The Year of the Dog

Next Saturday, we will be celebrating the Chinese New Year. This is the biggest holiday on the Chinese calendar and we are throwing a party.

We have invited all of Mimi's sisters and families from our travel group and Terry and I are going to attempt to entertain 15 children ages 1-5 in a traditional Chinese holiday fashion.

One very important tradition is the lion dance. This is usaully performed by the top martial arts students and is quite an honor to perform. This dance brings good luck(of course) for the coming year. I had found a lion dance costume at a monderful store called Pearl River(www.pearlriver.com). We have it on our piano and Mimi loves it. I would think any child would be completely freaked out by it but Mimi and Terry wear the costume and dance around the house. We will be having a shadow puppet show, a parade of the lanterns, and fireworks(the kids jumping up and down on bubble wrap).

I also read about an ancient tree that Chinese people visit, they write their wishes on a little scroll and attach their wsh to an orange. They then proceed to throw the oranges up to this ancient tree in hopes that it will stick and their wish will come true.

I would like to have the children throw oranges into our tree but Terry thinks I am nuts.

We will also be eating some traditional Chinese foods and making a lot of noise with pots and pans and little mini drums.

I will let you know how it all turns out.