Happy Year of the Ox!

Happy Lunar New Year! ^__^
Phil and I did most of our celebrating this weekend. We went into the city yesterday to meet up with his parents for lunch, and then it was off to the barber's so Phil could get his hair cut before the New Year. While we were heading back to the car we passed a bunch of people riding by on their bikes, blasting music and wearing orange traffic cones on their heads...
According to the signs they were wearing they were biking against war. (Not really New Years related, but interesting none-the-less.)
Today we spent the evening at my mom's house. This time I remembered to take some pictures, although I didn't remember until after dinner... And we can't forget the red envelopes. You're supposed to give red envelopes to kids and your elders. Considering my sister and I are both married now this will probably be the last year we actually get red envelopes from my mom. Technically we should have been giving red envelopes to my mom, but I don't think she's ready to be considered an "elder".

We put some food and flowers out for Buddha in the prayer room my mom has upstairs.

And we put out some food and flowers for my dad.

Then we went outside to burn some paper money to pay respects to all of our family members that are no longer with us. (Don't worry it's not actual money.) It was cold outside, but it warmed up pretty quickly with the fire.

Here's my sister waiting for the fire to die down a little so she can throw in more paper money.

We burned some paper lotus flowers too. You can see this one right before it caught on fire. That pretty much concluded our New Year festivities. Since New Year's Day is a Monday we won't be able to make it into the city to see all the lion dances and other celebrations in Chinatown, but maybe next year.