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So, did you notice the new blog design? Sorry if it's a bit intense, but these are the traditional colors for Chinese New Year! Kai and Mouse are excited about it being the Year Of The Rat, so we thought we should jazz things up here on the blog for a while.

Our local Chinese cultural society, The Northwest Chinese Cultural Association, puts on a fantastic CNY celebration that we had been looking forward to since we attended it last year. We bought outfits for the boys in Guangzhou last summer mainly for them to wear at this event. So Sunday morning we were a little distressed when it began to snow. HARD! In just a couple hours we had enough accumulation that the boys went sledding with our neighbor Susannah...

As fun as it was to play in, we were feeling really disappointed that we might miss the CNY party. Fortunately it stopped snowing and began to warm up enough that we decided to risk the roads and go for it. The main roads were all clear, and it appeared that our neighborhood got more snow than most of the rest of town so we had no problem getting to the the event.

The boys really had a great time and the entertainment was excellent. We ended up getting there a bit late, but we had planned on sitting on the floor so we could see the performers better. We worried about how the boys would hold up for the whole time, but they did absolutely great, and really enjoyed the music and dance performances. There were quite a few kids there that were dressed in traditional costumes. I think Kai's and Shen's outfits were some of the cutest, though their friend Jason, whose family is Taiwanese, had a similar, but much fancier one on. It was cute seeing the three of them hanging out together. Our little friend Mimi was there too which always makes for a good time.

Here's a video of Chuen-Ying Cheng playing the guzheng. You can see the kids a little at the beginning...

Here's a photo of one of the dancers...


And here's a photo I managed to get of the boys with Mimi...

Chinese New Year starts on February 7th this year. We're getting more in tune with the different cultural events that go on around here now, so we've got a pretty full schedule for the next few weeks. Let's see, it goes something like this...

Sunday January 20th
Chinese New Year Crafts for Children
at the Whatcom Children's Museum

Sunday, January 27
NWCCA's Chinese New Year Celebration
with...
Lion Dance
Chinese Clappertale by Dr. Jan Walls (you should click this link, he's really good!)
Guzheng & Dizi Concert
Chinese Dance Performances
Hong Bao & Lucky draw

Saturday, February 2nd
1:30 to 3:30 Sunny's Chinese Language School CNY Party
4:00 to 7:00 Children's House International CNY Party

Sunday, February 10th
Vancouver CNY Parade

Sunday, February 17
3:00 PM Bellingham Chinese Culture Festival Concert
at the Mount Baker Theater

We went to the Children's Museum today with the boys and had a fun time. There were a bunch of families from our adoption agency there and we got to see a lot of friends. The craft room there is pretty small so we were really packed in there. Kai and Shen did a good job working through a couple of the craft projects and then got to run around and play.

The boys are pretty excited about Chinese New Year this year. You know, 2008 is going to be the Year Of The Rat, so Stinky Mouse is quite pumped about it! We made the boys some new Stinky Mouse CNY shirts to wear to the event today and they were both very happy with them.

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Shen is planning on taking it with him when he goes. We have three ride on cars for the boys to share. Shen insists on always having the one with the largest trunk which he packs so full of toys the seat won't close properly. Then he takes a purse, packs it full to the brim and hangs it off the back. This is usually all accompanied by his overstuffed backpack or other extra bag of stuff.

This kind of behavior is actually quite common in children who have lived in institutional settings. We're glad Shen is just hoarding toys and not food. It actually seems to be more of a control thing. If he has all the toys packed away, then nobody else can use them. We do pretty well at having two of most toys available for the boys, but still he worries over who has what. At night after we put him and Kai to bed we go around and unload all his stashes. Hopefully we'll see this behavior diminish, but in the meantime he's building up his endurance packing all this stuff around.

Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love, time is eternity.
-- Henry Van Dyke

We haven't played Loving Lydia's Family Foto Fun Friday in a while (I think I write that every time I play) but I really enjoy this week's subject. The "Then" photos I used for both boys are photos received of them both slightly before we traveled to get them. Kai's was taken by his nannies with a disposable camera we sent them. Shen's was taken by a family that traveled to adopt a child from Xi'an shortly before we traveled.

CLICK HERE to see who else is playing this week!

I think I have complained on the blog before about Stinky Mouse's ability to go AWOL when it's time for bed. It just seems odd, that an object like Stinky-Mouse, which is always laying around or gripped in Kai's fist, can somehow go missing so often at 8:00PM. We refer to our routine search for him "The Mouse Hunt". Usually when we find him he's lying behind a dining room chair, or fallen beside the couch, or dropped in an uncommon spot. Shen has noticed the attention Kai receives through this energy we put to this and he began asking us to retrieve GoJee, the oversized stuffed monkey he as adopted as his Transitional Object. The one redeeming thing about Da GoJee's size is that he is always easy to find, if he gets dropped somewhere odd he is easily spotted.

At least he used to be. Over the last couple weeks he has grown harder and harder to find each night. Da GoJee is no longer just being dropped in the odd location. He has begun showing up in closets, cabinets, baskets, the pantry, the dryer. As you can imagine, The GoJee Hunt has grown into something far more impressive than The Mouse Hunt ever hoped to be. It's now become full on Hide & Seek. New Year's Eve we actually couldn't find him at all. Shen did his best to try and cry over the loss of GoJee, but he wasn't upset about it enough to tell us where GoJee was. Finally he had to go to bed without him. He was missing all day New Year's Day as well. At dinner time I took some recycling out to the garage and that's when I found him. He had been tossed into the recycling bins. The garage is the big boys' space, and "the Littles" aren't to be out there on their own, and the recycling is in a closet that is always kept shut. Shen seemed genuinely happy to have Da GoJee back, but I think he was a little disappointed we managed to find him. I am worried to find out where Da GoJee will try hiding next.

Well, sort of busy. Tina and I have been staying up way too late at night this vacation, so we've been pretty lazy around here in the mornings. We did get out of the house at noon yesterday to go downtown to the Federal Building and turn in the application for Shen's Social Security Card. We took his Certificate of Citizenship, Adoption Decree, Birth Certificate, and Chinese passport with us. They aren't clear on their website as to what's required, but we seemed to have it covered. After we finished that chore, we dropped off the over-due library books, then went to the Children's Museum. The museum had free admission, and there was a wagon drawn by a two-horse team of beautiful black Percheron draft horses giving free free rides. The boys enjoyed the ride, and really liked getting to run around inside the children's museum, even though it was a bit crowded. After that we stopped at the store to pick up some things for dinner, then we walked across the street to the neighbor's for a New Year's Eve potluck dinner party.

I don't have a lot of good party clothes, so I decided to wear a shirt I bought in Xi'an for Chinese New Year. It's a red muslin short-sleeved shirt with a Mandarin collar and frog-knot buttons. It's definitely looks "Chinese" but isn't the silk pajama type thing. When Kai saw me in this he insisted that we let him wear the new Chinese New Year outfit we got him in August. Which meant of course that Shen had to wear his as well. I managed to get this above photo of them together in front of the tree, and even though Shen has his finger in his mouth, I think my mother will be impressed that this photo only took 6 shots to get.

We couldn't believe the number of people from our past we ran into yesterday. At the Children's Museum we saw a couple families from the pre-school, but the kicker was seeing a young man who we knew as the child of a co-worker at the daycare Tina and I worked at when we were in college. Little Jacob is now 32 and was at the children's museum with his wife and three children! At the grocery store we ran into an old friend of mine who I used to do computer consulting for nearly 20 years ago. Then in the check-out line we saw a woman from the church we used to attend. We hadn't seen one another in over 10 years. She and her husband were a bit of an inspiration to us in regards to adoption. They had two sons, and adopted a girl after their boys were older. They encouraged us to wait until we were really ready to add to our family. She was really excited to meet the little boys. While we were visiting with her on our way out we ran into another woman from the same church who adopted a daughter from Korea. Her daughter is now 23 and just this last september they travelled together to Korea where they were able to meet her daughter's birth-mother. She said it was a really wonderful experience for all of them.

We spent the evening at our neighbor's house enjoying a potluck dinner party. There were lots of old friends from our days at the Waldorf school that we had a great time catching up with. Kai and Shen had a blast at the party. There were some bigger kids there that played with them, and a number of adults that were down on the floor rough-housing and giving horsey-rides. Tina and I barely saw them most of the time we were there. We left the party around 10:00 PM and put the boys to bed. We hadn't let them nap earlier so they passed right out. We proceeded to stay up and watch the Times Square Ball Drop and then part of a movie. This morning afternoon we're all moving pretty slow. Our goal is to get the tree down, and then Cam and Brittni are coming over for dinner.