Chinese Lantern Festival

First, we apologize for being a bit out of touch with our posts. It has been a very busy month. Trey's parents just left from their 2 week visit here which we will be blogging about a bit later. Lots of stories and photos from that!!

The Chinese Lantern Festival in Christchurch runs over a weekend in March and is attended by more people than we knew were even in the city!! We went at night to see the lanterns at their finest. For safety reasons I am sure, they have bulbs inside the lanterns instead of candles.

We turned the corner into Victoria Square and there were so many people and the lanterns lit up the night sky. There were also heaps of booths with Asian food, hand held lanterns for people to buy and even a booth where people were doing acupuncture. You will all be happy to know that neither of us took part in the "acupuncture in a booth". Can anyone say creepy? How do you say creepy in Chinese? :) We wanted to buy our own lanterns and walk around with them but there were only 2 booths dedicated to buying those and the lines were insanely long.

There were dragons on the water, zoo animals, watermelon lanterns hung from the trees, fish lanterns in the water, and of course being in New Zealand sheep and cow lanterns! We got some good pictures.



Click here to see more!

We wanted to try some of the Asian food but we had no idea there would be the option for dinner there. We ate dinner before we went unfortunately but next year we will definitely try it!

hairyLemon's 10th anniversary and Valentine's Day!

This year we got to celebrate our very first summer Valentine’s Day! It was a pretty nice day and we decided to go out to brunch at our favorite local spot, Café Decadence and then went to a local cookie company factory called Cookie Time. Jocelyn bought a t-shirt to commemorate the day and we got some of Jocelyn’s favorite afghan biscuits. An Afghan biscuit is a traditional New Zealand biscuit made from cocoa powder, butter, flour and cornflakes.

Later that evening we went to a beautiful restaurant for dinner that sits right on the Avon River, called Retour. They offered a 5 course meal with wine pairings that we took advantage of. We had a lovely night with lovely food and conversation. It was very romantic.

We are realizing that February goes a lot faster when it is warm out! :) We are both enjoying our jobs and Jocelyn just helped hairyLemon celebrate their 10^th anniversary. She planned a party complete with a lemon-shaped cake. Those Lemons really know how to party! She is also spear-heading a move they will be making soon. hairyLemon will shift their offices right after Easter to 123 Victoria Street which is conveniently a short walk around the corner from our flat. The directors have some really awesome things planned for the new space and Jocelyn has been sworn to secrecy. It will be real funky and modern – certainly the coolest office that either of us has ever worked in before.

We will be sure to take photos when the new offices are open.