This year's Chinese New Year was especially festive. I guess since Covid shutting down everything the previous year, many families including ours want to gather with family to celebrate the Chinese New Year. However, we are still very cautious of many places to avoid, so we mainly celebrate with family and friends in small group settings.
Abbey continued her tradition of Chinese calligraphy writing New Year symbolic phrases to put on doors. She even got FF interested to practice writing with the paint brushes.
Since the kids spend so much time online, Abbey found a great idea online as well. She challenged everyone in the family to make sesame balls from scratch. The challenge was accepted and the winner would receive an additional 'red pocket' as a reward. All three of them went online to find their recipe and method to cook it. Dad will judge the outcome of the final product on looks, taste, texture, and consistency. All three spent quite some time to make some great sesame balls, even mom made some of the sesame balls herself.
It is a tradition that on New Years day morning, parents give their kids red envelopes and little words of blessings to their kids. And this year was not exception. Since we are trying to maintain the kids Chinese language they must say several words of good fortune in Cantonese before receive the red envelopes. This is good practice for them to keep trying to maintain the language.
Another tradition is that after the first day, we go visit family and relatives to have meals with them too. We visited several family relatives and 'open the new year' with them. This year is Dawen's first year in the new house and with new baby Dalayna. She is just adorable. We also get to play with Dawen's nephew that's full of energy and love playing with our kids.
Before heading to Da's parents house to have "Family New Year Dinner", Abbey made some delicious turnip cake and duck feet.
Once we get to Da's parents house, the adults all took turns to give red pockets to all the kids and give them small blessing words in exchange. There was definitely a very festive atmosphere.
Da's parents always look forward to this occasion and cook up a feast for their three children, children's spouses, and six grandkids. Although they're old, they're still very happy cooking up so much food.
