Gung Hey Fat Choy!

I am beginning to believe that blogging is not really my forte. I have all the best intentions, but somehow the time just gets away from me. I guess I need to rethink the whole thing. Maybe some of my ‘professional’ blogger friends can give me some tips on how to keep this thing up to date….

With Feb 7th marking the start of the Chinese New Year, most of the recent events in the Choi house have been China related. On Weds Feb 6th, I spent some time with Aimee’s kindergarten class reading a New Year story and teaching them about the Chinese customs and culture. I have to say that I could not be a teacher full-time, but the occasional visit is a lot of fun. Mind you, with 3 kids 6yrs and under, my life often feels like I am a KG teacher already.

The evening of February 6th was spent at our favorite Chinese restaurant (Miss Yip’s in Miami) along with our local FCC friends and family. Of all the events our FCC group puts on, this has to be one of my favorites. I don’t think there is anyone more excited than me to see the Lion Dancers doing their show each year, not to mention seeing all of the beautiful children dressed in their finest traditional clothing. The food was delicious as always, the company was delightful, the Lion Dancers were incredible and the firecrackers were deafening. I love Chinese New Year. Unfortunately, the evening was over way too fast, but I think everyone had a lot of fun. The journey home up Alton Road looked like something from CSI: Miami. There were more police cars than I had even seen and yellow crime scene tape everywhere. It was only after watching the 11pm news that we discovered that there had been a murder/suicide. Nice! Gung Hey Fat Choy!

The Choi Kids prepare for a fun-filled evening




Hansen shows his usual enthusiasm for his food




Richard and Aimee feeding one of the lions some Hong Bao (lucky money)




Cutie-Patootie Cady taking notes, maybe she is going to be a reporter



On Saturday Feb 9th, we crossed county lines (I am well-known and much-teased for not crossing them normally) to attend the Palm Beach Zoo Dragon Fest. We had wanted to attend this event in previous years, but for some reason or another we have never made it before. I am so glad we could make it this year, the day was picture perfect and it was made even more special since we met up with many of our local FCC friends and family to watch the show. We are so blessed to have such an incredible and supportive group. Being so far away from our own extended families, Richard and I have come cherish the friends we have made on our journey to becoming We5Chois.

When I was pregnant with Aimee, I joined a Yahoo group (it may have been my first) for parents expecting in Dec 2001. Since then I have joined many, many more groups to discuss every angle of parenting and adoption (not to mention everything in-between), but no group other than FCC South Florida has come anywhere close to offering the same level of friendship and love as my Dec2001Moms group. I seriously do not know how I would have gotten this far without each of them. I have learned and shared so much as we have all laughed and cried our way through building our families. Thank you everyone!


Enter the Dragon...


The 3 Choi Wise Monkeys



Miss Katie Starr is such a sweetie pie


Big Finale


As I mentioned before, the day at the zoo was just perfect. After watching the dragon, the lion dancers and the Kung Fu demonstrations we were off in search of food and animals. The rest of the day was spent bumping into all our Chinese friends and learning some old and new Chinese arts and crafts, with the occasional zoo animal sighting. My favorite sighting was when Joyce finalized realized the Iguana she had been watching for 10 minutes was actually real and not made of stone! Crazy Girl! For those of you who have never been, I love Palm Beach Zoo and I highly recommend it. There are not as many animals to see asin other zoos, but the park is a great size for younger kids to wander around and enjoy, and there is a wonderful water feature for them to cool off in before heading home. There is nothing better than watching your kids squeal with delight as they run and splash the afternoon away. After a quick dry and a change of clothes, we were off in search of home and some dinner. Unfortunately, this was not before poor Cadence had a little pee-pee accident. This would not have been too much of a problem, but she was wearing a short skirt and we had no alternative underwear. The poor thing was forced to ride home knicker-less. A couple of minutes into the journey home the heavens opened and it was like hurricane season had arrived again. Rich took a photo of the highway, but it doesn’t show how awful the rain was. Rather than risk getting caught up in heavy traffic, we decided to stop for an early dinner.



The nearest place we found was a Cracker Barrel. We strategically seated Cadence on the inside chair so no one would discover her ‘no knickers’ situation and proceeded to have one of those ‘perfect, once in a blue moon meals’ where all the children behave like they are in a Kodak commercial. As one old couple were leaving, they made a point of coming over to congratulate Richard and me on our beautiful and well-behaved family…!? It is always wonderful to get compliments on your children, but we knew not to push our good luck and so we made a hasty retreat before Cady flashed anyone or Hansen and Aimee started showing their true colors. Needless to say, once we were safely back inside our car, the usual screaming and yelling started up again, but thankfully our reputations were intact.