Happy Lunar New Year's Eve (Chinese New Year's Eve) fun!

It was a semi-busy day today.  I had to go for a three-hour testing to test to make sure I don't have gestational diabetes.  I'm not exactly sure why I had to do the fast at night, and then get blood drawn three times.  Maybe because of my age or maybe it's a new thing that they are doing here in Taiwan.  I have no idea.  I do now that it made me very sleepy and I have some nice bruises from where they drew the blood. 

After I got back from the hospital, John left to take a bunch of guys to the orange grove to pick oranges.  The kids and I cleaned up, and I took a nap to recover some from my morning adventure while they played games. 

John got back and we decided to go downtown to see if they had anything up to celebrate Chinese New Year.  We walked downtown -- stopping and playing at all the parks, finding bathrooms for me and then stopping at our jewelry store so that Little H could show her brothers and her dad where she went to get her ears pierced.  We also picked out a couple of studs for her to wear after she wears her earrings for a couple more weeks and I decided last minute that I wanted to add another whole in each of my ears. 

  Then we went to see the blow-up chicken that was up in the middle of Hsinchu in honor of the year of the Chicken or Rooster.   As we were walking around downtown we found a long tent that had food vendors and a couple of game vendors and other vendors selling stuff in the middle of the street.  The kids begged us to let them play a game which we did and they earned a prize.  For some reason, those prizes drive me insane....maybe because it's a cheap prize and it breaks almost as soon as you get it and then all you hear is whining that it broke.  But it's in your house and you can't get rid of it because it's still a precious toy in the sight of that child.  Thankfully we could walk home and as we walked home we enjoyed the beautiful stars that we don't often get to see in the city. 

With the start of Chinese New Year, everything in Hsinchu is a little bit quieter as everyone is going to visit family in their hometowns and for the most part Hsinchu is not many people's hometown.  So we enjoy a little bit of quiet and not so much traffic during this next couple of days.  Happy Lunar New Year!!