January

I decided to celebrate Chinese New Year for FHE on the 23rd. Emily absolutely loves orange chicken and ham fried rice and was SO excited. We moved the table and chairs away and sat on blankets and pillows to eat dinner (under some chinese lanterns of course).

 I googled some chinese new year games and ideas to do after dinner. One of them was to play rock, paper, scissors while sitting on the stairs. When someone wins they get to move up a step and whoever reaches the top first wins. So Jeff & Emily played a few rounds winning skittles at the end. Jacob was a bit young to understand but he still had fun playing along.

 At the end of the night the kids got to do a treasure hunt. I had all the clues in 'fortune cookies'. The prize at the end was a red chinese envelope with money in it (apparently another new year tradition). The kids were really cute and it was a lot of fun to do. Maybe next time I can plan far enough in advance that we could dig out all of Jeff's China souvenirs that are in storage.

We had Jeff's guitar out and the kids both wanted a turn playing. I keep begging Jeff to pick it up and learn to play again. He argues he doesn't have time. Maybe one day I'll have a good rebuttal. In the meantime I think all three of them looked really cute strumming those strings.  

Jeff cleaned our carpets on the 21st and Jacob had to take a turn helping.

My sister-in-law asked if I'd take a few pictures of her cute new baby Molly. The kids seemed more than happy to 'help' one day as I was experimenting with the light in different parts of the house at different times during the day.

 One of the final products. Molly is SUCH a cute baby! Every time I see this picture I just want to snuggle her and smother her in kisses.