A happy and sweet day

First of all, Happy Chinese New Year! It is the year of the Tiger. It's not every year that the Chinese New Year which is based on the lunar calendar coincides with Valentines day but this year it does. Good thing in both holiday, the color to wear is red.

Here, in the photo the kids "bai-bai" which is Chinese way of wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year. In China, they would visit relatives and do "bai-bai". Here in the US, we just telephone. They also get to dress in their new cloths and get "hong-bao" or red envelope containing $$$. Many people travel far to see their family/relatives. The thing I remember the most from my childhood is the firecrackers. I love them. The ones I love the most is the type you hold in your hand and swirl. The light/sound was pure magic to me. If you were to travel to China now, most businesses are likely to be closed for 2 weeks so you might find service hard to come by.


The kids also went sledding yesterday as there is finally snow. J has actually been praying about snow. It's a good thing we live in a place where it snows because J/Prime love winter sports. They can't wait to go skiing.



We also went to our local children's museum to learn more cryptology. Here are a few:

The first one is "secret sharing". That is a way of dividing a secret among a group of people in such a way that no one person can discover the secret. The treasure is hidden and the coordinates are divided among different people.

This is "Visual Cryptography and is a method that allows a secret message to be encoded in two complementary array of black/white pixels. When the two is combined, the message/picture appears.
To make your own secret messages, check out http://www.r-hansen.com/tech/oti/html
or http://www.leemon.com/crypto/VisualCrypto.html

There was also a little decoding in Sunday school. You pop the balloon to find the letters and work with friends to figure out a key phrase in a bible verse.

Here J is in the process of extracting wheat germ DNA. The steps to do this experiment is on the board. You can click on it to make the picture bigger. The thing that looks like snot is DNA.

This V-day is esp. memorable for me as I got the best presents from hubby. Love is very sweet indeed.