Chinese New Year ~ Shine Your Light

We celebrated Chinese New Year on Saturday night.  It was going to be closer to the actual day (Monday)  but with Super Bowl in Sunday night we were afraid our favorite Chinese restaurant would be too busy.

It was simple really.  Just the grandparents, yummy food, music, and time remembering the country of our daughters birth.  

This is what China looks like to me.  (through the window of a fast moving bus on our way out of the country to the city.  Leaving her birth town)

This is the drive from the big city out two hours to the remote villages where Anna was born and spent the first 14 months of her life.  

China to me is beautiful.  Part of my heart will always belong to China.  The people that cared for (the best they could) my baby girl, her birth mother for giving her life, the fields, the factories, the bridges, even the orphanages are all beautiful to me.  One day I will have the full picture.  One day God will show me.  I wish I didn't have to wait until Heaven to know the whole story.  But I trust in it's beauty just the same.  Yes, China is beautiful to me.  I look at her every day.

Little gifts on the table.  *year of the monkey*

and oranges for a year filled with good luck









special gifts from China when Scott traveled there.









and this I loved (thank you to my friend Cindy for showing this to me... it was perfect)



Shine your light









Chinese New Year means red envelopes



(even in the middle of a party for her, she reads)





my girl