Happy Chinese New Year!

What to do when you and your children have been trapped indoors for a few days? Honor the good Chinese factory workers who manufactured Neal's treasured President Ronald Reagan pen. What could be more American! Thus, we celebrated Chinese New Year which follows the lunar new year. While the Chinese celebrate for more than a week, we lived out loud and did it all in one day.

In the morning we dressed in red, signifying joy and good luck. We also set out a bowl of tangerines and oranges on display as our superstitious friends believe that tangerines are symbolic of good luck and oranges represent wealth. Then we got busy making decorations for the day. As this is the "year of the rabbit" we gave an old cardboard toilet paper tube a make over.

For lunch we enjoyed, what else? Chinese food eaten with chopsticks...or at least attempted.

Rhys had more noodles on the floor than on his plate at the end of lunch. After lunch we participated in the tradition of giving red envelopes of money to our kids. I know the Dollor Tree thanks us.

The afternoon was spent finishing up our paper lanterns and creating paper dragons for our evening parade.

During dinner, we shared some Chinese folklore about the monster, "Nian", who was scared off by the villagers when they waved red banners and rattled their noisemakers.

After dinner we had our parade. Neal and Rhys shook the tambourine while Sophie and our friend, Kenzie, waved their dragons to scare away any evil spirits.

So Gong Xi Fa Cai (Happy New Year in Mandarin) to our family and friends and Chinese factory workers afar.