Chinese New Years Eve

Asians clearly love Costco, more than Americans, if that's even possible. This is a picture I shot as I ran the Costco gauntlet the day before CNY Eve. Two words: Mad House. But at least we have a Costco here, right?
Aly had a CNY performance at school. She wore her New Year's dress and yes, I know it's actually Korean, but it's so much more Aly than the Chinese style.
They did a Dragon dance and the children all got under the dragon to participate. Aly kept popping her head out to make sure Ashley and I were watching. Besides when she later stole the microphone and performed yet another impromptu number- I think the dragon dancing was her favorite part.
The next morning a big surprise showed up at breakfast. No, not a bright-eyed-bushy-tailed-ready-for-the-day Mom (some dreams just can't come true) but an even better UNCLE SHAYN!!!!
My children stalked their Aunt and Uncles room their entire visit, employing tactics of turning the lights on and off since the switch is right outside their room, quiet knocks that eventually turned into pounds and even little eyeballs and fingers under the door before sunrise. To say they were excited to play and wrestle with Shayn is a gross understatement. They lived for it.
Nathan finally arrived back home (!) in time for CNY's Eve and that day he and Shayn took the kids to Yu Kids Island while Ashley and I ran around to get the last minute prep for our dinner in order.
We put a lot of thought and effort into decorations and food. We didn't want Chinese food cuz... well, because it ain't P.F. Chang's frankly. So we decided to have hamburgers since anything round is supposed to be good luck. Traditionally you are also supposed to have a whole fish and not eat all of it so that you have plenty the coming year, even more than enough. Instead we had a bag of really good chips and didn't eat all of those. Apples to apples? maybe more like Fish to chips. Close enough I say.
We had a fun candlelit dinner amid all of the red and gold and hanging lanterns. The kids enjoyed their meal near by- the gold brick in the middle of their table? Kohen was insistent we buy that decoration, I still have no idea what the draw was, he has has no concept of gold's worth so I think he just liked it.
After dinner we headed out on the balcony area to light off some serious fireworks. This is done throughout CNY to scare off evil spirits. If ours scared off the darn stray cat that keeps tearing our trash open and spreading it around, I'd feel it a success.
This is Nathan channeling the pyro inside always ready to come out when he hears the word "fireworks". We all played with massive sparklers before Shayn and Nathan went up to the upper balcony to shoot off the big guns.
It was quite the show and nice to light off ginormous fireworks without worrying since they're far from illegal here.

Then things got a little wild/weird when we gave the children a small/cheap CNY present that had these hilarious dress up hats we found for a couple bucks. Without discussing it all 3 kind of morphed into the character they'd been given.

Take me to your leader

Aly the bee was running around laughing like a mad woman and then all of a sudden she ran up to Nathan, stopped. poked him with her finger and said simply, "sting!" Was it just cuz we were tired? cuz we laughed very hard over that move.

The dragon/lizard guy pounced on his prey

In the end I figured, if you can't beat em... you know....