HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!!

2010: YEAR OF THE TIGER

We had a fun time celebrating Chinese New Year with some special friends tonight. This year's gathering was twice as big as last year's, and that was with a couple families not able to attend!

Spencer had other plans tonight, so he wasn't with us for our family picture and was definitely missed!

Before the evening went on too long, we did our best to get a group picture of all the kids. These types of moments are so funny.

Besides playing with toys, the girls had fun making pictures with stickers and crayons. We also enjoyed making foam picture frames with a cute tiger to represent the year of the tiger.

The girls also loved getting a red balloon, which also doubled as part of the table decorations.

But the most memorable part of the evening was getting to light and release paper lanterns. One of the families ordered several of these large paper lanterns and shared them with everyone. They were a BIG hit!


Here is Rick getting our first lantern lit.

Almost ready to be released. You could feel it tugging upwards when it was time to let it go and watch it fly away.

Up they went into the night sky. They were a beautiful sight! (And all you environmentalists can rest easy since they are 100% biodegradable!)


Here we are getting ready to release our second lanter.


We had great food, but Malia loved the oranges best.




And all the girls got to go home with with a take-out box full of goodies!


"Thank you, Daddy, for such a fun evening!"