CNY & Tet

This is the Chinese year of the Rabbit and the Vietnamese year of the Cat. We celebrated in Cork this year. We stayed two nights in the Silver Springs hotel for the IGGC CNY event. We met up with Gennie, Kai, Sonia and Dave so the kids were in their element. On the Saturday morning myself, Grace, Sonia and Gennie went to the life book workshop. It was a really lovely expereince to work with Grace on her book. She is so proud of it.
At the afternoon celebrations Grace and Gennie had their face's painted and Daniel and Kai had to be prized away from the rabbit hutch. The girls also spent hours at the arts and crafts stand. They glittered and glued and coloured to their hears content.
We sat at a table with another family for the meal. They have two little girls from China. Strangly, Gennie had a nose bleed at the meal, as did one of girls from the other family and then Grace had one later that night. There was dancing after the meal. Grace danced the legs off herself. She knows some seriously freaky dance moves:)
The following morning, after saying our goodbyes, we headed to the beach in Cobh. It was cold, but the sun was shining so we had a nice walk there before heading home again.

Christmas 2010

I say it everytime, but I really can't believe that it is 5 months since I last posted. Chirstmas has been and gone and now it is almost Easter. We had a great Christmas. Grace and Daniel were so excited. Everytime Daniel passed someone with a red hat or beard he shouted "it's Santa" after them. Baby Jesus was also a big feature of our preperations. Grace had Daniel singing all the Carols she knows. They sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus on Christmas morning which was really cute. . They both got so many presents as usual. Daniel got a ride on car and lots of Mickey Mouse toys like the club house and the campervan. He is obsessed with Mickey Mouse. Grace got a new bike, tatoo gun (I know), loads of make and do bits and pieces and a make up set. She is quite a girly girl, but I also suspect she will be tatooed from her head to her toes when she is bigger. We bought a Wii as well. Grace and Daniel killed each other to get a turn on it. We gave Daniel a controller that wasn't plugged into the console and he was as happy as Larry thinking he was playing the game.
We had dinner in our house with Pam, Sophie and Jake, Mam, Sarah, Stephen and Jonathan and then did the visiting rounds. We finally got them to bed at around 11:30PM. A brilliant day, all round.