Chinese New Year-part one

I've been writing about China a lot lately. I guess it just confirms what the sidebar of our blog says-part of our hearts will always be in China. We will always be 3/4 American and 1/8 Chinese and 1/8 confused about who we are. Our precious friend Ping invited us to her home to celebrate Chinese New Year. We were thrilled to have the chance to meet her sisters and her father. Her father owns a Chinese restaurant here. You can see him cooking in the kitchen here!

Their family is from the coastal part of the motherland so we appropriately had seafood hotpot. Can I just say I have come a long way in my ability to eat Chinese food. I took it to a whole new level this week by partaking of this spicy boiling pot of mussels and squid and calms and oysters. Andy commented that we enjoyed an "authentic Chinese New Year meal, complete with stomach issues to follow!" We really liked the crab legs and lobster! And the cake...

We got the cake at the Chinese Market and they loved having an authentic Chinese style cake to celebrate! And so did we! Chinese cakes taste not sweet enough for the first few years you eat them. But about year 5 they start to taste really good. Light, fluffy cake, not too sweet, with a light fluffy icing-and candied fruit. Yum Yum.

The best part of the evening-the company. Our kids love these A Yi's, Fen, Jing, and Ping. They were so kind and even gave our kids the traditional hong baos (red envelopes with money-kids receive them each new year from neighbors and family) Such a blessing to be able to celebrate with Chinese friends!