Every year we say that we are going to go into Chinatown for the CNY parade but every year it is too cold, too rainy, or we are too tired :) Good thing, then, that we have an AWESOME CNY festival at our local mall. They really go all out decorating the whole mall with dragons and lanterns for the 2 day festival full of dancers, martial artists, and other performers.
It is great to see everyone come together for the activities and it is always fun to see the Chinese-American children (as well as many adopted Chinese children) wear their traditional outfits and enjoy the show. This is the first year that we had Chinese outfits for all of the kids (yeah to spending too much money in China!!!!) but we were unsure of Mr. I'm A Self-Conscious 8 Year Old would put himself out there like that. Much to our surprise he was enthusiastic about it and all of the kids looked great (we got many compliments!).
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This is Jack (in the red outfit) feeding his lucky red envelope to the lion. Notice Ben is no where near him... he was screaming in terror on the side :)
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Okay, so this is Ben pretending to be one of the martial artists he just saw (this went on for DAYS!), Annie smiling while holding on to her prize that she won in the coloring contest, Jack rockin the dragon outfit, and Catherine looking bored and wondering why on earth she was not given a nap today.
