Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Happy Chinese New Year!
We planned on attending our local Northwest Chinese Cultural Association’s New Year Celebration for the 3rd year in a row - we had our tickets and everything, but then Kai came down with Chicken Pox! So this year we stayed home and made our own Chinese style dinner.

Kai and Shen enjoyed dressing up in their New Year outfits, getting Hong Bao (red envelopes/lucky money) and lighting fireworks out in our labyrinth. Here are a few pictures from the day...

The Rain Rain Rain Came Down Down Down...

Our house is situated up high like Christopher Robin’s, when it floods the water doesn’t bother us, so last night we slept through the drama that unfolded in nearby parts of our neighborhood. It has warmed up, and a hard rain has been falling steadily for over 24 hours. The snow pack in the foothills is melting and all the creeks and streams have swollen up over their banks. Just down the street from us a small lake formed that encroached upon a number of houses. People were out at 3AM clearing out culverts with shovels and sandbagging. We went out for a little walk in the rain today to see how things looked...

The worst that we got in our yard was a bit of a puddle in the labyrinth...


Our next door neighbors got it a bit worse. They have a little stream that runs through the lower part of their lot. It’s dry most of the summer, but last night the water backed up behind their fence and came up to their house. We didn’t hear them out there tearing down fence boards to let the water out.


The water had subsided enough to sort of fit back in the ditch where it flows across the street from the neighbors...


But down another block it was spilling over the road...


Great conditions for testing your rubber boots!


After exploring all the puddles we could discover, we did find the boots’ limit for keeping your feet dry.


After lunch, and a change of footwear, we drove down to Whatcom Falls Park about a mile from our house to see the falls.

They did not disappoint us!

Endless Winter - Endless Christmas

I can’t believe it’s been 11 days since I wrote the last blog entry. Today is the last day of Christmas, so it’s time to take down the holiday graphics in the header. I really like these new colors, they are very similar to ones we have in our house and they’re well suited to Chinese New Year which we’ll be celebrating in a few weeks.

Speaking of celebrating, we drove down to Uncle Mark and Aunt/Uncle Kris’ house on Sunday and exchanged gifts with their family and with Gramma-O. We have had snow fall off and on since the 14th, that’s three straight weeks with snow on the ground. I have never seen that in my life time here in Washington State. It prevented us from getting together with them until today. Even Sunday ended up looking pretty dicey and we drove home through a pretty intense storm of snow mixed with rain. At one point the traffic on I-5 slowed down to under 20 mph in a 70 zone.

Still we had a great time and the boys totally enjoyed getting more presents! After two rounds of birthdays and Christmas all in one month they have started to get a bit obnoxious in terms of expecting gifts from people. I’m glad they[re going to be in for a long dry spell for them till next December.

Of all the gifts they received, I have to say that the ones I like best are the new pajamas that Gramma made for them. She found a great flannel that’s super soft, but best of all, she made them with custom sleeve lengths! No rolled up sleeves! here are a couple pictures of them playing with some of their holiday loot in their new jammies...