
The group!
Lion Dance. We made this great lion head a few years ago and it just keeps on going. We fix it up a little bit each year. Several kids got to be "first" and the others followed behind walking through the family room, dining room and kitchen and back in again to the cacophonous banging of everyone else.
This year we invited the children who sang at Chinese New Year - Virginia Tech program to do a repeat performance.
They sang the Tiger Song and a couple of others. If I can figure out how to upload videos here again I will.
Here the older kids are getting ready to stomp on large bubble wrap - the sound is almost exactly like fire crackers and much safer.
Stomping!
Little kids stomping!
Red envelopes - the children wish each of their parents and/or grandparents and/or senior person a Happy New Year and the parent/grandparent/senior person gives them a gift of a red envelop. In seriously Chinese families with serious red envelopes this can add up to quite a bit of money. At our celebration there were a $1 coin in each envelop, chocolate coins in another and a dollar bill in a third.
Grandma B., Boboa G. and C. handed out red envelopes to some of the girls.
B. receiving her red envelopes.
Chinese New Year is a holiday we look forward to each year. It ends our holiday season which starts with Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and New Years.
This is one of our yearly highlights!! Thanks to all who made the red envelops possible-that was the highlight for my girls.
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