Chinese New Year at the Bradley/Bryant household

Once again we were invited to celebrate Chinese New Year with our friends Judi and Jama and their family.  It is something we look forward to every January. Every year seems to be a bigger celebration than the year before and the kids and the adults always have the best time.  Every one brings a dish to share (our contribution this year was red panang curry with chicken) and either some red envelopes with money, small toys, or candy to pass around to the kids after dinner for good luck in the coming year.  This year there were also some Chinese parachutes and other fun toys to play with that Casey and Haley brought back from their recent trip to China.

Jessie and Rian led the line of children around the room collecting their goodies in red bags from all the adults. Rian wore her hanbok from Korea, but Jessie decided to leave her Vietnamese ai doi home and wore a Chinese dress instead. 

Little Maya kept stealing all the bracelets with Chinese writing that I had to pass out to the kids.  But she was so cute, I had to let her get away with it :)

Some of the goodies this year included:  red envelopes with money, gold coins, bracelets, chocolate, candy, balloons, and other trinkets to symbollize good things to come in the year of the Dragon!

Jeanine, Jessie's preschool teacher whom we adore, and her husband, Kent.

Cyndi and Shane Ball

Diane, Jama, Shelley, Kirsten and sweet Marit.

It was a fun night for the kids, and I sure enjoyed having some conversations with really nice adults for a change!