Gung Hay Fat Choi!

Happy New Year!

Hannah and I celebrated with a group of friends earlier this month and what fun we had!  Many of us became friends a number of years ago while we were waiting to become parents and now it’s a treat to celebrate with our children home!  I still marvel all the time at how blessed we are that God brought Hannah and I together in this most wonderful way to become a family!

It was sweet to look in and see some of the girls gathered around listening to a story being read to them.  (At first I thought it was a CNY story but then I looked closer and realized it was a ‘Frozen’ story.  No surprise there!)

After dining on an Asian potluck dinner, there was the gathering of red envelopes.   This was new to L but she caught on quick and as the most recently home member of our group, everyone oooed and ahhhed over her!  Welcome to Canada Baby L!!!

The kids disappeared after gathering their envelopes so after a few minutes I went to see where Hannah was.  This scene just made me giggle!  Red envelopes ripped open and coins everywhere.

The kids all took turns wearing the dragon as they paraded around playing musical instruments.  We’ve sometimes done this outside in the past but frigid temps easily determined this parade was happening in the warmth of the house!  (LOL…check out some of the boots!  There were almost 50 of us gathered together!  Oh how we cherish these friends who share similar stories to ours!)

Gung Hei Fat Choi from Hannah and I!

2014 CNY Celebrations

Hannah and I shared 2 weekends of CNY celebrations with family and friends.

She was invited to take in her story books to school and also shared red envelopes with gold chocolate coins with her classmates. 

We kicked off our celebrations at our favourite Chinese food buffet with Grandma.  Cotton candy for dessert.  LOL – not your typical CNY dessert!

The day after this we braved the snow and went to a mall about a 1/2 hour away to celebrate with a local Chinese Cultural Centre.  We enjoyed walking around listening to the beautiful Chinese music, watching people create neat things like paper hearts, and Hannah’s name written in Chinese.

Face painting is always a hit with my girl and this little panda was adorable!

There was a place set up where the children could also try Chinese calligraphy.  She really enjoyed this and practiced for about 20 mins before asking to move on.

Once we left we went to celebrate with friends from our agency.  I love the friendships our girls share!

Debbie made this beautiful cake to celebrate the year of the horse.

While the adults were chatting around the dinner table the girls were playing upstairs.  It’s amazing how much noise 4 little girls can make!  We were sure they were going to come through the roof so E and I went up to check in.  We laughed when we saw what our creative little girls were doing!!

Thanks for hosting such a great party Debbie, Dave and Charlotte!  We love being invited to share in your travel group celebrations!

Our final celebration was with a group of friends, many who live locally and a few who drove a distance in the snow to join in the celebration.  Back in 2006 all of us began to attend a Waiting Mommies group and now we all have our children home to share in the celebrations!  Perfect!!

Opening their red envelopes.

A wonderful time of celebration Gong Hey Fat Choy!!

Gung Hay Fat Choi!

This past week has been one filled with lots of wonderful celebrations as Hannah and I celebrated Chinese New Year with many friends.

Our first party was a large one with many other families and was hosted by our local Families with Children from China (FCC) group.  We attended it with a group of friends from our agency who travelled to Hunan the summer after Hannah and I were there.  Hannah was most excited to have her face painted like a beautiful butterfly and she spent much time enjoying her new look in a little mirror they gave her.

Hannah and Charlotte enjoy playing together whenever our families are together.

We enjoyed a delicious 10 course Chinese dinner with friends and my sweet butterfly fell asleep in the car on the way home.   She was sad but understanding the next morning when we had to use moisturizer and a few baby wipes to remove her butterfly before church.

The second CNY party was a bit of an impromptu one when last Friday’s storm caused us to reschedule a party with friends.  I live on a major street so it was kept ploughed.  Some of the side streets, Ange’s included did not have their streets ploughed until more than 24 hours after the storm which kept them housebound.  Liz had ordered a cake that needed to be picked up so she also picked up Asian food  for us in the same plaza.  She had to be creative when she came to some snow drifts but made it through.  These storms cause for creative driving for sure!

When she and Ava arrived we took some pics of our little sweeties dressed in their Chinese finery.

This is one the Liz snapped and it made me LOL as it captures (errr….tries to capture!) Hannah perfectly!  This is my girl for sure!!

e are the girls posing with the beautiful cake Liz had ordered for our party. It’s easy to say we only put a dent into it but it appeared bigger as the girls both wanted the snake so we cut it right down the middle!

Sunday afternoon Hannah and I volunteered to take dessert to lunch at Nana and Papa’s house so we made a combo Valentine’s/CNY cake.

We were able to reschedule Friday’s party to Sunday afternoon.  Here Hannah is playing with Ava’s lion costume.

It was wonderful to celebrate this special day with great friends!  Julia brought fun snake crafts for the kids.

Not to be outdone by the bigger kids, Grayson worked on a craft too but quickly ditched the plate in favour of painting the tray of his high chair.

As the kids are getting older it’s getting a little easier to take a group shot.

My cheesy girl showing off her red envelopes.

From Hannah and I, Gung Hay Fat Choi!

Fun Times with Ava

Over the past couple of weeks Hannah has had fun doing some special things with her friend Ava!

On Jan 12th we took the girls to see the Disney Princess’ show and they had a blast!  Even though neither girl had seen any of the stories portrayed, just being there, seeing the Princesses plus their pals Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy was all these girls needed!

A wonderful Disney fix before our next trip.

Next was a quick snowy play date last Saturday.  I’m glad we took advantage of this time as the rain Monday washed all the snow away. 

Monday night we celebrated CNY with Liz and Ava in their home.  What fun we had and it was decorated wonderfully!

Chop stick fun!

Eating long noodles is a CNY tradition.  This year Hannah enjoyed plain noodles with butter until we can see an allergist and rule out a peanut allergy.  She was just as happy with those noodles so that worked out just fine for her!

Our cute, giggly girls checking out the dragons.

Kung Hay Fat Choy!  Happy Year of the Dragon!

CNY Party with Friends

Sunday afternoon we were invited to Ange and Gavin’s to celebrate CNY/Tet with some of our friends.  I will be forever grateful for the friends I made as I was waiting for Hannah and now those friendships continue to grow as we have many connections with friends who not only share our journey but also for Hannah’s sake, look like our family.  I believe having that connection is very important for her both now and in the future.  Adoption may be what brought us together but friendship now ties us together.

This weekend 5 families got together to celebrate.  Aren’t they cute?!!

Hannah playing with her new little friend Isabel.

Since this year we were celebrating the year of the dragon we found a cute little dragon craft for the kiddos to make.  They did so well!

My little love hard at work making her paper chain.

Final step….fedders!

Hannah with her finished ‘dragon muppet’.  Great job Hannah!  (Instructions can be found here.)

The highlight of the night was the amazing cake that Ange made!!  It was a Canadian version of M3’s awesome Dragon Cake!  We weren’t able to find single coloured M&M’s so she substituted with gummy hearts and it looked AH-MA-ZING!!!  Way to go Ange!!

This kids (ok, and adults too!) couldn’t wait to dig into it!

Happy New Year everyone!!