New Year Festival

On Saturday, we took the kids to the Chinese New Year Festival downtown. We've never been to it before so we decided to brave the crowds and check it out for the sake of the kids. It wasn't too bad, considering. Although, there were a lot of groups there performing that has nothing to do with Chinese New Year. Half the groups there don't seem to really even follow the lunar calendar but I guess it's slim pickings and they have to fill it out with some things.

They also had fireworks over the library at the end, but we did not stay that long to see it. Also, it was nice to run into a few friends while we were out and about.

I wanted to show the girls' the chinese pavilion in front of the library since it is usually locked up but it was swamped with weirdos in "manga" costumes most of the time. 

We mostly went to see the the lion dance though and that is always fun.

Chinese New Year

We went on Saturday to celebrate Chinese New Year, as usual, with my family. We usually go pretty early to help my mom get stuff started. We cooked and ate pretty much all day long (which doesn't do my goal of losing some weight any good...but, Chinese New Year only comes once a year!).

We had quite an assembly line going. It's nice how all the kids and grandkids can all help out now. It makes it go faster and makes it a lot more fun. Hopefully all the kids will all learn to do it so that we can keep the tradition going.

The kids got to collect lucky red envelopes from their grandparents and all their aunties and uncles!

New Year's day was actually on Monday. We had more chinese food for dinner and for FHE, we had special Chinese New Year crafts as an activity for the kids.

The kids worked on paper dragons while Christian worked on making "Spring couplets" to put up for an auspicious New Year.

Starry Starry Night

On the evening of January 3rd or the pre-dawn hours of January 4th, was to be the beginning of the Quadrantid meteor shower. We decided to stay up and try to catch it in a stop motion video.

Over a two hour period, which was supposed to be during the peak of the meteor shower in our time zone, we captured not one single falling star. We did, however, capture 23 air planes flying through just the camera's field of vision. That says nothing of the ones all around us, outside the camera's field of vision. Why is there so much traffic up there in the middle of the night?! It is totally insane.

We did each see two falling stars that were not captured on the camera. One big one that we both saw and two separate smaller ones that we saw on our own. So I can attest that there were at least all of 3 falling stars during that two hour period. And for our efforts, we just ended up cold, tired and disappointed.

I checked a bunch of youtube videos others had posted after the fact and found that many others had the same results as we did in other parts of the country (although, some supposed that the airplanes going across, were falling stars). Only one person seemed to have captured a halfway decent meteor shower.

Bike ride

We spent the rest of the kids' winter break just playing with new Christmas toys and working out in our back garden.

We did take the girls over to the university to ride around the empty campus though. Caitlyn got her training wheels off some time after school started for the new year, but was so anxious about riding without training wheels that she would only ride about a hundred feet at a time. She would spend 10 minutes just sitting there trying to psych herself into doing it. It was a very painful process. She could do it without problems, but she was just too afraid for some reason.

So during the break, we took advantage of the flat open spaces on campus to try to get her more comfortable riding.

She finally did it and she is doing great. We did have one set back, however...after riding around about 5 times in front of the library, she slid on one corner that was full of leaves and fell. She scraped her knee. After the initial pain and everything wore off, she did get back on and ride some more so I don't think it set her back too much.

She keeps one training wheel up a bit higher on her bike though. She uses it as a kick stand as her bike does not have one!

Hike

Monday morning after Christmas arrived. Christian and Marian managed to get her car to the dealership for  repairs.

We had been talking about New Year's resolutions and the fact that we have all gained back some of the pounds we managed to lose last year. All the Christmas goodies, parties and excellent dinners and desserts did not help.

We had been talking about taking the girls up for a hike up to the "C" for a while now. Since we were waiting for Marian's car to be fixed, we decided that it was a fine day for a hike. And so we dragged her and one of her dogs with us. It was quite a beautiful day for a hike...only it is a bit steep for the girls and their out of shape mom but we finally made it up to the top. We have proof!

This was only the second time I'd been up there. The last time was in college and it was getting dark when our group finally made it up. It was getting difficult to see and we were nearly to the top. Christian was hiking up behind me and I slipped and slid down a bit but not before kicking Christian's legs out from under him! I may be more out of shape this time, but I had a lot better luck getting up without any problems in the light of day!

Christmas Day

Christmas with my family went off almost without a hitch. When we arrived at my brother's house. My mom called saying that her car was not working! So Christian and I drove to my mom's house to check out her car and perhaps to give my parents a ride over. Luckily, they don't live very far away. Christian was able to get my mom's car started though, so they were able to drive in on their own and we followed them back. 

The girls love to play with their cousin Lauren so the little nephew sometimes gets left out. Luckily, the older nephews usually are pretty good about playing with him and helping him do boy stuff!

The big gift for the night was a photo book we made for our mom. My brother, sister and I got together to make a book of all her grandchildren in their various stages. It took quite a bit of work and we had some complications in trying to all work on the book on-line at the same time but in came out really nice.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning

Our best friend, Marian, comes over every Christmas Eve and spends the night with us so that we can spend Christmas morning together.

picture courtesy of Auntie Marian

This year, Marian arrived a little early to take the girls out to watch a movie. It's actually the first time the girls have been to a movie theater. We usually just watch movies at home. There are never any really compelling movies to go see that is worth the price, hassle and having to deal with other people. I almost took them at the end of summer, but they started misbehaving and I decided not to take them. Anyway, they went to see the Muppets. They went to McDonald's for a treat afterwards.

Unfortunately, Marian had some car problems on the way home. Luckily they were just up the hill but I'm sure it was pretty stressful having the added problem of having the girls with her at the time. Anyway, Christian went out to get them and they managed to get the car back to our house.

We tried to make the best of it and have a nice evening. Marian also brought a prime rib roast for our Christmas Eve feast. So while she was off with the kids, Christian and I prepared dinner in peace (prime rib, braised carrots and french onion soup...mmm). As usual, we ate too much and stayed up too late talking.

We had our usual belgian waffle breakfast on Christmas morning then we were off to church (yes, we made the kids wait until after church to do presents...got to have our priorities straight you know).

As the kids didn't whine or complain about the wait, we did finally get to the presents shortly after returning home.

It's fun to see that the kids are finally old enough to really think about others for Christmas now. During the week before Christmas, they would go through some of their stuff and secretly wrap them for each other and for us. Plus the girls got out their jewelry making stuff to make gifts. Caitlyn made me a bracelet and Emily made me a necklace.

So during the week before Christmas, Christian would take turns, taking each of them to work for a few hours in the morning to give me a break and I would take the other one on errands to deliver treats or to help make goodies or clean. Then we had them collect their money and I took them to the Dollar Store to buy a present for their sister with their own money. They were really excited about it. Emily got Caitlyn a little fairy snow globe (or glitter globe, I guess) and Caitlyn got Emily a little kite.

Christian got me more parts to my Willow Tree Nativity set. I've been wanting it for a while now but never had the heart to spend the money on it. Christian started getting me the pieces in November for our anniversary.

Normally, Marian would take off at this point and we would prepare food for the potluck dinner at my family's house while the kids played with all their new toys. But unfortunately for Marian, she was stranded at our house. And to add to her bad luck, no one would be open to fix her car until after Christmas. But, her misfortune was our good fortune. She helped entertain the kids, helped with dishes and peeling and slicing potatoes for the gratin I was preparing for my family's dinner! I also made dessert but I made cheesecake so that I could make it ahead of time on Friday night so that I would not have to spend time doing it on Christmas Eve when we had a house guest already. So everything worked out for us pretty well...sorry Marian : )