Seollal Celebration

This past weekend, we attended a Seollal party. Seollal is the Korean Lunar New Year, and it's one of the most important days on the Korean calendar. We made the drive into Rockford, which is about an hour and a half north. Thankfully Joel fell asleep about halfway there--it might have been a little scary if he hadn't since he only napped for a half hour that afternoon. The celebration was at Kuma's, an Asian bistro. The food was delicious! We enjoyed mandu, bulgogi, jap chae, and tteokguk (traditional new year soup). Kris, who was one of the hosts, made sure that some of the food was vegetarian. So sweet!

After dinner we attempted to take a picture of all the kids in their hanboks. As always, it proved to be a little difficult, but the pictures still turned out cute!

Kuma, the owner of the restaurant, showed us the traditional bows that men and women do during Seollal. It was very interesting to see, although I don't think I could demonstrate!

We saw many of our friends from the bloggy weekend, and we also met some new families. It is such a source of happiness for us that we have met so many wonderful people through adoption. People we never would have known if things had gone a different direction. That's just one more reason we are so completely happy about bringing Joel into our family.

We weren't quite sure how the drive home would go. Since we left around Joel's normal bedtime, we put the extra outfit from the diaper bag on (more comfortable than jeans and a sweater), gave him his bedtime bottle, and prepared for him to sleep on the way home. He must have been too excited from the fun evening to sleep, because he didn't fall asleep on the hour and a half ride (made longer by an ice-cream stop). He didn't even fall asleep when we tried to put him to bed and cried for a good ten minutes in daddy's arms. I'm guessing he was overtired and confused by the change in routine. He did fall asleep, though, and slept all night.

The actual date for the Lunar New Year is February 13, and we have another celebration with our local adoption group to look forward to! Happy Seollal!