Keong hee huat chye!

Our greetings to you this Chinese New Year! I apologize. My computer won't write in Chinese characters...plus I wouldn't know which ones to use, so you get it in Hokkien. (?) : means "congratulations and be prosperous".

We are starting one of our new traditions in celebrating different cultures holidays.

To start out the Chinese New Year, I swept the floors: symbolizing sweeping away all bad feelings or spirits from the previous year. note: you shouldn't sweep a for few days after, or you may sweep away the good spirits entering your home.

"Painted" our door ways with red (hung red ribbon, decorated with Chinese symbols of what we want to gain as a family); symbolizing good wealth and good fortune.

Made papercutouts and hung them in the window.

We made pork and cabbage dumplings and stuck a yen in one. Who ever gets the yen will have goodluck for the rest of the year.

And we ended our night with our version of a "togetherness tray". It was suppose to include sugared tangerines, waterchestnuts, figs, etc...but we settled for yogurt covered raisins and strawberry mentos. :) my, how cultured we are.

Tonight, we will give our offering to the kitchen god and place honey on his picture, so that he'll give good reports to the other gods when he goes back.

Oh, and Larry got the yen. Here's to making Sergeant this year! :)

History...let's keep it that way

This year is a first in many different ways, not only for our family, but for America (as we all know) as well.

Our family's first, was to celebrate Martin Luther King Day the right way. We usually take this day as another celebrated four-day weekend, but I really wanted to take the time to go out and commemorate and meditate on what this great man did for our nation.

We woke bright and early and drove out to Denver for the annual Dr. Martin Luther King marade. Despite being there almost 2 hours early, we were still in the back. It was so overwhelming to see the thousands of people walking in memory for Mr. King and walking towards a new America. I am ever so grateful and humbled by the courage of a man to face what he knew to be a long and terrible journey, and I am even more grateful that our nation has seen the error and is willing to change.

Hurray for January 20th! Congratulations to our 44th President Barrack Obama! I am so excited and ready to do my part in the long journey of change ahead of all of us Americans. I am grateful for our new President in being the voice and motivator for our change and I am overwhelmed to how far our nation has come. I am grateful to see the joy, hope, and pride that African Americans now claim; to come from a long history of hurt, ridicule, and hate, and now see a nation that is as much theirs as any one else's. May that history be far behind us, and may we continue towards a better path.

A Surprised Thankyou!

So, I just had to add this on here, that tonight was such a great night.

Full of confusion, surprise, laughs, chats and gratitude.

My dear friend Emily threw me a surprise b-day party tonight. I literally had NO IDEA! I really think that was a first for me. Usually I have some degree of knowledge that a party is at least in the works....but not this time. Emily had planned a girl's night tonight and I really thought that's what it would be.

If only someone had taken a picture of my face. I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor. It's funny, because my intial thought was that either when everyone yelled, "Surprise!" They were playing a joke on each person that walked in, or that the person they were saying surprise to was coming in behind me. It really was such a great surprise and such a wonderful party. Is it silly that I kept getting all teared up throughout it?

I am so grateful for my friend Emily and all she does for me. I am so grateful for all the wonderful friends that showed up to the party! It is so good to know that I have people here that care for me just as much as I care about them. Thankyou, all so much for the great surprise, the presents, and especially how loved I feel here in Colorado. I think I just might stay here....for awhile, at least. ;)

Me, (that is, if I were Lucille Ball) being surprised....

Snowy Days

I keep getting my hopes up by all of these sunny days, thinking "YEah! Spring!" But the next thing I know, the city is covered in MORE snow!





How do we survive these freezing days? We have our ways....
Making



snowmen...indoors....

And a new found favorite...

Snow cones...well, I guess more like slushes.

What we did for our Christmas Vacation...

Well, I know. This is mucho late and I feel almost like I'm typing up some English project, but I wanted to share the fun we were able to have out in Utah for Christmas this year and hurray! I took pictures! So here is our Christmas highlights!

Relaxation was our goal this trip.

While Larry enjoyed the parents cable

Edana learned how to play Hide and Seek with Aunt Abby.

Jen's relaxation? Eating Momma Jones cookies. Seriously. I would drive to Utah and back for these babies!

Where there is Utah, there is....

SNOW!!!!

Edana could not get enough of it.

Neither could Larry.

We were so lucky to tag along with Abby and see her friends Heather and Cody's baby boy Tatem.

Edana LOVED baby Tatem. On to traditions! We went on the Jones/Eyring tradition of floating down the Provo River gazing at the lights,

where Santa canoed up to the boat and handed out candy. Edana hid from "scarwy" Santa, and wouldn't pop her head out of Larry's coat til he was gone.
Oh, and that's Mike in the ski mask. :)

On Christmas Eve we combined family traditions and celebrated it Jones/Eyring/Scanlon style

We ate yummy food,

played white elephant gifts,

read a Christmas book and the Birth of Jesus, and sang karaoke.

It's times like these when I realize why people must get drunk to enjoy karaoke. ;) It actually was alot of fun singing karaoke mormon style and the highlight of the night was watching Laura look embarrassed by all of our strange American traditions.
Christmas morning was spent with the Jones family.

The night before we opened our new Christmas pj's.

Edana was totally enthralled by opening these cool wrapped boxes

Our little Princess FINALLY got her own princess attire

Momma and Mike got a giant moving spider-from us, I might add

Maggie FINALLY got THE Christmas! Laura didn't seem to let down that she was with us and not in GermanyOh, and multiple games of Harry Potter Scene It. I love that game. ( I had to add this picture, which should have been my first clue that Abby was going to take me down at Scene It)

On to our Scanlon Christmas!
The girls had a blast in their new tent.
Kyra was more into unwrapping presents than anyone else!

Edana enjoyed playing with her cousins.

And we actually had Christmas where all of us kids were there!

To end our fun holiday celebration, not only did we get the flu and THEN give it to EVERYONE else (how nice of us) but we celebrated my birthday Murder Mystery Style.
The characters:

Addler the gambler and Silky the *ehem* "hotel" owner.

Mr. "S" the easily payed off district attorney and "Torchy" the sexy club singer

"Socks" the golfer/club owner and Molly the wealthy mobster

And Billy "The Kid" the pitcher for a pro baseball team and "Scoop" the "tell it like it is" news reporter

We all waz called cuz Eddie da Mobster waz missin. We met at da Speak eazy down town and tried to figgur out who wooda wanttid Eddie ded.Who dunnit?

Play it yourself and find out! It was way fun and even cute little Lizzy got into it. :)

I even got a yummy lava cupcake with a twisty candle! It totally made my day, especially after being sick the night before.

And that's what we did for our Christmas Vacation! WHeW!