On Tuesday we celebrated the Chinese New year with Nanny and Jo Jo. When the kids were younger they loved making Chinese New Year crafts and Chinese food. This year we didn’t have time to make decorations with Izzy but we read our Chinese New Year books and ordered a Chinese! Here are some snapshots of our evening:
Danny loves using chopsticks- when he was younger he would only ever eat Chinese food with them and used to get annoyed at me for preferring a knife and fork! So we handed out chopsticks for the kids. In the end only Isabelle and Rebecca persevered with them. During the meal we had a Chinese Trivia Quiz- which led to interesting conversations and much laughter. I think we all learnt something new!
The kids love knowing what Chinese new Year animal all of their family and friends are. They’re often overheard having conversations like, “Is Jo a Pig?”, “No, she’s a horse!” It sounds really funny. They love the story of how the Chinese New Year animals were chosen and often retell it using family members instead of the animal names, so Caitlyn (the Rat) wins the race because she hitches a lift on Daddy (the Ox)’s shoulders and so on. It’s very funny.
After our delicious meal we opened up our Fortune Cookies (which are accidental vegan by the way!). Every year Rebecca means to make them herself and I’m sure she will one day!
We took turns reading out our fortunes.
We all have an exciting year ahead it seems!
We had a lovely evening. I find school nights are so busy and days can just run into one another. It’s lovely to take a “night off” and be able to spend a school evening with family.
The Year of the Dog may have made way for Year of the Pig but everyday is still a dog day with lovely Toby dog around. He had lots of fun too.
Happy Chinese New Year / Lunar New Year everybody!
Gung Hei Fat Choy! (Cantonese for “Wishing you great happiness and prosperity!”)
Gong Xi Fa Cai! (Mandarin for “May you gain greater wealth!”)
