Year of the Horse

This weekend we had our post-holiday holiday party to ring in the Chinese New year.  One guest came in and actually asked if one of us was Chinese which was comical for many reasons, but mostly because of how un-authentic it was....right down to the oozing chocolate fountain!  Nevertheless we had a great time seeing everyone and ended up with way too many leftovers, as usual.  The most surreal/comical/painful part of the preparation was going to the Chinese grocery store in Virginia on Chinese New Year's Eve.  Bad idea!  Me and every person of Chinese descent were fighting the narrow aisles with crappy broken grocery carts.  For good or for bad, I couldn't understand what anyone was was saying to me (cursing at me?) or any of the labels.  Oddly, all the workers were hispanic....  Try picking out the right rice wine when this is what you are faced with:

A row of various rice wines, none of which had any english on the label...

Charlie and Diego helped me pack gold coins into little red envelopes and hang them on branches I made them collect during the polar vortex.  And they cut open the 150 fortune cookies I bought which came in individual bags!!


The kids had an eventful evening as well because they had a pseudo-sleepover.  Cici came to "sleep" here until the party was over.  "sleeping" didn't seem to be one of the main activities however.  We'd go up to check on them and all three of them would be coloring by the nightlight or crammed into the closet looking for some elusive item, or parading to the bathroom to get water.....Despite my annoyance at them still pitter-pattering around at 10pm, they were pretty cute.  They wrote each other notes in case one ever moved away so they could remember each other.  Cici wrote this "Diego you rook (rock) so do you charlie" and Charlie made her a folded note with a secret note inside which was decorated with a heart.  I hope to see more of this type of behavior and less of charlie's wrestling/fighting motif.  Finally around 11pm they all crashed.

Super Bowl sunday was fun too with our chili tradition at Lisa and Toby's house.  They have this rolling betting system and Charlie seems to win every year!  This year he won $20 of which only $5 seemed to get from his father to him.  The $5 promptly went into his treasure chest as he debated what to invest the money in...most likely pokemon or baseball cards he says....Sofia enjoyed herself too because there were three pre-teen girls there who fell over themselves giving her attention.  The 11 year old gave me her number so that she could come over for a playdate with Sofia :).   

Given the cold weather, we've been visiting various museums.  My favorite is the building museum - it is the perfect amount of open space for them to run around and cool activities for all three to enjoy.  The picture on the left is a (almost) family (outline) portrait of charlie, diego and me holding Sofia.  If you stand still the tetrus blocks fill in your outline, but as soon as you move they fall down.  Clearly Charlie did the best of all of us standing still....