Happy Chinese New Year!

One thing I've learned about being a mom is that holidays are even more important when you have kids. They're something fun to look forward to and break up the monotony of the everyday. Especially when you've been snowed inside all week! I'd been planning on celebrating Chinese New Year for a while but since we had nothing else to do, some might say I went overboard. The girls wore Chinese/Japanese dress-ups all day.
We read several library books. An especially good one told us about the signs for the year we were born and the characteristics of people born in that year. Some were dead on! We ate Japanese noodles and edamame for lunch.

I made my mom's famous Sweet and Sour Chicken. It was a huge hit so I may make it more often if I can figure out how to cut the calories. I'll post the recipe on the Lazerbeams Love Food blog.

We made a Chinese dragon puppet and had a parade, set to traditional Chinese music (compliments of Pandora, my new friend). We watched the Chinese news channel on TV and even though we didn't understand a bit, we were able to talk about the differences.

Overall, it was a great way to spend snowed-in day number three!