Asia Pacific New Years Celebration

We probably shouldn't have gone.

She was behaving a little more cranky than usual this morning, but she seemed fine after a short nap in my arms.  LOVE that she is getting more cuddly, relaxing with us even more.

But even when she looked like this she was tapping her feet to the music.

And the performances were fantastic.   We watched the dances of the country featured this year -- Taiwan.  It started with a traditional Lion dance preformed by a local-ish Chinese school.  They also went around and handed out red envelops with candy in them.  Sweet Pea clutched hers for quite awhile.

She only gave it up for some food.  We sat and watched some more dances while we ate potstickers, steamed pork buns, sweet muffins, and Asian almond yogurt with fruit.  There were many different Asian cultures represented by the food booths.

She is 18 months and has several molars now, but she has always been enthusiastic about eating her potstickers.

She let Huckleberry feed her some steamed bun, too.

Almost out of food.  Sunflower wants to know where the coconut milk is but we remind her we were not planning to buy any this year that is why we have water bottles.

Then we are off to make paper lanterns at the Korean Buddhist Temple booth.  This is our third year making them, but the first time we saw most of the chairs filled with adults instead of children.

Sweet Pea and Huckleberry decided to walk around rather than fight the crowd.

 But SnapDragon and Sunflower finish theirs with Daddy's help.

And after Sunflower preforms a little dance with hers we go back to the stage to watch the Chinese Christian School do their preformances.

But the children (and parents) start to lose it a little.  Sunflower wants coconut milk still; Sweet Pea wants more food (even after the strawberry delights); and SnapDragon starts crawling on the floor -- "I'm getting the water bottle from the stroller, MOM!"

Okay, so home we go, and we miss the Dragon Dancers and the rest, but we did see them last year.  But maybe next year.  And it is a good thing we went home when we did...

...as this is the best photo I got of her outfit as soon after her nap at home an unhealthy diaper made it need a washing, and all the children are now in bed with bowls by their side.  Still no fevers so hopefully it'll all pass quickly...and sorry, public.  I promise we would have stayed home if we'd known...no matter how much I wanted to celebrate our first Chinese New Year with our Sweet Pea.