Happy New Year!!

Welcome Year of the Rabbit! I heard rabbit years are lucky years. I sure hope so!

I LOVE Chinese New Year! I wish we celebrated for 15 days like people in China. I wish I could spend time with my family and not have to go to work. Sigh. I suppose that is what Christmas is for. I learned that I could celebrate the new year 12 months out of the year if I really wanted to. That's not a bad idea! Check out this link for more information.

We started this year's Chinese New Year celebration by going to the International District in Seattle (I still think it ought to be called Chinatown, but that's no longer PC) to watch the Dragon and Lion dances. We had so much fun following the lions into restaurants. We loved watching them reach for the cabbage head (it's lettuce so I'm not sure why they always call it cabbage) to retrieve the red envelopes. The lions must come to scare away the evil spirits and bring good luck to businesses for the following year. (I wish the lions would have visited our state capitol building to bring a little good luck to the education budget and scare away a few evil spirits...)

After Chinatown, we enjoyed the activities at the Westminster Chapel's Lunar New Year celebration. Here are a couple of videos from our fabulous day:

Chinatown:

Westminster Chapel:

Pummelo Head Pictures

I forgot to post these pictures. That was the juiciest, yummiest pummelo I have ever eaten. What a great way to start the Chinese New Year holiday season!

Mu Shu Pork

Erin Joy and I made Mu-Shu pork tonight. It was easy, fast, and very yummy! Well, at least I liked it.
Erin Joy tolerated it...
Rachel didn't like it at all, but enjoyed the pummelo. We're getting ready for Chinese New Year! Fun, fun!!!

My Little Pianist

After only one piano lesson, Erin Joy is playing like a pro:) I love her little bow and big smile at the end of her performance.

Baby Shower Fun

I'm having a fun time helping with a baby shower for a fellow teacher and her police officer husband. It was cheaper to create a few silly onesies to hang from a clothes line than it was to buy them. A big thank-you to my sister, Becky, for creating the iron-on transfers.

Baked Salmon Pesto

We tried a recipe in the Washington State Cookbook my sister gave us for Christmas. It was yummy!! The kids wouldn't touch the salmon, but they liked the pasta. Rachel is going to make a lasagna recipe from the cookbook on her cooking day. I'm going to try MuShu pork (a recipe from one of the trainers from the Mariners) sometime soon--when I get the ingredients. I tried to talk Erin Joy into making Taco Soup on her cooking day, but she wants yucky boxed Macaroni and Cheese. I'll try taco soup another day:)

Thanks, Becky!

Vacation Report

The girls had a lot of fun on the airplane to Utah. I should have sat between them. The people in front of us didn't have as much fun as they had. The lady in front of us turned around twice to ask them to stop kicking the seat and be quieter. Ooops:)Sledding and snowmobiling at Grandma and Grandpa's cabin was one of the highlights of the trip for my girls. Frozen pipes in the cabin just added to our adventure.






My family thought I was silly when I insisted on stopping and taking a picture of my girls by this statue/fountain thing in the middle of a round-about in Idaho Falls. I don't live in Idaho any more so I felt like a tourist...
We had a great time bowling with 16 children and 5 adults. What a great family party!


After bowling, we enjoyed pizza and a great playland at Leo's Place (similar to Chuck E. Cheese).
The gingerbread and nativity display at the Idaho Falls Museum was very nice. It was also free. Hooray for free activities!
We enjoyed a visit at the Idaho Falls Temple Visitor Center where Grandpa and Grandma are serving a mission. I hope the kids were listening when Grandma told us how much she loved the Savior.

We really enjoyed Ballet West's production of The Nutty Nutcracker. The choreography was amazing and the humorous addition of famous Hollywood characters made it very entertaining and full of surprises. Some of the surprises included Luke Skywalker as the Nutcracker prince, a Darth Vader mask on the Rat King, and Clara dressed as Dorothy.

We planned on going to Temple Square in Salt Lake after the Nutcracker, but it was snowing very hard and the roads were terrible. We just spent more time swimming at the hotel.
We spent two nights at a fun water park hotel. We welcomed in the new year with several family members by eating too much free food provided by the hotel, swimming (the pool was open until midnight), and playing games.

We were exhausted by the time our trip was over. All three of us slept a lot at the airport and on the plane ride home.
The sky was clear and we enjoyed looking at beautiful snow-covered mountains. Mt. Rainier was our favorite.

This is a long movie, but it is filled with wonderful memories of our fabulous vacation with our family.