February Wrap Up Mega-Post - Chinese School and Stuff

It's rainy Saturday afternoon and the boys are busy with a box of vintage Lego, so instead of getting my household chores done I'm putting up a Kitchen Sink Round Up blog post. I tried to take a bunch of photos this month for different blog entries, but never posted them, so now they're all going into one big entry...

Tomorrow is the Chinese Lantern Festival - the last day of the 2 week Chinese New Year Celebration. I don't think we're doing anything really special tomorrow to mark it, we'll see.

Last night we went to see The Bellingham Arts Academy for Youth's production of Suessical Jr. It was a great production and the kids in it did a great job, Kai and Shen really enjoyed it.

Tonight we are going to see a Chinese New Year Celebration at the Mount Baker Theatre with the boy's Chinese language school. It's a presentation of classical and modern Chinese music. It looks a bit "high brow" so we're not sure how well the boy's will do with it, but i guess we'll find out.

Now for all the pictures...

Chinese New Year Assembly at Kai's School. His after-school Chinese class performed a really cool dance routine to traditional Lion Dance music.


Here's Kai with his Chinese language teacher, Sunny, at school (Kai's the one in the lion mask)...


Shen, the Ultimate Tag-Along Little Brother, goes to after-school Chinese lessons with Kai and actually got to be the tail of the lion in the assembly!


This is Kai and Shen with their Chinese language teacher Mary, who teaches them on Sunday afternoons at the Mei-Hua School...


They are getting to study Chinese calligraphy there too now, check out their great brush grip!


After two hours of Chinese, Kai and Shen look forward to playing on the playground outside. Kai spent quite a bit of time shooting baskets...


Shen spent his time climbing the "rock wall" with a friend...


One last CNY picture. This should have gone in the last post, but it didn't. I had a hard time trying to get photos of the boys with their fireworks, it was raining a little, and it's hard to get the camera settings right to catch moving subjects in low light, but this one kind of came out...


Last weekend the boys got long overdue haircuts. Shen told his stylist he wanted to look handsome, Kai told his he wanted to look like a Rock Star!


After the haircuts we took the boys, their bikes and the dog down to Zuanich park on the bay. I think I've posted more pictures of them at this park than anywhere else, but it's so beautiful down there.

Juno is getting better about letting the boys hold her leash...




Kai loves throwing rocks in the water...


Shen being a daredevil on the play structure...


And my favorite view of Mt. Baker from down there...


Kai's kindergarten class celebrated 100 Day this week (100 days of kindergarten), a great opportunity for extended counting and learning number concepts. Here's Kai kitted out from the party...


Weekdays are pretty busy around here, which the boys really love. When I get home from work Kai is usually still working out one or more of his Big Ideas, but quite often Shen is done and he and Go-jee are in their favorite chair taking a 6 o'clock nap...


Amazingly this never upsets our 8 o'clock bedtime!


Ben helped his little brothers build a marble roller coaster set their Aunt Erin and Uncle Bill handed down to them...


and here it is in action...


There was some other stuff too, but I'm done for now. I hope February has been a good month for you too!

Valentine's Day / Chinese New Year

I really should be updating here more often. February has been a busy month.

We spent Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year weekend in Cheney with Tina's dad. It was a really good visit.

Shen and Kai are wearing their "Year of the Tiger" shirts in this picture with their Grandpa. It's nice that red works for both CNY and Valentine's day!

Tina's dad, Len, had planned a special Valentine for his girlfriend Joyce. Joyce suffered a fairly severe stroke several months ago and is still pretty impaired by that. We drove Len in to pick up flowers for her then went with him to the assisted living facility where Joyce lives. A bunch of her family were there visiting her too. Len had arranged for a barbershop quartet to serenade her. It was a nice little party, and very romantic. I shot a little video of the quartet singing...



After the Valentine's party we stopped at a really great little asian market and picked up some supplies for our Chinese New Year dinner. It was fun celebrating this with Tina's dad, her sister-in-law Erin and Niece Caitlin. We picked up extra hong bao (red envelopes) so all the adults could them to all the kids after they said the traditional new year greeting of gong xi fa cai, which means "Congratulations and be prosperous". We made rice and long noodles, dumplings (frozen potstickers - still good!) and made Hui-Hui's favorite egg flower soup.

We had saved some of the fancy paper wrapped sparklers on wooden sticks from the 4th of July and remembered to bring them with us, but when it was time to light them they were nowhere to be found. We searched the house, but came up empty. Aunt Erin managed to come up with a box of the little white "popper" things you throw on the ground and the kids really liked these. Then we found one more bag of ours and the sparklers were there so Yay! We had fireworks to scare away the evil spirits and ensure good luck for the coming year!

Chinese New Year Party

We went to the annual Chinese New Year party that our local Chinese Cultural Association hosts. Kai and Shen performed with their class from the Mei Hua Chinese Language School. We had a great time and saw a lot of friends there, both adoptive families and Chinese American families from the Mei Hua School. They held the event at Sehome High School, so there was a lot more room for people to move around. The kids got to run with their friends and the grown-ups got to visit. There was a TON of excellent Chinese food too!

I took a few pictures, but Kai really wanted to use the camera today. I was a little worried about letting him use our only digital camera, but it has a neck strap and he was being pretty careful with it. Surprisingly, he got a number of really great photos of a bunch of people! Now he clicked off close to 200 shots (thank God for digital!), but that's a strategy I use for getting good photos too! I often will shoot fast and hope to hit something. Anyway, about three of the photos in the slideshow above are ones I shot, the rest are Kai's!