Chinese New Year

This year, Chinese New Year happened to land on Valentine's Day...which was also a Sunday. So we headed over to my family's house on Saturday. Caitlyn was still sick so we were not exactly sure what we were going to do, but she woke up that morning without a fever and we headed over to my mom's house, hoping for the best. However, by the time we got there, she had a bit of a fever again and had to sit out of most of the festivities.

We basically, get together and have a traditional meal. Normally, we are supposed to get together at the end of the old lunar year as well as after the new year begins but as all the kids are busy these days with their own families and schedules, we some times try to just do it on one day. As a part of the New Year festivities, we normally hand out lucky money to the children and make dumplings and other dim sum like goodies.

My mom prepares the stuffing ahead of time and all the kids come over to assemble them. Most of the grand children are now old enough to help so we are teaching them how to make them.
We basically sit around and eat all day because as we continue to make dumplings, some of the batches come out of the kitchen, ready to eat...and boy do we eat. The dumplings are best eaten fresh so we, um...take advantage of that fact. Although, none of us seem to be able to really put it away like we used to. Getting old is no fun.

My Mom's Birthday

A couple of weeks ago, we went to my mom's house to celebrate her birthday. I haven't been that good this month in keeping up with my posts.

At first, I wasn't in the mood. Then Caitlyn came down with a really horrible flu. I had to pick her up from school early last Tuesday. She had a really high temperature for quite a few days. At one point she had a temperature that was over 104 degrees. We took her to the doctor on the third day just to reassure ourselves that we were doing all that we could for her. The doctor pretty much just confirmed that she had the flu and informed us that it just had to run its course and not to worry. After another day or two, she finally started making some improvements. She was almost over it by Sunday but this past Monday was her first day without a fever and she was finally able to return to school today.

So it would be back to business as usual today....if Christian didn't start getting sick now.

Anyway, as I was saying, a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated my Mom's birthday. Instead of presents, we offered her our services in the yard. She had this thorny grapefruit tree that produced very bad tasting fruit. So we decided that it needed to go. There are a couple of other trees that were not producing very well either so we decided to replace them for her. My brother picked up a couple of trees for her and Christian helped him dig out the tree. The rest of us were on clean-up duty.

My mom turned 72 this year. Here is a picture of her with all her grandchildren. I took a bunch of pictures but I was apparently having trouble with my camera again because the boys in the back are slightly out of focus. I don't know why I had such a shallow depth of field for these pictures. I'm hoping that it was just because I forgot to change the picture taking mode again or something. It is very frustrating.