We had a low key Lunar New Year's Eve.

The girls wore red to bed so that the monster Nian would be afraid of them and not eat them if he came, because we were not going to stay up all night to scare him away. We ate homemade pizza. We read our favorite Lunar New Year story: The Nian Monster by Andrea Wang. The Nian monster comes to modern day Shanghai and we learn about new year traditions, the Nian myth and also Shanghai landmarks, while the little girl, Xingling, outsmarts the monster for another year.

Lunar New Year is also called Spring Festival since China moved to the Gregorian Calendar. We put out a few New Year/Spring decorations. MsC and I had made paper cut lanterns in the mandarin symbol for Spring. We pinned one of our banners from last year to our bulletin board, so have up a some red decorations, a bamboo plant in a goldfish pot, some pink blooms, and a live Pussy Willow Plant symbolizing Spring which I brought home from Ikea. Some people were leaving with 10 foot tall arms full of Pussy Willow branches. I don't know how they got them in a car.

New Year's Day we made sure to eat something sweet for a good luck, didn't sweep the floors or our luck away all day, and spent the day doing what we would like to do all year, so we avoided the housework and schoolwork, spent the whole morning at the pool and playground, and  had a Lego building afternoon. The kids are working on New Year Lego sets: Spring Festival Market 2020 and also Story of Nian which shows a Lion Dance in front of a Chinese Temple. We also got free Ox for buying so much Lego too.

Most Lunar New Festivities are cancelled or strictly modified to limit any gathering of crowds this year in Singapore. One of the big ones that we skipped last year, because we had just heard about that virus in Wuhan and Jonathan assured me "There's always next year," was replaced this year with a very controlled festival in Gardens by the Bay, called River Hong Bao. Tickets are free, but expected to be so popular that they were released one day at a time. I missed them 2 days in a row, but was able to get 6 tickets so our whole household can attend one evening later this week. You get a 2 hour window out in the gardens to go enjoy the festive Lantern walk and Chinese entertainment, including traditional plays and classic live music. I'm pretty excited about that.