Chinese New Year Weekend

With Chinese New Year this past Thursday, we were invited to Uncle Tao and Aunt Cathy's house for a Chinese New Year family dinner on Saturday night. All of the extended family came, and Eric and Jeff were there as well from Southern California. Unfortunately we were the last to arrive as Lauren was having a difficult day. She was having one of her major constipation days, one of the side effects of her no-vegetable diet she has put herself on, fairly typical for a 5 year old. We do try to make sure she gets fiber supplements, but sometimes we miss a day and we end up with problems like Saturday.

The day started off well enough. I happened to notice that Saturday was also the first Saturday in February which meant it was kids workshop day at Home Depot. That's one event Lauren had never been to and one that we've wanted to take her to for a while. Home Depot sets aside part of the store, where they set up a workshop for kids to work on a project. This particular Saturday the project was for the kids to build a "heart" shelf, basically a wooden heart with a shelf in front, and a peg hook. Lauren and I arrived at our local Home Depot just before 9 AM, but there were already kids there busy at work putting together their projects.

We got handed our project kit, and found room at the table to set up. The project involved sanding the wood pieces, hammering in the metal hangar in the back, glueing and nailing the shelf in place and then glueing in the peg. Lauren also spent some time drawing and decorating hers with sharpie markers. She also received a kid sized orange apron, completion pin and sticker from Home Depot. Lots of fun for a Saturday morning and something we plan on going to again.

After we got home, we waited for my sister who was bringing Amelia, Daniel and friend from Davis. The friend was coming down to buy out our Honda Accord from the end of the lease term. After we finished the paperwork on the car, and the friend drove off with our former car, we drove out to Sharks Ice in San Jose for the bucket session they were having there that afternoon.

Lauren has never gone ice skating, but she's asked to go a few times since she's seen Caillou learning to ice skate on the PBS show of the same name. So even though she was starting to feel ill, she wanted to go. A bucket session is where they rope off part of the ice for beginning learners who hold on to stacked upside down buckets to get maneuver themselves around the ice.

She had a lot of fun trying to get around the ice, but it will take a few more sessions before she'll be ready to try the ice without the help of the buckets. When we got home from the ice skating session, we prepared the food we were going to bring to my Uncle Tao and Aunt Cathy's house, but because Lauren needed additional restroom time, we were a little late arriving at the house.

The food was great, and the kids had fun playing with the Xbox Kinect dance and bowling games at my aunt and uncle's house. By the end of the evening, Lauren had perked up and was dancing and bowling with the rest of the kids.