Chinese New Year Celebration

I’m sorely behind on this update, but I’ll try and get caught up.  We have an excellent group of folks in our local FCC group (families with children from China). We attended one dinner last year before we had Kylie, but we hadn’t been to anything since.  When we realized the CNY celebration was coming up, we definitely wanted to go.

There were tons of people there and Kylie enjoyed coloring while waiting to get our food.

Look at all the people!  There’s nothing like knowing everyone around you understands the make up of your family. 

We sat with a family with two teenaged daughters from China.  I think their girls were 16 and 18.  They adopted them both when they were just about a year old and getting to talk to them was wonderful.  They gave some good nuggets of wisdom like what age their girls started to really ask questions about their time in China and how to best balance the Chinese culture with the American one (don’t go too far either way and don’t push).  Also, I had, for the first time ever, someone come up and recognize Kylie from my blog!  Which I mean, come on, is pretty amazing because the room was FULL of Chinese children and Katie was under the table so not noticeable to just anyone passing by!  It was SO cool and honestly, I felt a little bit like a celebrity.    Shout out to her! (She knows who she is, but I don’t want to call out her name to protect her privacy).

Then they had several groups of children dance.  Steve and I videoed from our phones and this is my favorite because the music sounds so similar to what played in the toy we sent Kylie for her first birthday while she was still in China.

Little CNY Dancers

Several other groups of dancers performed as did a young man with a Chinese yo-yo.  All very interesting and great Chinese culture

Then the finale…

I’m telling you…the people who put this on were excellent!  I SO wish I could have experienced this in China.  I think seeing it there would have been unbelievably cool.

Chinese New Year

There were red envelopes with coins in them on the tables for the kids to put in the mouth…

Even though it was really loud, Kylie watched and enjoyed it all perched atop Steve’s shoulders.

It was a great evening and I’m so glad we went.  I can’t wait for next year when Kylie can really enjoy it.