This is true.  Every year my parents throw a Chinese New Year party.  This holiday is sometimes in January and sometimes in February.  We eat Chinese food in Chinese costumes.  We bang pots and pans to scare away “evil spirits” and we give pennies wrapped in red paper for good luck.  When I was a young girl my mom decided to start celebrating EVERY holiday.  It brought purpose and fun to each month.  Now that I am a mom the tradition continues.  We have great family memories.

I love you!

On three day weekends our family enjoys hiking.  We look up a hike in the Arizona Highways Magazine and go on an adventure.  This hike was up near Sedona and although you can’t tell in the picture, we were surrounded by huge walls of red rock.  It was so beautiful.  We had a great time.  Ben made us impromptu walking sticks because in the shade the snow was ice and slippery.  Plus we crossed a creek about 5 times, so the sticks helped support us while stepping on stones.

I love Valentine’s Day.  Each month I can’t wait to change the decorations in our home.  This month I bring out the red plates, the valentine books, and hang up this decoration.  It is twine that I hang with some IKEA ornaments.  I bought them on sale right after Christmas one year, and use them for Valentine’s Day.

For MLK Day we wanted to eat some southern food.  We visited Pappadeaux and enjoyed some gumbo and po boys.

We held Adam’s birthday party in January so that it didn’t conflict with the holidays.  What fun!  This was Adam’s first “friend” party and we had a great turn out.  We chose an exploration, Indiana Jones type theme.  The kids wore hats and ate using old fashion tin cups, plates, and spoons.  The tablecloth was burlap.  They enjoyed an obstacle course, playing with a parachute, and a rousing game of dodge ball.  The chocolate cake had cookie dinosaur bones on it!

Maurice Sendak wrote a delightful book about chicken soup with rice.  Here is our favorite January recipe:

Directions

1. In a large soup pot, combine chicken, carrots, parsnips, celery, onions, bay leaves, garlic, peppercorns, and 1 teaspoon coarse salt. Add water to cover by 2 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium. Simmer partly covered, occasionally skimming and discarding fat from surface, about 1 hour.
2. With a slotted spoon or tongs, remove chicken, carrots, and parsnips from pot; set aside. Pour remaining contents of pot through a fine-mesh sieve into another large pot; discard solids, and bring broth to a boil. Add rice and white part of scallions. Reduce heat to medium, and simmer, uncovered, until rice is tender, about 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, remove chicken from bones, and shred into bite-size pieces (discard any fatty or discolored parts). Cut carrots and parsnips into bite-size pieces. When rice is cooked, return chicken, carrots, and parsnips to broth in pot; add green part of scallions. Season generously with 5 to 6 teaspoons coarse salt. (To freeze, see note.)

From Everyday Food, October 2006

Around here, in sunny Arizona, we don’t get snowflakes in January (although I still decorate in blue and white), we get citrus.  We love our lemon and orange trees.  Harvesting this time of year is always so rewarding.  We start making our favorite lemon recipes.  Here is the ice cream…

Lemon Ice Cream

1 c. granulated sugar

1 c. whole milk

1/3 c. fresh lemon juice (about 1 1/2 lemons)

1 c. whipping cream

1/2 t. vanilla

We make it in an ice cream maker.