Happy New Year!

As today is New Year's Day on the lunar calendar, it seems appropriate to ponder this holiday. The holiday lasts about 5 days, but prior to the holiday most households are busy with preparations like cleaning the house and doing other auspicious activities. For New Year's Eve dinner it is imperative for sons and unmarried daughters to be at their parents' or grandparents' house, if they don't already live there. Then on the second day of the new year, the family goes to visit the wife's family. A few years ago when I realized this, it dawned on me that if that's followed by the book, siblings who are grown and married would never see each other during this holiday period. However, Kevin reassured me that families make it work rather than following the rules exactly completely. I guess that's why it's a 5-day holiday - it leaves some flexibility for family reunions.

Since Kevin is the only son in the family, it would be rather boring to just stay home with our small household. As a result, we celebrate New Year's Eve with his aunt and uncle, their two sons and daughters-in-law, and 3 grandchildren. That makes a good sized group and Keanu had lots of fun. The dinner was at Kevin's cousin Toshino's house and he has a little boy about the same size as Keanu, so that means there are lots of toys there to play with. Keanu got much more confident in his walking because he wanted to keep up with the other kids (including Andrew - Super-Big-Little-One, who's not so little anymore since he's 5.5) Keanu was having so much fun that he didn't want to go to sleep for fear he'd miss something in spite of the fact that he'd only slept 1.5 hours early in the afternoon. However, he fell asleep about 3 minutes into the car ride home and slept until 11:30 this morning.

Today we spent the entire day at home doing absolutely nothing important - the best kind of holiday. Tomorrow Yoyo and her family are coming so it'll be more fun.