Lantern Day

Another big weekend at Casa de Housepants. Saturday night, we co-hosted a progressive wine-tasting/appetizer party with the people on our cul-de-sac. Hosting parties makes me nervous, but it all turned out fine and everybody had a great time. Daphne got to go to a neighbor's house to hang out with her little friends and a babysitter. She had a blast and cried when she had to come back home.

Then yesterday, Daphne suddenly declared it to be "Lantern Day" (see above, Daphne in her Lantern Day outfit). She gave all her guys pretend baths, and then put teacups on all their heads (below - don't know why the photo is rotated that way, sorry):

She said it was their Lantern Day hats. Then she started singing, "It's Lantern Daaaayyy, it's lantern daaaayyy, we get to eat really good food on lantern daaaaayyy." At first I thought this all came from her crazy imagination, but I am starting to think it was based on something she saw on Ni Hao Kai Lan. For those of you who don't know, Kai Lan is like the Chinese Dora the Explorer. If you don't know who Dora is, then you must not have kids or ever go to Target or other places with toys. Anyway, I think they once had a lantern festival on Ni Hao Kai Lan, so that's probably where this all started.

Meanwhile, Kev and I decided to attempt the rare and difficult feat of cooking together. Kev was the Gumbo Meister and I was the sous chef. In order to get Daphne excited, we called it Special Lantern Day Gumbo, and told her that if she ate it all, she could have Delicious Lantern Day Strawberry Shortcake. And guess what. It worked! She ate all of her gumbo*, which was delicious:

and after a short break for Family Band Time, we all watched Dumbo and ate strawberry shortcake. I am really hoping that we can make Lantern Day a yearly tradition. It was fun. Everybody was in a good mood. And we got to have really good food on Lantern Daaaayyy.

*chicken and andouille gumbo - the final "Winter of Soup" soup.