A Celebration

When we went to China we fell in love with the Chinese culture and the people.  We have always wanted to take part of Max's culture and integrate it into our family. We also have wanted to be able to share his culture with friends and family.  We decided January would be the perfect time to do that with our family.  This year January is when the Chinese people celebrate Chinese New Year.  It is the largest celebrated Chinese holiday.  We thought it would be fun to share the customs and food of Chinese New Year with our family and also celebrate Max's 1 Year Anniversary of being in our family! 

This year is the Year of the Dragon so we hung the dragon from the ceiling. 

We spent a large part of the day preparing food.  We are rookies when it comes to Chinese cooking.  I will say it is a little bit hard to entertain a large group of people with a large amount of Chinese food because everything is cooked fresh and it is hard to make things ahead of time.  I really should have gotten a picture of the stove and all the dishes.  I think we used every pan in our house. 

I wish I would have gotten a picture before we all dug in but it was  little bit of a blur as we finished up the food prep and tried to get it all on the table at the same time.  The girls helped make fruit kabobs that we put into a fun arrangement in the empty pineapple.  We also had dumplings and spring rolls. 

We made a chicken dish to make lettuce wraps. We also made pork to put in buns that resembled one of Eric's favorite dishes in China "the Chinese hamburger" well at least that is what we called it.

Our main dishes were beef and broccoli and orange chicken that we served with rice.

The Chinese don't eat a lot of dessert.  We usually had fruit at the end of our meal for dessert in China.  We decided to have some cupcakes for a treat.

The kids had fun trying to teach their cousins how to use chopsticks. 

Max enjoyed his food!

It was fun watching everyone try out the chopsticks. 

It was fun to have everyone over to celebrate! We had a dinning room full and in this picture Eric's sister and husband and kids are missing.  They decided to venture up in the snow and got to our house after we started and I had snapped the picture.  

Happy Gotcha Day Anniversary Max!

We finished the evening with sharing a book about the Chinese traditions of the Chinese New Year.  The kids handed out some bracelets and notebooks to their cousin.

The kids also got to take a Red Envelope home with a special treat in side!

We put together this video of our journey to Max to share with our family.  

We feel so blessed by all their love and support on our journey.  It was fun to share some of the Chinese culture and traditions with them.