Monkey!

Gung hee fat choy! Happy Year of the Monkey.

The children woke up to find li see envelopes at the breakfast table. This weekend we had hoped to see a dragon dance performance at Uwajimaya as we had in years past, but apparently it had been in Seattle last weekend and was at the Bellevue location this week. As usual, we had a lot of things to do, so we couldn’t make it all the way to the east side. Ironically, Alton and I did have to run to Bellevue to run a couple of errands. Watching a dragon dance was not one of them.

I am still reminded of Nikola yelling out “Monkey!” in the middle of the night when she was 18 months or so. One night while she was in bed with us (as she had for the first 9 years of her life) she sat bolt upright in bed and yelled out what sounded like “Monkey!” then went back to sleep. Later we figured that she was probably not saying “monkey” but rather “mooncake.” Round is a Mooncake by Grace Lin was one of her favorite bedtime books – she could practically recite it by heart. When I would ask what book she wanted to read for bedtime, more often than not it was Round is a Mooncake.

This weekend Nikola had a small birthday gathering with a few friends. Shaynee hired a woman who does mehndi henna decorations to tattoo designs on their hands, arms, and legs. Even the moms who stayed (Susan and Shaynee) got henna inked too! As a parting gift, each girl went home with a sock monkey with a red envelope.

Not officially evicted, Alton and I chose to go to the Full Tilt pinball and ice cream parlor in Ballard to play several rounds of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and some pinball. We had considered checking out the board games happening at Card Kingdom but time ran out and we headed back just as the party was breaking up.