Tet

I want familiarize you with the Vietnamese holiday Tet. We hope to take part in this celebration with our child throughout their life to keep them in touch with the heritage and country’s culture.

Tet is a popular holiday and festival in Vietnam. Tet is a celebration of the New Year. This year it starts on February 7, 2008, the holiday lasts three days. 2008 is the Year of the Rat or Mouse. This year marks the beginning of the 12 month cyclical zodiac of animals.

Prior to the start of Tet, people clean and paint their homes, making everything spotless. Old clothes are given away are new ones are bought for the celebrations. Paying back debts before Tet is customary and arguments are avoided and mistakes are forgiven. This signifies a new beginning.

During Tet, everyone visits family and friends. It is believed the first visitor of the new year brings good or bad luck with them. Families often invite someone important or well liked to be their first visitor to make sure their luck is good. It is an honor to be asked to be the first visitor in someone’s home.

Children receive li xi (red envelopes containing money) from their elders. Some families hang many li xi on a tree in their home to give to visitors. Children will don their new clothes and give their elders traditional Tet greetings before receiving the money. The children are free to spend their money on toys or on gambling games such as bau cua ca cop.

Customs during Tet are giving lucky presents to others to enhance your relationship, new clothes, new rice, rice wine, red things (red symbolizes happiness, luckiness & advantages). People buy a lot of water on Tet holiday because many people wish money to flow in streams like water currents. Some things that should not be done during Tet to prevent bad luck are: saying or doing bad things. You should not sweep the house or empty the trash or you may lose luckiness. You should not wear white clothes because white is the color of funerals in Vietnam.

Food during Tet is usually vegetarian since it is believed to be bad luck to eat meat on that day. Bang chung is tightly packed sticky rice with bean fillings wrapped in banana leaves. It can take days to cook so it must be prepared prior to the start of Tet. No cooking is to be done during Tet. Hat Dua are roasted watermelon seeds, Cu Kieu are pickled vegetables.

We hope that you are interested in the holiday and in the future come out to celebrate with our new family.

The wait goes on

We are still anxiously waiting to hear from the agency. There have been 7 referrals so far this month. That is a record since we've been with the agency. The agency hopes to be able to refer just as many next month, however, the holiday may slow it down. What holiday you may ask? Many of you have heard of Chinese New Year well, it is similar. Vietnamese call it Tet (their version of the New Year.) The country shuts down for 1 week at the beginning of February to celebrate. I will post more on the Holiday in the next week.

We are trying to finish the baby's room. Chris needs to replace the ceiling and started to remove all the finish work. Unfortunately, his foot was injured and we now will have to wait until he is out of his cast and started PT. This will be helpful to me because I'm still torn on the room color. Right now, it's yellow and I think I want to change it to sage green. It works with both a boy or a girl. I have narrowed down the theme of the room, Classic Winnie the Pooh. Some of the things I have registered for at Target are the Classic Winnie the Pooh and it has a sage undertone.

I will post more on the upcoming holiday and how we will be celebrating with the baby next year. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for good news, SOON.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year. A new year brings good news from our agency. They have referred 4 more babies, 3 infant boys and 1 infant girl. I will not know how far up the list we move until the families identify themselves. I have based our standing on the list of the other families who are active in the agency chat room. The agency stated that some of the families referred these children are not active in the chat room. I don't know what that means because I go to the chat room but I don't post in the conversations, so does that mean I'm not active. As many of you know I have a pseudo waiting list, it is based on information from the chat group. One member put together a database where each family could put where they were at in the process. I have made my list from that database. It's not completely accurate but of the referrals so far it's been right on so I have been relying on it.

Chris and I are hoping that 2008 will be our year. Our ten year anniversary, a new baby and a happily ever after.