Chinese New Year, OR "Come Eat My Pig" Feast

I cannot begin to count how many "Come Eat My Pig" feasts we were invited to over Chinese New Year. To celebrate the new year over here, you slaughter a pig and then prepare the meat for the next few months. In the colloquial, many people don't even bother to use the word for "party" or "celebration"; they simply say something like, "Hey, we're killing a pig! Come on over!" That obviously means "We're having a party!". Why else would you kill a pig and tell people to come over? You think we're crazy or something?

Here is our staff making sausage from one of our pigs we (okay, "they") killed. I had an "a-ha" moment watching them make the sausage - realizing the parts of the pig being ground to go into the sausage and realizing that they actually use the intestines as the skin. For some reason, my expensive Western education never allowed me to put all of this together. Anyway, Monty likes sausage with his eggs so I was excited to bring some home for our breakfast. After frying some and biting into it, we realized we forgot two very important phrases: "No MSG and no chili peppers." Wow! It was SOME sausage and I hate to admit that I fed the rest to the pigs:). Cannibals!

As you know, I love parties and most of all throwing parties. Here we are hosting a Chinese New Years party (not on the actual day because we figured no one would show up). Monty is trying to figure out how to play Mahjong. He said they kept changing the rules on him - I think he just does not like to loose:).

This is Ai De. He is Big Momma and Uncle Sam's son. He is 13 and about the size of our Henna (6 years old). Here they are playing "tip over" together at our party. Big Momma spent two weeks during the holidays in the hospital. She is better now, but while she was in the hospital, her two children got to live with us. It was great having 7 children! Usually Big Momma cooks a big lunch for our family, our staff and anyone else passing through. She loves to cook and I appreciate getting to eat together and having the fellowship. This is also nice with home schooling - I can really focus on the kids in the mornings without thinking about what to prepare and quitting early to cook. With Big Momma in the hospital, all of our other staff home for the new year and Uncle Sam taking care of Big Momma this left me to figure out lunches. I had planned on pb&j every day so I could still do school and not loose a lot of time cleaning up afterwards. With Ai De and his younger sister, Yex Mei, with us I realized they needed rice or they might die (Chinese people really think this is possible) so I had to compromise. I learned I am a terrible Chinese food cook. When I have people over and want to serve Chinese food I always have a local person help cook because I know they will make it much better than I could attempt to. We survived and by the end of the two weeks I watched Ai De put away 8 tacos at one time and Yex Mei asked for seconds when eating Mac and Cheese! I did, however, hear them comment to one another about their poop changing color and consistency since living at our house:). Sometimes, I really wish I didn't know those words.

On Yex Mei's first night she tried to go to bed in her jeans and sweat shirt. My girls simply would not have it! I mean who would go to bed without wearing footsie pajamas? Certainly not anyone staying in our house. So they found a pair that they are waiting to grow into and put them on Yex Mei. She said she had never been so warm in all her life! I once looked for footsies in several local kids clothing shops. The response I got was: "if you put your kids in something like that, they will not grow tall." "Yeah, right," I said, "Look at my kids!"

By the end of the two weeks Ai De and Yex Mei could beat even Manon at Monopoly Deal (which is hard to do), knew all the quirky things about our house - like how to pump water, what to do when the electricity goes off, which sippy-cup Ezra likes at night etc... We were blessed to have them with us and hope they were blessed as well.

New Year's Steak! Our friend John killed a cow and cut some of the meat into steaks. We were happy to have steak to eat. I cooked this almost everyday for one week. It was like I could not get enough once we ate one. I found a great marinade that made it so delicious. We don't have a grill but I learned how to cook it in the oven on the grill setting. It is really easy and I can get most of the ingredients locally to make a great meal of steak and potatoes!
Time for a date. Once I realized all of our staff would be away for 2-3 weeks and Monty and I would not have the luxury of asking someone to watch the kids while we go for a jog or get some time together I knew we better squeeze a date in or we would regret it. We got all dressed up and went to a quaint little Italian restaurant with live music! Okay, I'm embellishing again. Actually, it was a Chinese sidewalk restaurant that serves fruit pizza on their desert menu and has a "Leaning Tower of Pisa" picture taped to the wall. The live music was the man next door giving piano lessons in his garage (not too bad actually). Regardless, I was with Monty and we enjoyed a few hours without hearing, "Mommy, I need to be wiped!". . . "STOP!". . ."I got a boo boo!". . ."Mommy, watch this! Owwww!" (followed by incoherent sobbing). . ."I, I, I, I, I'm Batman!". . . "Smell this!". . . and you know the rest:).