The Year of the Sheep

It is the Chinese New Year today, and as you can see from our annual card, it's the Year of the Sheep.  We didn't have much time this week due to weather and just a general busy schedule, but we did have this photo from Christmas that seemed to fit the theme very nicely.  So we made our card from that old photo, and posted it on social media sites to wish a happy new year to our friends.  Only afterwards did we remember Lambchop, the puppet we have upstairs.  Now there's a classic character!  We might be seeing more of Lambchop this week, just because Sherry Lewis is awesome.

We do have some Chinese New Year gifts for Madison, but there's one or two more to get, so we'll probably give these to her one morning coming up.  We'll post pictures of that.  We'll also post pictures of the nice Chinese New Year display Mommy put up in the kitchen.  Some of the items we got in China a few years ago, and other items we've picked up along the way.

We wished each other a happy new year, no doubt terribly pronouncing "Gung Hay Fat Choy." That's how you say "Happy New Year" in Chinese.  Madison centered on that "Fat" part, which suddenly makes the phrase hilarious.  And even more so when she blurts it out from another room, almost like something you say after stubbing your toe.

It was a nice day, and another day off for Madison.  I have no idea why.  The trees are still covered with ice, but the roads are perfectly safe at this point.  At least they are around here.  Daddy went to work yesterday, and got to survey the damage quite a bit.  Trees are out of the way for the most part, and the roads are safe.  The only thing extreme about today was the temperature:  it never made it out of the twenties.  It was brutally cold this morning, eleven degrees.  Plus the windchill factor made it seem like zero.  When the temperature gets that low, it doesn't really matter what the number is anymore.  You just run for your life to the nearest interior.

Which, in my case, was the local doctor's office.  It was time for Daddy's annual physical.  This went well, although there are some pills that I need to start taking for cholesterol and blood pressure.  These are part of life now, the result of being born into a family with this sort of history.  I think I can blame the Irish side of the family, although you never know.

Madison had a lot of homework today, which is funny because she hasn't been in school for a week now.  Today was an online schoolwork sort of day, where she did a lot of homework on her school's websites.  We watched movies about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and afterwards Madison wrote about the two.  We did some math, and some other online assignments as well.  It actually took a while to get all of this done, but Madison did well.  Additionally, everything seemed to be working for the most part.  There was an outage at one point, where her teacher was telling us to save everything.  But it somehow didn't affect us, and we were able to get our assignments done quickly, and only once.

Tonight we went back to "Mulan."  It's the Chinese New Year, after all.  We watched this movie with some popcorn and a roaring fire in the fireplace, and a few blankets too.  It's so nice and cozy - and these movies always bring back memories of happy times in a land far, far away.  Some day we will return to China, but that will be later when Madison is older.  We'll have to save up for that one!  But it will be worth it to take her to the place of her birth.  She has no memories of it at this point, and coincidentally, we just found some photos of her orphanage online this week. These are pictures we've never seen before, and this one in particular struck a chord:

One of the very first pictures we saw of Madison was of her on these stairs.  This new perspective gave us all sorts of memories, taking us back to early 2008 when there were so many questions.  We have most of them answered by now, but we still have that same joy with us.  It was the Year of the Rat, which doesn't sound as auspicious as other animals.  Madison's birth year is the Year of the Dog, which has a more noble feel to it.  Just before Madison, we saw the years of the Rooster, Dog and Pig - each of these as we were joining other families with children from China.  They were always asking us when we were going to be meeting our daughter, and our only response was, "Soon!"  We had no idea!  The wait was two-and-a-half years, and I'm sure some were beginning to wonder.  I know we ourselves were beginning to wonder a bit.  But God is in control, and as soon as Mommy was healthy enough, there was the call to go to China.  In the Year of the Rat.

We took Madison to the Year of the Ox celebration the first Chinese New Year we were with her, and she had this adorable outfit on, playing with the dancing dragon they had there.  The other Chinese New Year celebrations are shown here - we've gone through Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake and Horse last year.  We'll visit the Monkey again next year, and then things will start to get pretty sentimental.  We'll look back on those visits to the Chinese New Year celebrations that we attended, the ones where Madison was only a dream.  We'll think back on those times, so full of hope and questions.  And here we are, twelve years later, with so many happy memories in between.

Happy New Year.  Gung Hay Fat Choy!