Chinese New Year

We had a fun time celebrating the Chinese New Year this weekend. We started off by making steamed buns. I am usually the one to make these, but this time it was a joint effort with everyone in the family doing a part. I thought they turned out really well. The two types that we do most often are cheese filled and taro filled. This time we burnt the taro though, so we actually used a white sweet potato with purple food coloring. 

While those were rising, we also ate some Dan Bings (scrambled up egg fried with a tortilla on top, then rolled up and cut into bite sized pieces. They are super simple, but really yummy. Here is a picture from the internet of them. We also had some time to watch a lion dance video and look at some of our pictures from our trip to Taiwan two and a half years ago.

Our children played outside in the snow for a while after that. The past couple days it has snowed a ton and it is supposed to keep going for all next week. They spent about an hour building forts and then had an epic snowball fight. It was so intense that our neighbor even came over to watch.

Then we played a few Chinese games. We modified one to use pillows instead of bean bags and chairs instead of drawing squares on the floor. This was a pretty simple one where you throw your pillow onto a chair, then the second person goes. If their pillow lands on the same chair, they get two points and you get zero. If theirs lands on the other chair, you both get one point. And if someone doesn't have a pillow on a chair, that person just gets zero and the other person gets one point. We played to 10 and Julia was the big winner. We also played another one with dropping pennies and trying to get yours to land on someone else's. 

The favorite part of the day for our children was when they got the Hong Baos (Red Envelopes). For dinner we had some pot stickers, sticky rice, tofu, and some other sides. 

We got to talk on zoom with my parents and some of my siblings after that. That was especially fitting since one of my siblings and his family live in Hong Kong (where they actually celebrate the Chinese New Year) and another of my siblings and her family live Japan (where they celebrate the Lunar New Year).

We finished the night by watching the new Mulan again.

I think we all wish that the new Mulan had some of the parts that the cartoon one had (sad not to see Mushu in in), but the new story is also pretty good.

It is exciting to think that next year we will be in Taiwan to celebrate the Chinese New Year. That will be toward the start of our seven month stay there.