Chinese New Year's coming

Noah was very excited about today being show and tell because tomorrow is Chinese New year and his school is closed. Grace is away until tomorrow night, and I'm wondering what  to do for Chinese New Year. Growing up, my mom gave me lucky money for Chinese New Year, and we would walk into Chinatown (because technically we didn't live in it, just near it) and watch the lion dance get some baos, but we didn't do all the food and stuff. In fact te director of little Panda had asked me if I had any plans for the New Year and I told her all of this. That mostly my experience of Chinese New Year is stuff done outside the home. When I was with my Sifu he would make big meals this dish representing this and that and an altar to the gods first. Heck he did that for every holiday and there is actually a Chinese Holiday once a month pretty much. But I'm not making that meal. First of all I don't know how. Secondly, we wouldn't be able to eat it all. It's too much. Later today we will go to two New Year's meals, one at Little Panda and one at the Kung Fu school. But I don't really want that to be it. We wrote our little Chinese New Year's sayings. Well I did, while they cut up paper. And yesterday we sort of made little nian monsters, not that that is really a new year's tradition. But Noah actually made one himself and that is what he brought in to show and tell today.
They will get their red envelopes of course. And we will do some of the parade stuff.
But I think there is a lack of magic in the household for this holiday.
Now I have some children's books and they mention the Kitchen God and the burning of paper and bribing of the Kitchen God as he goes to the Jade Emperor. But for me, there is no Jade Emperor. I bow to Guan Gung, as a man and that's pretty much the only Chinese deity I ever believed in. Does that make sense, to devote one self to one of the gods but not believe in the Pantheon? There was Guan Yin to, but like I said, she is just the goddess in general for me. Call her Mary, call her Guan Yin. Same thing.
The coolest thing about New Year's more so than the Buddha stories about choosing the animals and all that, is the Nian story, which is the Lion Dance story. And tell the story all you want as if the Nian and the Lion Head are two different monsters species, or two different monsters of the same species.... but whatever, your lion head can be either one. I feel like I'm going to have to start making our own Chinese New Year's traditions that work for me. Grace bought a Pomelo and I opened it and hung the peel over the door. Should have done that earlier but whatever. Traditionally (according to some book) the wife is supposed to bathe in pomelo leaf water. But I remember doing a cleansing ritual at the school where we all washed our hands in water with pomelo rinds. We'll be doing that tonight. I guess I should set up an altar too. We don't have one. We'll just set up a New Year altar. I guess we'll bow to the ancestors and whatever gods/saints. Maybe say a prayer. Maybe not. But we'll do the cleansing ritual and read the books and do some lion dance.
 I'm not burning anything but incense in the house though. We have a fire place, but now isn't the time to play with fire. Maybe when their older and we actually have the fireplace being used more regularly.