Kong Hee Fatt Choy!

 Katy got a hongbao from Kung Kung and Poh Poh and one from Mama and Dada.  In lieu of real fireworks, she got a packet of our current family favourite chocolate - Firecracker from Chuao.  It has pop candy in it and chillis, so you have a spicy bite of chocolate with pops and fizzes on your tongue!

Katy loves giving too so she made a little hongbao for her Mama and Dada too!  Guai haizi!

 Unfortunately, after running downstairs this morning, Katy was very disappointed to find that the kitchen god had not eaten the little treats she had left for him in our "home altar".  Katy loves reading all the books about Chinese New Year and the old traditions in Chinese history, so I guess that's where she got her idea about setting up an altar for the kitchen god and expecting him to come visit.  We didn't get that memo though...

 A big bunch of tangelos, clementines, oranges and red grapefruit for the New Year!  Katy loves citrus!

Reunion Dinner

Poor Katy!  After our adventures at piano and Surdyk's and Coastal Seafoods and Cub Supermarket and with all the extra snow induced traffic, it was really late by the time we got home to START preparing our reunion dinner.  Katy was pretty tired and overwrought, so Mama threw her in the bath with some bubbles specially scented for Overtired and Cranky Children while Dada and Julie did an amazing job of getting dinner ready in a hurry.  Katy FaceTimed with her Hong Kong cousins who got a kick out of watching her have her hair washed.

Dada always says he is the most Chinese person in our family!  He insisted that our reunion dinner be vegetarian, which I had never heard of...so we compromised and had whole steamed fish but had vegetarian jiaozi and noodles.  Katy enjoys wrapping the jiaozi...and we all loved the new vegetarian filling we'd never tried before.  This one was a cabbage and carrot and mushroom filling - it tasted like the Teochew food my grandmother used to make.

 
 The uni was so amazing and just like the best uni we had in Tokyo!

 It was a lovely family reunion dinner!

Minnesota-By-Sea

One thing we like about our treks Downtown is that we are slowly getting to know some great food purveyors.  While Mama and Katy had piano lesson, Dada hit Surdyk's for their 40% off wine sale and picked up some bargains.  After piano, we went back to Surdyk's to buy good bread, which turned out to be from Rustica Bakery, the suppliers to Meritage, and a yummy caramel chocolate nougat treat called a ladeedah for Katy!

Then we hit the Minneapolis branch of Coastal Seafoods.  Mama and Dada love love love uni but it is really really really hard to get great uni like you get in Tokyo...so imagine our surprise and delight when we found live sea urchins for sale at Coastal Seafoods!

The nice salesman showed Dada how to prepare it, with Katy (and the rest of the store) watching in fascination.

The first step is to remove its beak.

 Then you break a hole in the shell and pour out its insides other than the roe.  Then you have to carefully pour out the roe and wash it out with water.  It's a delicate process and the man accidentally lost one of our roe branches, so he very nicely gave us another sea urchin for free to open ourselves at home!!!

Who woulda thunk we would have our freshest, livest uni in Minnesota!?  They're from Washington State.

Last lesson at MacPhail for a while

It's been quite smooth sailing going into Downtown on Thursdays for Katy's piano lesson at MacPhail.  We've developed a tradition of Katy jumping down the steps/amphitheatre after her lesson.  The kids love it for some reason!  We're changing our lessons to Tuedays now because Katy is always so tired on Thursdays after a long Wednesday with Catechism classes.  And we'll be having our lessons at Miss Annette's house in Edina with her little dog Bella for the rest of this term.  It will be a real change.

Little Canyon Driveway

We had a lot of snow overnight.  You can see how deep the snow on our lawn is getting.  It's like a little canyon down our driveway.  Dada has to drive Mama and Katy into MacPhail today because the roads are showing "difficult driving conditions".  It was a winter storm in the morning but has cleared up to a beautiful bright blue winter day again. 

Truancy

Katy had a day off school last Thursday and another yesterday because of the extreme cold.  Monday was no school because of teacher planning and grading.  So what did we do today?  Took Katy out of school so we could go to St Paul to watch the Chinese American Association of Minnesota Chinese Dance Theater.  

It was so worth it!  A really great show with lots of colourful costumes, a great story, and lots of Chinese new year traditions and symbolism.  Since we were such a long way from home, we took the opportunity to check out a nearby French restaurant that we had read a lot about.

 

It was certainly very atmospheric, in a beautiful historic building and featuring authentic dust on the walls that looked like Rorschach Diagrams, and wait staff with slightly grubby clothes and frayed black ribbons around their necks.  They even had a lovely French gal as the Maitre D'.  

I had been craving French food as I'm currently reading Julia Child's "My Life In France", which I love, but which makes me very hungry!  And the food we miss from Hong Kong is not the dim sum or Cantonese, or even the wonton mian, but the French restaurants and the Szechuan places.

The baguettes we were served at the beginning were a good start.  Katy asked for more!  It's hard to get good bread here and the good stuff is more Italian than French, so this was a great discovery and we've made a note to check out their supplier, Rustica Bakery in Lake Calhoun.

 And the escargots de Bourgogne were superb.  Great for dipping with the baguette.

 Katy ordered a matzoh ball soup, which was poured table side to her great delight, and half a Croque Madame.

She liked the soup, but was not a huge fan of the matzoh ball for some reason.  It's odd because she loves Julie's dumplings in her chicken dumpling soup!  From my perspective, I thought it was the best matzoh ball I had ever had - super light and fluffly.

 While Dada and Mama finished eating, Katy did a quick Michelle Phan inspired treatment for under-eye bags...

 ...and checked out Dada's new phone.

Yes, after much distress and hand wringing for many years now, Dada has finally accepted the inevitable and bought a non Blackberry phone.  He hates it!  But is determined to tame the beast or, as my Dad says, teach the machine to obey his commands.

Finally came Katy's favourite part of eating out with Mama and Dada...dessert.  While Dada and Mama shared a delicious rosemary olive oil cake with a completely wonderful and fragrant Royal Tokaij 5 Puttonyos glass of dessert wine, Katy savoured her salted caramel pop!

 

We don't really love to eat out and only really do it for very special occasions or as a matter of convenience.  So, I think our standards for a great restaurant are pretty high, possibly impossible.  Just like those Super Models who would not get out of bed for less than $10,000 per day, we are not inclined to go out to dinner unless the pay-off is really great.  Unfortunately, we've been spoilt by some great restaurants in Hong Kong that are amazingly good value and where we know the Sommelier or Maitre D' or Owner or all of them so we always get treated very well.  

So far, we are still trying to find our favourite restaurant in the Twin Cities that would be worth the drive and forfeit of our warm and comfy beds.  We'll keep you posted.

Thank you Jack Frost

One man's disaster is another child's happy day!

The extreme cold has resulted in more school closures than ever before!  I had heard of school closing because of snow days but they have been closing school because of extreme cold.  Katy is very chuffed and has been roaming about home having fun!

This morning, she was doing puzzles with Julie while they both sang Vacation Bible Study Kingdom Rocks songs at the top of their lungs.  Nana would have loved it!

Ballet!

We have been wanting to get Katy back into ballet again for some time but hampered by our back to the wall schedules and a difficulty in finding recommended classical ballet schools with a rigorous regime like the RAD Katy was doing in Hong Kong or the Cecchetti I grew up with in Australia.  We finally made it to a class at Eileen Blake School of Dance with Katy's friend Elsa. 

It is half ballet and half jazz, but seemed like it was really quite a serious but fun class.  Katy is keen to continue this class with Elsa BUT ALSO wants to try the Academy of Russian Ballet, which sounds like a very serious enterprise indeed.  I'm just paralyzed with the panic of how to fit everything in!

With Katy's background in Suzuki piano and RAD ballet, she thinks she really likes the serious and strict classes more than the fun and airy fairy classes.  Funny, since she really doesn't seem to be at all competitive and ambitious in her own right.  At least, not yet.

Happy Australia Day!

 In the midst of our quintessentially Minnesotan cold weather catastrophe, we managed to celebrate Australia Day in our own small quiet way with vegemite on Saos at home and minties and Violet Crumble (thanks Auntie Rachel!) in the car while singing Home Among the Gumtrees and Waltzing Matilda.

Catastrophe!

After Mass on Sunday, we received a phone call from our neighbour at Sanibel Drive to let us know that there were icicles outside our window so we had better go over to take a look!

 When we got there, Rick opened the door to the sound of gushing water and a disaster of epic proportion!  Jack Frost and his winter goblins had struck again.  Somehow, a water pipe burst and we ended up with torrents of water coursing through the main level and the basement.  Rick was dismayed as we had just finished renovations on the place!

 
After much sloshing, Rick managed to turn off the water, but it still kept coursing down for at least another 15 minutes after the water shut off.  Finally, we felt that the water was starting to slow down and abate, so we then rushed off to Katy's recital at the nursing home in Edina, while calling neighbours and our insurance agent to figure out what to do. 

We found an emergency water damage specialist to come and clean up the disaster and prevent further damage.  They arrived with 30 huge fans and massive dehumidifiers.  The man has been camping in his warehouse because they have had 60 calls this week with water emergencies due to the extreme cold. 

While this is a disaster of epic proportions that will be costly and inconvenient for us, we do feel very fortunate when we think of all the other families our emergency water specialist told us about.  He has had to evacuate families into motels because of the water damage and people's homes and belongings have been ruined.  We feel fortunate that we are not having to deal with all of that on top of the property damage.

We have been such enthusiastic new Minnesotans that I did begin to worry whether we had jinxed ourselves.  Last night, after I parked at Cub on the way home, I thought my windscreen was cracking from the cold because I could see and feel huge "cracks" on the inside of my windscreen but not the outside.  I went outside to take a picture this morning but they were gone.  Obviously just frost that was so bad it looked and felt like cracked glass.

So with that panic gone and just the one cold disaster to deal with, we are still "embracing Winter" and enjoying the beautiful blue skies and Thomas Kincade scenery!  I still do feel like I am in a Bavarian oil painting or something when I gaze out at the deep drifts of snow.

The Old and the Restless

Katy had her first official Suzuki nursing home performance today.  Of course, she's performed unofficially many times at Great Grandma Edna's assisted living facility and now also at her nursing home.  But this was the first official Suzuki recital where she didn't actually know any of the residents!

The kids did a great job.  There were 13 of them from 3 to 17 and Book One to beyond Book Seven.  The residents were very appreciative and really enjoyed the performances, cute and spectacular.

Katy played Musette and her last part was particularly beautiful.

 After the recital, the teacher, Nancy Daley, encouraged each student to make it a point to introduce him or herself to at least one resident.  The residents were all super friendly and eager to share their musical memories and talents too.  Katy ended up chatting and meeting with five residents!

This was the first time we actually got a chance to meet other families.  We spent some time with the family of the boy who provided the grand finale to the concert.  He is of Indian heritage and is a Senior in High School, hoping to go to MIT to study Engineering.  He included a DVD of his performances in his application, so it's nice to know the music will be relevant to colleges.

Budding baker

To end her goofy day, Katy made her own bread cake.  This is a concoction she has whipped up many times over the years, always without a written recipe.  She thinks recipes are for wimps.  As is anyone who won't try her bread cakes!  Actually it was really yummy with a good slather of store bought lemon curd on top!

Goofy day

 You never know what a day at home with Katy will be like, particularly when Mama and Dada are super busy and can't spend much time with Katy playing...this day, Katy got busy painting Chinese lanterns, eating and exploring Ugli fruit, pumping up exercise balls, getting dressed up in Dada's wedding hat, helping Dada build his new dock box and then hiding in it...

 ...and generally goofing around.

The dock box is huge and will make ice fishing a lot less of a sherpa job!

Yummy Ugli

After years of writing the word in crossword puzzles, we finally found out what an Ugli fruit looks like.  It's kind of like a pomelo or grapefruit.

Minnetonka Chinese New Year

One of Katy's greatest worries when we were moving from Hong Kong to Minnesota was the loss of all the Chinese festivals and traditions she loves.  So, we were very excited and curious to take part in our first "official" Chinese New Year celebration in Minnesota. It's the District wide celebration held at Minnetonka High School and featuring performances from all the Chinese immersion classes.

 Excelsior First Grade classes all performed as one group.  They sang one song, but repeated it about four times to make it longer.  Katy said her class knew other songs but the other classes did not so they could only do one song together.

 The kids were very excited and really enjoyed performing together.  Katy is here with Elsa, Mikayla, Paisley (Zizi) and Sophia in the picture above, and with Kyle, Kenzie, Tirfe and Benjamin in the picture below.  They have a very diverse class!

 Katy and Elsa are great friends but unfortunately we don't get to spend much time with the Caldies as they live over by Ridgedale and are super busy with a new baby in the family.

 Each class also displayed artwork on a large scroll hung outside the cafeteria and performance area.

The kids get very upset about their drawing abilities in the classroom.  I'm trying to encourage them to embrace their own versions of whatever they are drawing, and we had fun inventing dinosaur horses and elephant unicorn horses and babies.  Horses are really really hard for six year old kids to draw!