Year of the Snake

Happy Year of the Snake!  This year to celebrate Chinese New Year, we returned to a local restaurant where we knew some international students would be performing a Lion Dance.  The food at the restaurant is admittedly, a bit disappointing, but we like that our kids can get more of a cultural experience with the performance, so we went with it!  Maybe by next year we'll come up with something else to celebrate.

We invited my brother & his family, as well as my parents, to join us.  We like being able to share our Chinese culture and traditions with them.  My nephews loved the lion, and while they might have been a little intimidated at first, they quickly got into "feeding" the lion with the red envelopes.  And, since the dancers knew our family, the lion got up close and friendly with the boys, even pretending to eat them and put them in their mouth!  (not sure if THAT is good luck).

After the meal, we had prepared hong bao (red envelopes) for the kids and showed them the proper way to receive them.  It was cute to see them showing respect this way.

Sho-Be (little sister) got her first hong bao! 

The following day, I attempted to make a Chinese noodle dish that my mother in law makes.  I failed miserably, but created my own noodle soup.  It was hard to duplicate something when I didn't have many of the ingredients on-hand.  But, at least we did have noodles (un-cut, to represent long life) and eggs (also representing new life).  Our family seemed to enjoy it!

"No soup for you!"