Happy (Chinese) New Year!

We weren't organized enough to do a holiday party this year so we did a post-holiday party in celebration of Chinese New Year and the year of the dragon. As usual, I was up until 2am the night before getting ready because it's impossible to do anything once the kids are awake. I actually planned to have a babysitter here from 5pm on so that I would be able to finish cooking, but that was a disaster. Diego went BALLISTIC. He has never had a babysitter around while he is awake and clearly he didn't approve of the idea. I ended up carrying Diego and instructing her what to finish cooking! poor girl. Diego was fast asleep by the time people came over and Charlie was headed to bed, but just as we were saying goodnight his friend Ehren came over and sabotaged bedtime. They ended up running around upstairs until he decided he needed to go to bed and sent her away. Once things were settled upstairs, things deteriorated downstairs pretty quickly thanks to Carlos handing out shots early in the evening. That wasn't the only unfortunate news - it turns out that, according to the Chinese zodiac, Carlos and I (dog - dragon) combination are considered "a truly tumultous affair - not recommended for peace of mind." Oh well - I thought we were doing pretty well.

Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to take pictures, but we had fun decorating the house with chinese laterns, a long dragon along the ceiling and a chinese flag courtesy of our neighbors who used to live there. Charlie and I painted our toe nails red for the evening.

Despite people consuming a lot of food (including 150 fortune cookies!), we still have an absurd amount of Chinese left overs on my back porch.

On Sunday I took Charlie out while Diego and Carlos napped and was surprised how nice it was to just hang out with him. He is at the age that he is a fun companion even though we did boring routine things. After doing boring errands we both needed an afternoon treat so we went to a coffee shop and I got a latte and he got a muffin and we sat down to discuss life. It was so pleasant and fulfilling.

Charlie has been working on his writing and it's been so much fun to see his progress. Today I stayed at his school for morning meeting and group time where he wrote me a letter. Admittedly I suggested the content :) Clearly he needs to work on a few things, but I thought it was pretty cute.

Here is Diego playing with coffee beans with baby Emma at Kathleen's house.