Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is one of my favorite holidays: Chinese New Year.


2011 is the year of the rabbit. Rabbits are born in 1915, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011. Any rabbits in the house?

According to the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, people born in the Year of the Rabbit are articulate, talented, ambitious, virtuous, reserved, and have excellent taste. Rabbit people are admired, trusted, and are often financially lucky. They are fond of gossip but are tactful and generally kind. Rabbit people seldom lose their temper. They are clever at business and being conscientious, never back out of a contract. They would make good gamblers for they have the uncanny gift of choosing the right thing. However, they seldom gamble, as they are conservative and wise. They are most compatible with those born in the years of the Sheep, Pig, and Dog.

Here are some fun activities to do with your kid for Chinese New Year.

There is a big celebration in Flushing, Queens every year year to celebrate the Chinese New Year. This year there is a parade on February 12th. Here are some Chinese New Year celebrations going on in Flushing, the Chinese capital of Queens.

Stay tuned for details of how E-man and I celebrate this holiday.

Today is Don't Leave Your House Without A Sense of Humor Day

Today is a good day to stay home.

But if you feel compelled to leave your house, be sure to take a sense of humor with you as well as a good pair of mud boots, preferably thigh-high.

Welcome Winter, Don't Wear It Out

I almost forgot that today is the first official day of winter. Maybe that's because it's already been so freezing cold, it feels like Winter has already been here for ages.

The good news is that the days will only get longer from here.

In celebration of winter, I will be going on my first long run outside in the cold tomorrow morning.

Las Posadas

Today is the second day of Las Posadas, a nine day holiday celebrated in Mexico, one day for each month that Mary carried Jesus in her womb.

Traditionally neighbors go from door to door in celebration of this holiday, but since this is just something E-man and I are doing, our neighbors might think it is a bit odd if we knock on their doors and ask them if there is room for us to stay. Come to think of it, the neighbor with the drunk daughter who likes to knock on our door at 2am might get the wrong idea from this, so we will skip that part of it.

Maybe I will just have E-man close the bedroom door and then I will knock on it and sing the traditional song of Las Posadas.


We will try the food on our un-suspecting playdate that is coming over later today. Now if we can just figure out how to make or find a star-shaped pinada, we will be all set.

You can find out more about Las Posadas here.

I will report later on how well the food is received. OK, before I scare you away from ever visiting my home, I assure you, there will be plenty of food that I know our guests love and they are welcome to eat that if they don't like the ponche, bunuelos and tamales.

PS. Update on yesterday's Decoration Day, we got the Christmas tree and the popcorn and cranberry strings up, but I still have a couple decorations to get for the Christmas tree to incorporate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa into the decorations.

Tomorrow is Decorationg Day

I declare tomorrow to be Decorating Day.

Here's the plan.


1. Get E-man to go to sleep so we can manage to get up before noon tomorrow. (I suspect his lack of tiredness has something to do with the nap he took on the train earlier today.)

2. Take E-man to the gym for 9am daycare and get in a 3-5 mile run.

3. Stop at the 99 cents store on the way home from the gym and pick up a white Christmas tree, decorations and cards for our Christmas Card mail-out.

4. Go home and get some work done while E-man plays with his legos. (He is becoming quite the engineer with his legos.)


5. Invite Aliyah to help us string popcorn and cranberries (our family tradition) and decorate for Hanukkah (I know it's already passed, but we didn't get a chance to celebrate it yet), Christmas and Kwanzaa while we listen to Christmas Carrolls and drink eggnog.

6. Take lots of pictures.

7. Pick out a picture for our Christmas cards.

Will post pictures tomorrow after the decorating is done.

Oh, I found this really cool site. If you want to know what holidays are celebrated in any part of the world on any given day, go to http://www.earthcalendar.net.

There are so many to choose from, I'm thinking I will randomly pick one to celebrate each day or make up my own.

Welcome to My New Blog

I have been wanting to do this for years. Every December I say, next year I am going to celebrate all the holidays throughout the year. For Christmas we will celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa, and throughout the year I'm going to celebrate every holiday of every culture, not just the US Bank & Federal holidays.

I figured it would be a great way to teach my son about all different kinds of cultures and ways of doing things so that he will grow up open minded. So I would wait until he was old enough to understand.

But recently I started thinking, why does everything have to have a reason? Why can't we just celebrate life every day? Why do I have to wait to do this until I can make it a "teachable moment"? Why not start now?

Life is a journey, we're always going somewhere, doing something. As a running mom, I'm either running to train for a race, running after my toddler, running errands or running around like a chicken with my head cut off to accomplish the next task on my list of things to do.

Oh yeah, I know this to be true, because I looked back at my facebook statuses throughout the year and they're all about running somewhere.

In a normal day I will get up early to get in a run. Then I will run home to get E-man up and make breakfast. Then I will try to get as much work done as I can. Then I will try to write as many web pages as I can. And so on and so forth throughout the day.

No matter how much I get done in a day, there is always more to do, the list of things to do never gets any shorter.

How often do we ever stop and celebrate our achievements? How often do we ever stop to give thanks for what we have been given or for what we have accomplished? How often do we take the time to slow down and celebrate life and love?

Well I have decided that I am going to take the time to do that every day.

So this blog will be about celebrating a different holiday every day, and the interesting foods, celebrations and cultural lessons learned that comes with that.

But more importantly, this blog is about making every day a celebration of life. It is about enjoying every day no matter how little or much we accomplish in that day. Because life should be measured by more than just a list of accomplishments.