Chinese New Year

We had a wonderful time this evening. Our Great Wall China Adoption representative, Paige, always puts together a Chinese New Year dinner for all the families in our area who have adopted from China (there are more than 20).

We meet at one of the Chinese restaurants and have a whole room to ourselves, and we fill it up for sure. This was the third one we have attended, but FINALLY our first with Jacob. We enjoyed ourselves at the previous two, but we really had a great time this year. Isn't it amazing what having a little one can do?

We wondered how Jake would react being around so many children, especially children who look like him. He hasn't been around this many children at one time since we've been home, and this was his first time seeing most of the Chinese children from around here. He was shy at first, but then really got into it. He ran around a lot and interacted with a lot of the other kids.

It's a tradition to take a group photo of all the kids. It's so cute seeing them all (we have all ages, from teens on down). Jake fit right in, being the camera hog that he is. He stood next to one little boy and put his arm around him. Violet said the other boy got this look of "what are you doing?" but he didn't move away or anything. It was so cute. At one point, the other boy took a step forward, and Jake moved along with him, keeping his arm around him. I said Jake did it because the boys have to stick together since there are only 4 of them and all those girls!

All the kids pass out gifts to each other. We bought a bunch of rattle drums in China and passed them out. When all the kids started playing with them we were sure the other parents would ban us from next year's dinner. LOL. Just kidding. It really kind of added something to the celebration, we thought.


Party Pic! Jake and Mom having a good time at the Chinese New Year dinner.



Jake with Baba and his rattle drum.



Here's a group pic of most of the kids.



Jake and a new friend.