The Week In Pictures

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

A couple people have asked me to post about how we celebrate Chinese New Year.   This year, CNY coincides with the insanity that is M’s 5th birthday (including not one, but two birthday parties).  I thought it might be easier to do a small series of photo posts instead of just typing out what we have been up to.

Saturday night, we had an impromptu Chinese New Year dinner at Mr. A’s sister’s house.  MIL brought a feast of foods that she bought at a Chinese grocery store and they were delicious.  It didn’t occur to me to take photos of the food, so you will have to imagine it.

Then, after dinner. M did a little performance of a couple Chinese songs.  She tried to enlist L and her cousin S.  This photo is of all of them playing Ba Luo Bo .  Mr. A joined in too.

Then, M did her own lion dance with a play costume we brought home from China.

MIL gave the girls hongbao and asked them to bow to their parents.  They did (L was the best, most compliant bower.)  Then they also bowed to MIL, I think.    It was not thing too formal.  A fun time was had by everyone.

 Sunday

Today we had M’s family birthday party.  It was just cake and ice cream, then she opened some presents.  I can not believe she is almost 5.

L loved the cake and the hats.

Then we headed over to the new and improved, Midwestern city, Chinese New Year EXTRAVAGANZA ™.  This year, our Chinese schools partnered with the Chinese schools from 5(!) cities in our region to put on a huge CNY performance.   It was a very Chinese event, with many formal speeches and gifts being traded among the principals of the different schools. 

M with two of her good friends while they were waiting to enter the auditorium.

We were surprised and pleased that CNY Extravaganza ™ was fairly well organized and not running too far behind schedule.  (Just as an aside, it must be the new administration.  Last year, pretty much everything at Chinese School was late, chaotic and organized very poorly.)  The kind schedulers had M’s dance class very close to the beginning of the second performance session. 

The first act was a lion dance.

 M and friends watching the lion dance.

Not long after that, M’s class danced.  They are the youngest class, ranging from 3 year olds to 5  year olds.   They are enthusiastic, but most of them have very short attention spans.   One little girl got distracted and just played with her tutu for about 1/3 of the dance.

When the dance was over, MIL was heard proudly saying “OH! M was the best dancer of all!”  While it is sweet to know that MIL was proud, for the record, M is NOT one of the best dancers.  She doesn’t really get the graceful details like straight fingers and pointed toes.  Actually, her hands tend to look a little more like claws.  But she loves it and she has friends in the class, so I am thrilled.   (And amused by the claw hands, but that is just the kind of mom I am.)

That was all for this weekend.   It was a LOT.

M performing her dance.