Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's the year of the Snake!

We're celebrating here in Singapore with everything red and gold.

Today was a fun day to ditch the uniforms and celebrate the Chinese culture here.

The kids got to wear beautiful Chinese traditional dress.

This is the first year Ben had any interest in wearing something more than an old red t-shirt. He warms up slowly, but he enjoyed being a part this year.

Here they are ready to go to school.

Tuesday night we had the LDS missionaries to dinner and enjoyed our Prosperity Salad.

I knew the kids would LOVE to do it so I bought one at the grocery and we had a blast tossing the salad together.

Brian searched online and found some of the history and meaning as best we could figure. I added the 15+ ingredients as he told us the meaning. Seemed to us to all be signifying 15 different ways to say "wealth" or "prosperity". With a few "posterity" thrown in for good measure.

Why then, did I know the kids would love it so much? Because everyone actually TOSSES the salad with chopsticks all at the same time as you yell out "Gong Xi Fa Cai!!". It's loud and messy and crazy fun.

When we finished there was salad everywhere! And smiles too.

Over dinner we talked of other cool CNY festivites we could recommend to the missionaries. Lion Dancers topped our list and I promised to tell them if I heard when and where. The very next day I got wind of one at Jacob's school.

So, Friday I took the elders to the school so they could see a lion dance. It was pretty cool to watch and they really enjoyed it.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!!!