In preparation of CNY

I had written a great post earlier and some how it got deleted, so I'm sorry that this might be spotty.

Chinese New Year (aka Lunar New Year; CNY) is a huge holiday in Singapore much like Christmas is in the US. Everyone goes shopping because there are lunar new year sales. People get small gifts on the day of the new year. Family members meet up to celebrate the holiday in Chinese tradition. People also decorate the whole house in the lucky color - red. The house also needs to be cleaned up for not only for practical reasons, but spiritual reasons as well. When I was young, I was taught that in Chinese tradition you must clean up your home before the first day of the Lunar New Year. The reason for this is because spirits will "dust" the home with good luck for the whole year, if you clean up after the new year you will be sweeping away the luck.
My grandmother has been very diligent in her CNY preparations. On the morning of the 6th my grandmother decided that we were going to clean up the living room. We moved out all the furniture into the leftover spaces we have in the small apartment. Moving to couch was a bit of a hassle because I was the only one who could lift things. Then Mama scrubbed the marble floors with all-purpose cleaner and a broom. When it was time to mop up the suds, Gonggong (my grandfather) and I thought that Mama wanted a bucket of water to mop. Instead she grabbed the hose from Gonggong's hands and watered down the floors! There was water everywhere! In the kitchen, in our rooms... We had to hurry to push the water out through the front door. My job was to make sure the family shrine did not get wet. My biggest worry was that the water would seep into the apartment below, but my grandmother didn't seem worried. I guess the apartments in Singapore, being made of solid concrete and marble, does not have problems of seepage. Needless to say, we got the floors cleaned and dried before noon.
Yesterday was the day that my grandmother took me to the largest temple I have ever seen for new years blessings. Our trip was to thank the gods for the blessings this year and then humbly ask for blessings in the new year. When going to the temple you must be clean as you can be (women on their "time of the month" shouldn't go), and you should also bring items to donate so that the temple can keep running (i.e. Jossticks - prayer sticks, candy - to give to visitors, money - you know why). So on our way to the temple Mama and I bought some candy to donate. The candy was donated to the first shrine we encountered and then we started our journey of praying to several different shrines. Mama showed me how to thank and to ask for blessings at five different shrines. By the end of it I still wasn't sure I was praying correctly. Some shrines were large, some were in air-conditioning, some you had to walk around to thank every god. It was a long trip and I got some minor blisters but I guess you need to go through some pain to obtain true blessings.

The picture is of this year's prediction for those born in the year of the Rabbit. Good luck to my fellow Rabbits!