Yinghua Chinese New Year Pageant 2014

The Chinese New Year pageant put on by Yinghua becomes more and more the capstone to our holiday season each year. We get so happy thinking about it and so excited to see what the teachers and kids have come up with.  This year's performance clocked in at 2 hours 40 minutes!

Held at Bethel University again - and this space barely holds us now! Over 500 students were participating!

 

Here's our girl!

Winter Carnival Snow Sculptures

It was a cold, windy, sunny day here in the Twin Cities but it's expected to get even colder next week. We used the clear skies as an excuse to cross the street into the State Fairgrounds to check out the St. Paul Winter Carnival's snow-sculpting contest.

About a dozen 10-foot cubes of compacted snow were delivered onto the Kidway of Machinery Hill this week, and today was a working day for the sculptor teams to put their creations together.  This year a new feature was added; a giant snow slide that Wynn and I took a ride on (very fast and no way to brake...)

They had speakers up around the perimeter of the grounds playing Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers tunes - it's cold enough now as I write this in the evening that I can hear the music, and we are about a mile away...

That's Wynn and Baba in the orange sled!

 

Click on this picture to expand - notice the little grey clay model on the snow chunk in front - that's the pattern the sculptor is trying to achieve with the big piece

8 years of awesomeness!

After a mid-day visit from Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa Ben with the gift of a nice jewelry box / music box (which Wynn immediately wanted to take apart to figure out how it works), the fun times kicked in again before dinner when Grandma Barb, Grandpa Ken, and Uncle Paul came by the house - and take-out from our local Sichuan restaurant was on the menu!

Showing off her knitting work!

Looking for Uncle Paul, who's bringing the food...

Not even all of it!  Two different kinds of duck - tea-smoked and crispy ... both were scrumptious

Dragon cake!

Learning the basics of chess with Uncle Paul

Our girl is so smart and so beautiful and interested in so many different things - it is so wonderful to have her in our lives!

Birthday Breakfast

It's going to be Asian food all day by Wynn's request - she's 8 years old today!

A fairly authentic northern-Chinese breakfast - on the left, deep-fried sesame-coated rice balls with red-bean filling; two different kinds of oranges in the middle; steamed pork bao on the right

She was excited to see what I was making - and told me the significance of each item before we started eating!

Happy New Year 2014!

No big trip this Winter Break - the biggest journey we took this season was to Hogwarts as we introduced Wynn to Harry Potter. Finished Book 1 yesterday and showed her the first movie today.  She is still trying to get her head around the idea that we had to wait about a year and a half between the books!  ("Now, imagine that the next book we'll read sometime between third and fourth grade!")

New Year's Day was cold - we had lunch at Masu at the Mall of America, but the service was dreadfully slow.

Bored, bored, bored

The Polar Vortex descended on Minnesota today, and Governor Dayton has closed all the schools tomorrow, so Wynn and Ann are getting one more bonus day of Winter Break. They'll be picking up the house & getting ready to go back to school Tuesday...

Sick day on vacation

Wynn and Ann were both fighting a flu bug and not having much success Sunday night; Ann was really out of it Monday morning. I went to work in the morning and came back at lunchtime to take care of the ladies.  Wynn was taking it easy and was feeling pretty good after lunch - took Ann until evening to start feeling more like herself.

I love how Wynn can relax in just about any space / any position:

The End of Christmas 2013

We took down the tree this cold, cold morning and set the Christmas Castle out on the deck for the squirrels.  And Wynn built a solar-powered dinosaur robot.

It was a most excellent tree; still very fragrant and thirsty and held the ornaments beautifully.

 

The plastic fork & spoon for arms was Wynn's idea ... all the better to eat you with!

Squirrels love marshmallows and Kit Kat bars, apparently.