On February 23 we attended the annual Family with Children from China (FCC) CNY Banquet, hosted at the Empress Pavilion in Chinatown.
We celebrated the night with the O'Kane and Cooks/McDonough families again this year and hope too for many years to come.
The evening consisted of a traditional dinner (always so much food and keeps coming all night), DJ playing music throughout the evening, dancing by everyone, special acrobatic performances, the Los Angeles East Wind Lion Dance Troupe with the parade of the dragons and drums, an amazing magic show, other performances, and the grand finale of the "Fireworks" Bubble Wrap Stomp (when all the kids jump on a floor of bubble wrap, which does sound like lots of fireworks going off.)Tanith, Meghan and Olethea had so much fun dancing. Meghan is our little dancing diva,,,she has the moves and very dramatic, where Tanith and Olethea did a lot of jump dancing and then you could not get these two out of the conga lines. The best part of the evening for us was seeing all the kids having such a wonderful time. The magician was probably the crowd favorite of the night. It was so fun to see all the kids get so excited every time he made a bird appear...they would all run up to try and touch the bird...poor bird was probably scared...but every time the bird appeared, the rush of kids would surround the magician and the bird...this went on at least five times, so when he finally made a bunny appear, the crowd went wild. Tanith kept trying to find the birds behind his magicians table and he kept having to push her away, but she was bound and determined and never gave up. The magician would ask for volunteers for many different tricks during his performance and I was so excited when Tanith got picked. He put her up on a stand and had her hold her finger up and then finally he spun a basketball on her finger. She was thrilled!
It was nice to have more time this year to socialize with everyone and felt more comfortable knowing the girls stuck together, looked after each other and were having fun running around the banquet hall together (of course a parent was not too far away...we did follow the girls just to make sure they were okay and they were).
On the way home, Tanith asked us "What our favorite part was", daddy said "dancing with you", mommy said "watching you all night having fun", and Tanith's said, "the lions, drums, dancing and the basketball spinning on her finger"!
