The Year of the Snake

Hello,

Today is the first day of the Year of the Snake.

I would like to wish everyone a fantastic Year of the Snake. May you have joy, good health and prosperity. If you are a seller, I wish you heaps of sales. Yes, heaps and heaps of sales.

I woke up early this morning (because I checked my phone and saw I had an Etsy sale and HAD to get up but yay for the sale) and smelled the air. Yep, there was no mistaking the smokiness from the mass burning of incense paper the night before. It's just about right. The Year of the Snake smells no different from the Year of the Dragon.

Yesterday was the last day of the Year of the Dragon and we Chinese traditionally gather somewhere to have a reunion dinner. For us, it's at my MIL's.

The dragon sure isn't giving way to the snake easy. The last 3 days has been nothing but rainy with floods in a few unfortunate low-lying areas.  In the photo above, we're leaving for my MIL's and this was after waiting for 2 hours for the rain to let up. I don't know why my iPhone doesn't capture the rain well but it was pretty heavy.

For our reunion dinner we had the usual fried food - fried mid-joints and prawn fritters. There were many dishes prepared but I usually just eat these two.

Of course we had the obligatory lo hei. (tossing of salad for good fortune). Above is the before image.

Here's the tossing. The higher the better. Anyway, I didn't have the heart to show you the after image of the salad. Just imagine what the salad would look like say, after a horse had run through it - a few times.

We also played mahjong - for real money. My kids have never gambled with money before. Before we have only played for points. Me and my girl lost to SIL(the big winner) and son.

This year we were really good with observing of traditions.

We remembered to put the pomelo and mini oranges (what are they called?) on the dining table. It's a symbol of good fortune.

I did not clean my home today in order not to sweep away the good fortunes. In fact, just to be sure we keep the good fortunes in, I'm going to refrain from cleaning for a whole week.

I did good on the Mandarin oranges - queued up for them and most importantly remembered to bring them when we went visiting today.

We gave red packets to everyone we were obligated to give.

We visited three homes.

For once I wore something reddish. I wore old sandals because I don't like to limp when I go visiting.

Hubs found the opportunity to wear his hideous snake t-shirt.

He loved it that I screamed in fright when he first put it on.

Today at my mother's, we had a 2nd lo hei. It got me wondering. How many lo hei's can one have. Would one lo hei cancel out another lo hei?

My great/grand niece - isn't she cute? She knows how to use chopsticks!

That's right little girl. Show the older ones how it's done.