Happy Chinese New Year!

Christmas was wonderful. And we're going to make a big deal over St. Patrick's Day. But Chinese New Year? The celebrations around here will continue for weeks.

When John hung one of the two lanterns I received for my last birthday, Louis wanted to know why we couldn't hang them outside like the local Chinese restaurant. Somehow we just can't pull that off.

 

Otherwise, our boys have had no disappointments.

When a package of Chinese New Year fun arrived from their friends Matthew and Melanie, they dug right into the candy.

And Michael opened his first red envelope--at least in the U.S. (We don't know whether he received any last year in China.)

The package included sunglasses for both boys, and Michael pounced on his.

(One day maybe I'll take pictures of the boys at home and not have diaper boxes as a backdrop.)

Louis dug into the Cars cards and had me write a wonderfully complicated list of rules of how to play a game.

Then we met our good friends Ewen and Amy for a Year of the Dragon celebration--our second annual Chinese New Year dinner--at a restaurant. Three adults and three children makes for a good ratio, though we were still glad we had met at 4:30 when the restaurant was fairly empty.

The big boys had lots to catch up on.



There was plenty to eat.
 

And eat.

And Michael couldn't believe he got a whole bowl of duck sauce all to himself. 

There was Won Ton soup.

There were porcelain cups (and, no, I'm not quite ready to give a 2-year-old caffeine, so he's not drinking tea).

And we had three hungry and well-dressed boys on our hands.

"Where did you get your outfits?" our waiter asked.

Guangzhou, we told him. I remember bargaining with Jenny, that sweet shopowner who assured me they were already a very good price. Louis was on a yellow kick at the time, so we got them matching yellow outfits. Our waiter at dinner told us kindly that yellow was worn only by royalty.

Royal? Our boys? The one who wishes cameras had never been invented--and learned Ewen's paparazzi-dismissing hand signal that night?

The one who thinks duck sauce is a drink?

Hmm. They weren't particularly regal. But they were pretty cute.

And Louis and Ewen make some mean dragons.

It was an evening full of luck--dumplings, orange slices, fortune cookies, gold chocolate Chinese coins, and wind-up dragons. Ewen had made us beautiful Chinese New Year crafts with our names on them, and Amy brought a chocolate dragon, which everyone couldn't wait to eat.

And there were red envelopes, carried home from China just five months ago.

Is anyone else astonished that Michael has already been home with us for five months?

He has settled in so beautifully we can barely remember the sleepless nights.

Last week I noticed that as we turn into our neighborhood, Michael proudly announces "home." He does it without the H, but it's clear--and beautiful. The first day he did it, I teared up. He is just such a happy child. And he's home.

I'm not saying we don't have our challenges, but our two boys are perfect for each other--and for our family. And when you put them alongside their friend Ewen, they make a remarkably cute threesome.

Luckily (maybe even miraculously) they let us take a few photos of them together after dinner.

It would be fun to have a photo of me and Amy with our boys, but we know when we're pushing our luck.

 

 And there's always next year, the Year of the Snake.

Back at home, I used chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream to bribe the boys for a few photos.

We ended up having fun, even though we didn't get any good traditional photos.



I'm not sure how Michael celebrated the Year of the Rabbit, but we'll be able to tell him how he celebrated the Year of the Dragon.

And we'll tell him the celebrations just went on and on. After all, in China the new year festivities last for a week or two, right? So this past week we invited some friends with links to China over for dinner. We have friends with some Chinese heritage in their ancestry. Then we have our friend Marny who is preparing to travel to China to bring her daughter home.

Aunt Treasa's link to China is her dress--the one we found for her in Guangzhou--for $11, I believe--and the fact that she is aunt to two Chinese nephews, of course. And her boyfriend, George likes Chinese food. So we were set.

Having a gathering at home gives us a reason to pull out some of the Chinese items we brought home from Guangzhou--the ones my husband squeezed into our bags for the long trek home. Sometimes you have to throw a party just so you can use your new tablecloth from China.

I had such grandiose plans to make a long, scale-covered dragon cake with flames shooting from his mouth. In the end, I baked a very simple cake.



No one complained, probably because their mouths were too full of fortune cookies and chocolate coins.

So that's it until next year, right? Well, no. Our last celebration is still two weeks away. It's a good thing you can't really have too much Chinese New Year fun.

Sending you our best wishes for a happy year of the dragon!