Chinese New Year, Iowa Style... year 2!

Year two of the Schmitz family's attendance at the Iowa Chinese New Years celebration.

Prior to going this year, momma and me (dad) talked about how if the seating was more conducive to kids eating, that we would stay for a while and then head to a restaurant to eat lunch, which is what happened on Saturday.

It was roughly the same type of thing as last year, but at a different location.

I took a photo of the signage in a futile attempt to read the Chinese letters under the English. Every time I do that, including this time, it ends in a fail.  I just don't get it...

This photo and the one after it are looking into the room where the food, crafts, fund raisers and whatever else are all set up.

I tried to take a photo of the guy laying on the floor and the little boy doing the crazy acrobatics above him.  A person with really good eyes can spot them in nearly the middle of the photo.

Caleb seemed much more into things this year than last.

Robby seemed way more into as well and was MAD when we were leaving to go get food elsewhere!  Who'da thunk it?

One of the many performers.

Aging rocker Neil Young doing a dual knife dance.  Just kidding, it wasn't a knife dance.  Okay, seriously, it wasn't really Neil Young, but it reminded me of him!

These two cats were also at last years shindig and were 100 times more fascinating to the boys this year.  They do have quite a long choreographed routine that is quite impressive.

Here's some of the kiddos and with the acrobatics group.

More...

Even more...

Ahhhh...  setting up for the "lion dance".  Caleb was captivated by the "lion" headdress and was hilarious standing up to get a better view.  The photo cannot possibly do the situation justice.

The aforementioned lion dance.

This was going on during the ending part of the lion dance (that's the lion on bottom right of the photo), where the adults would do the back-bends and the kiddos would walk across their guts.

And the big finale of the lion dance.

This guy was simply amazing.  Robby just walked up as I scrolled down to put a caption on this photo and said the same thing.   I do not recall what the instrument was called, but he handled it like a champ and played along with recorded music.

This was the stick dancing guy.  He had some pretty good moves, but he has nothing on my Martin Short dance.

These kids, not one of them Chinese, performed common American nursery rhymes/songs in Chinese dialect, presumably Mandarin, but I don't know for sure.

We left there and drove up to the China Dragon in Norwalk for some good kibble.  We weren't the only family to do so as there were four other families, white folks, with Chinese kiddos in there.  

Makes me think that I ought to send an email of recommendation to the organizers about eating arrangements...