Father and son shaving together

I remember the time I was young watching my dad shaving his facial hair in the morning. He got soap fluffy covered his face, and smoothly ran the stainless steel razor with replaceable double-edge blade down the cheeks. It was fascinating, like the coolest thing ever and I wondered when I could get to do that.

… Fast forward in time …

As I was getting ready for work this morning, Benjamin sat in the bathroom watching me holding an electric razor in my hand.

Benjamin: “What are you doing, daddy?”

Me: “I’m shaving.”

He continued to watch for a few seconds, then said: “Daddy, when I’m big, can I have a ‘mouth lawnmower’ too?” (His word in Vietnamese: cái máy cắt cỏ miệng!)

Me: *laughing out loud*  ”Certainly, Ben. And this, this is called a razor.”

(Image from Getty Images)

Daddy and Benji

I think being parents and watching the kids grow each day is truly a special gift from God. It certainly brings me a clearer perspective on my relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Our little Benjamin is now quite talkative using his limited bilingual vocabulary pools. It is quite funny yet adorable hearing him talk, trying to explain something with only words that he knows. Most of the time, you probably already understood what he is trying to say before he finishes his sentence as he takes his time choosing the words, while the other times you will be guessing what he tries to say as he mixes in English and Vietnamese words altogether.  I can’t keep from laughing every time he finishes his stories. At first, he thought I probably made fun of him, so he blushed and shy away. But then, now he takes it as I am cheering him on. Ha ha ha. I love it!! I absolutely love to hear him telling stories of his day.

It must be the parent instinct or something very cool like superhero power in us that we parents typically already know what our kids try to say before they even say it.  Our ‘parent-sense’ probably tingling all over as we can sense when our children are happy, sad, excited, hungry, in pain, or something bothers them.  Even though we can read their mind most of the time, we still wish our kids would talk to us about what’s going on in their lives. We would give them foods, clothes, toys, things that they like anyways, but we would like to hear they request them first.

Isn’t that strange that this is exactly how things are between us and God, that He always knows what is in our hearts before we even lift up our prayer to Him? Well,  it shouldn’t be a surprise since we are created to His image, His likeness. We are His children, and God loves to hear from us, our stories, our needs, what going on in our lives, what bothering us. Not that God doesn’t know since He is the omniscient One (simple word, He is Mr. Know-it-all), but He longs for that interaction, conversation, relationship that connect we and Him.

“Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord” (Psalm 139:4)

“for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8)

When Benjamin talks now, he often struggles finding words to express his thoughts. That’s when I come in to help him, either complete his thought by saying it for him, or help him saying it right. Again, we learn to do that from the Master. God knows our hearts and He is praying for our weakness.  He even has given the Holy Spirit in us to intercede for us when we cannot find words to express ourselves.

“Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you,  that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31)

“the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” (Romans 8:26)

The love in our earthly relationship between parents and children is simply just the small scale manifestation of the “truly, madly, deeply” God’s love for us. Our mind just simply cannot fully grasp how strong, how far, how high, how deep God’s love is for us. Then God gives us that gift of being parents so we can have a glimpse, a taste, a somewhat comprehension of His love through the love for our children.

“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! ” (Matthew 7:9-10)

God knows what in your mind, and your heart. Yet have you talked to Him lately?

I just love road trips. There is just something fun about driving, discovering places, trying new foods, being outdoor, being spontaneous. For Thao, she just doesn’t like the part sitting in the car for too long. I don’t think the kids like sitting in one place either, not to mention the dreadful repetitive question: are we there yet?

With recent little short road trip to Denver with the kids, another issue arise: bathroom break. Benjamin was quite fussy and kept requesting bathroom break like every fifteen minutes. When he was younger, he just slept the entire trip in his car seat, which was a whole lot easier. He’s not wearing diaper anymore, but for little road trip like this, we put him in diaper just in case but he refuses to go in the diaper.

The we have the little guru in back seat giving us tip: “Mommy, usually he wet his pants when you don’t tell him. If you tell him pee in his diaper, he won’t. You should tell him: don’t pee in the diaper, then he will!” Then, she turns to her brother: “Don’t wet your diaper, ok?” I couldn’t help but laughing out loud during that little therapy session. She already uses reverse psychology at her age.

This gets me thinking of the huge “road trip” the Israel took from Egypt to Canaan, the promised land. Now, that is some road trip, 40 years long, crossing many desserts – not so much of a scenic drive. There was a shorter route but of course due to their constant complaining, God made them took the long route, wandering in the dessert.

Forty years, can you imagine that? There were lots of them, like sand on the seashore, like stars in the skies, with donkey, camel, pets, cattles, belongings, kids. That is one heck of a trip. I don’t know how Moses did it, leading millions of people, knowing when to start moving, when to stop, what to do for foods. Then, I got to curious how the bathroom breaks were handle. That trip was a miracle in itself.

Road Trip

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Lately, I notice how Grace and Benjamin play and interact, and their differences in solving problem just amaze me.

When we give Ben a toy still in its package, he immediately goes for the “main content”, yanking it off the box, then try to press on everything that might be a button, or flip it up side down to locate a switch. If nothing happens he gives it couple bangings against the floor. If still nothing, he concludes: “het pin roi!” (translation: it’s out of battery!) and will try to find a screw driver to open it up.

As for Grace, she goes for …the manual booklet first. Ha ha ha. She carefully pulls out the piece of paper from the box, spreads it across the table, and starts reading the instruction and follows the steps. When she got stuck, then she goes to daddy.

(On a side note, I’m so proud of her on the reading part. She’ll read just about anything she sets her eyes on, whether it’s her Bible, her books, Mommy’s book, back of a cereal box, or.. a toy’s manual booklet!)

The other day I bought them Happy Meals at McDonalds (bad parent, I know! Lol. This is not a frequent thing so it’s OK .. ha ha I hope), so they both got the toys that come with. Benjamin already gave me the Iron Man toy so I could turn it on for him while he’s eating the fries. I was driving away from the parking lot, finding the switch on the back of the toy and flipping it on, Grace shouted from the back seat: “No Daddy! That’s not correct. You have to pull the tape off on the chest first. That’s step one!” I looked in the mirror and saw Grace already had the instruction sat squarely on her legs with the toy already blinking light on her hand.

Isn’t that something?! We are blessed that God gave us 2 beautiful children with very unique in personalities and characteristics, which make our parenthood quite flavorful and completed.

I don’t remember the first song I sang when I was a kid, and I doubt if my parents would still remember. As for my kids, Grace’s first songs  were both “ABC” and the “Barney’s Song: I Love You“. That’s right, she knew both song, sang it loud and proud.  Songs are pretty easy for Grace to remember, and she sings some Vietnamese children song as well.  Quite the opposite for Benjamin, words and English vocab doesn’t quite stick with him.  He knows them, but he doesn’t say it back. When he was younger, Thao usually sang to him a Vietnamese lullaby and he remembered it.

You start singing and he can sing the next words for you, but he doesn’t sing the song. His babysit lady is from Hue, a central region of Vietnam, and she speaks with thick central-region accent. Ben also now has some Vietnamese central accent when he talks. It’s quite funny. The other day he went home from daycare and sang first line of  ”Ai Ra Xu Hue” (a well-known song about that central region) and we had quite a laugh.

Today mark a milestone for him as he can sing his first English song, “Happy Birthday to you!”  ”ABC” didn’t quite work out. Too many letters.

Here are our little superheroes dressed up for Halloween night. Grace is Blue Power Ranger (yeah, it’s her choice of color since they don’t have orange, and she prefers blue over red), and Benjamin is Superman.  Grace was excited walking block after block for trick-or-treating, while Ben preferred sitting in the stroller and being pushed around the block. Not so super, after all!

Our superheroes

See more pictures

Also, beautiful sunset sky on Pikes Peak the night before Halloween.

Pikes Peak

Sunset

See more Pikes Peak pictures

…And then Benjamin turns 2! That was fast! It seems like he was just learning to walk yesterday. Asking him “How old are you, Ben?” and he would say two but spreading all of his five fingers because he can’t quite use the thumbs to hold down other fingers yet. Cute!

Thao prepared the Vietnamese noodle for dinner, and family and couple friends, with short notice, came over to celebrate. Ben dressed in his Halloween costume as Superman, though he was confused and kept saying “Batman”… hahaha. We lighted up the candles on the cake for Ben to blow out, and he was very excited and wanted to do it again and again.

It’s a joy being parents and watching our kids growing up. It’s really is! It’s busy having kids for sure, and definitely tiredness is part of the equation. But on the bright side, seeing them laugh, learn, play, walk, talk with full of energy and curiosity, it’s priceless! Oh how we love our kids!

Blow out candles	Grace and Ben
Family and Friends	Vietnamese noodle

See more pictures

Both Grace and Benjamin caught a flu bug and were down for two days.  They had fever, coughing, and vomitting.  They’ve been sick-free for quite a while until now, so we were little frantic, worried, and afraid if they have got the swine flu, H1N1 virus. But we also trust in God’s authority over our lives, and nothing is out of His reach. We prayed and certainly God had heard our prayers. He gives them strength and they are sick no more. Grace showed sign of recovery in the afternoon, while Benjamin recovered the next day. Today, they are up, running around,  laughing, and active as they can be. Praise the Lord for His mercy. He reigns over sickness, or even death. What an almighty powerful God we serve!

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised – Job 1:21b

My apology for the lack of posts lately , and my typical excuse would be ”I’ve been busy“. However the truth is rather I’m been lazy.  Also somehow I couldn’t stay up late like I used to anymore. Usually after my evening devotion time, I would grab my laptop and browse, or write blog,  or find something to watch on the TV until 1AM before I hit the bed. Now, I could hardly open my eyes after I finish my evening prayer.  Sign of old age, I know!

Anyway, here is a long updates with what’s going on last few weeks.

Kids

Grace is doing fine in 1st grade and has fun at school. We get the hang of managing homework thing every night now.  Grace is also reading everyday, and I’m very impressed with her developing skill in phonetically pronouncing unknown words by breaking out letters and sounding them.  It’s amazing! I don’t know why this skill was never taught when I learned English back in the day in Vietnam.

Benjamin is into cars, or anything with wheels. Anywhere he goes, he brings a car toy with him. He’s still learning to talk, slowly. Ben goes to sleep by himself without mom or dad laying next to him. Though many occasions, he quietly sneaked out of bed, laying down on the carpet on top of the stair, observing us while we were cleaning in the kitchen.  When he heard me calling him out , “Benjamin! Go to bed, now!” he quickly ran back in the room,  climbed onto bed, closed his eyes and pretend he was sleeping. It’s kinda cute!!

Work

God has been great to us. We are still blessed for having our daily job.  Our company’s client cuts back, our company has to follow as well. It’s sad to see co-worker being laid off, or cut back in working hours.  It’s the ugly sight of this downturn slow economy. Though our hope is still in the Lord, who knows our future, and carries us in the palm of His hand.

Church

Our family’s been attending New Life Church morning service for about a month now. I’ve been going with friends before, but now Thao and the kids are joining me, which make me extremely happy. The messages past several months were on Proverbs, and they were so good. I certainly learn a lot, and these series of messages are meaningful, lifechanging to me.  God’s Words brings conviction, yet refreshing, and certainly makes my life, my family, my marriage happier.  I challenge you to listen or watch these sermons online at the New Life Church website, http://newlifechurch.org. Your time won’t be wasted.

After morning service at New Life Church, we usually go out for lunch. Then we rush home to get ready to attend our main church service, the Vietnamese Baptist Church in the afternoon. Thao is still teaching Vietnamese to the kids prior service time. I am still playing guitar for worship. It’s a long busy Sunday for us, but we are in it for the Lord, to worship Him. Last week message was great, too. That also reminds me to continually praying for my dad for great insight and teaching to bring transformation, revival for the congregation. Dad is also a guest speaker for the convention for the northern states and Canada this Labor’s Day weekend.

Guitar

Talking about guitar earlier reminds me that I want to tell you I have changed to a different guitar teacher for 5 weeks now. Yeah, I kept saying I will write all about this but that laziness got to me,  you see….  I really like this new tearcher, and absolutely learn a whole lot from him. He not only taught me guitar skills, but gave lots of insights in praising and worship.  It’s pretty awesome. I’ll talk more about that in another post.

Concerts

Two weeks ago, I went to the Chapel Service at Forcus on the Family with Rush of Fools lead the worship, and John Morgan was the guest speaker.  I wasn’t planned to go, but I heard of it on the radio on the way to work, and decided to take 2 hours off from work to come. My sisters and two other friends also went.  Without prior information, we probably would be fooled thinking the President George Bush was there. John Morgan not only impersonated the president well, he looked just like the president.  At first I was troubled by the idea of impersonating the president and sharing Gospel message, like how do you make fun of someone and talk about God at the same time. But it actually wasn’t a comedian showto make fun of the president.  With all the jokes aside, he presented the characteristic of the president that people don’t see. John’s message and the testimony were actually quite entertaining, funny yet inspirational.  You should check out his website: http://www.georgebushimpersonator.com .

Last week we also went to the Lincoln Brewster concert event hosted by our local Christian Radio. It was pretty awesome as well. I knew about Lincoln and his music, but did not know about his background.  It wasn’t like typical concert with music after music. He took breaks, joked around, played secular song requests. He introduced his family, talked about his kids, his wife. He gave the testimony about his life, his step-father…. There was calling and there were people accepting Christ on that night.  It was great. Lincoln is such a talented guitarist, and the praise and worship session was splendid.

Youth

Several youths go to New Life Church with us in the morning. It’s always fun going with the whole group, and hang out more. Lately, we are hooked on Sequence board game and played that a lot. We still play volleyball after our afternoon church service ends. Last Saturday, we went to Youth Fellowship event in Denver to hang around with other youths. It was been a long time since we last had such event.

Photo

I haven’t taken any pictures with my camera lately, or I might have and forgot to off load them onto computer. Last week at the Youth Fellowship event, I left my camera at the church and forgot to bring it home, so a friend is holding it for me. There won’t be any pictures anytime soon until I get my camera back.

But while waiting, enjoy some pictures I took with my phone at the Famous Dave BBQ restaurant last Sunday. I like my new phone, did I tell you that?!

Moose head	BBQ
Grace	Benjamin

See more pictures

Last time we went to the zoo probably was a little more than 2 years ago. Ben wasn’t even born yet. Last weekend, the kids had nothing to do so I decided to take them to the zoo. I’m not sure why but it was very crowded on that day. We had to park in the overflow parking lot.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is not like San Diego Zoo, you know. There’s nothing much to see, you see it once you see it all. Actually, they built a Sky View ride recently, which is basically a nopen air, noncover ski lift that take you up the mountain and back. If you don’t ski or snowboard, or have never been on a ski lift, this is your perfect chance. It’s as close as you can get. 

On the lift

Lift

One of the advantage point is that the  zoo is located near the foot of the mountain, so its layout has many hills. It’s great for getting some excercise while you enjoy watching the animals. If you have young kids, you should definitely bring stroller. You’ll need it.  Just in case you forget, they do rent out stroller for a price.

Top of Mountain	Resting
Riding Horse	Watching

Grace is pretty excited going to the zoo; she’s an animal lover. Benjamin is quite the opposite. He’s timid and afraid of animals, even cats and dogs. Probably he’s a little bit too young for this. He’s terified as the giraffe reached in his neck  for the crackers. So, while Grace is enjoy riding horse, petting the wallaby, Benjamin just sat in his stroller and watched.

Giraffe	??
Sleeping porcupine	King of the jungle

We had a good time. We headed home just a little bit before the rain came pouring down.

Check out pictures here

Grandpa gave Ben a haircut, and he looks handsome in it. Thank you grandpa! Before taking him to daycare this morning, I told him: let me take a picture of you, and he just squatted down right on the floor… hahaha!
 

Ben with new haircut

Ready for picture

Why Arizona State? Because it was on sale, that’s why!

My kids are looking forward to summer break. I know I used to when I once was (or still am ??! hmmm…)  They can go to bed late, and don’t have to wake up early. They look forward to summer vacation, outdoor activities, fun things to do… It will be a very long and boring summer if there is nothing to do.

Grace has been asking me to set up the pool in the backyard. We did that last year and maybe used it once or twice. But this year, the weather hasn’t been hot enough and it rains every afternoon.  So, we think she probably would enjoy  swimming lesson by now. Last year, we wanted to sign her up for swimming lesson, but she did not want to go.  I don’t know what change this year, but apparently she is very excited and tells everyone about her swimming class.  Grace starts at the very beginning level, because we want her to feel comfortable with the water. She’s somewhat afraid of being under the water, so there is no reason to skip ahead, then scare and scar the kid for life. Thao switches role with me to take Grace to swimming class in the morning, while I take care of Benjamin (showering, changing, feeding…  you know, all that jazz) before dropping him off at daycare.  The swimming class will last 2 weeks. Grace  has had couple classes, and she really enjoyed it. It’s funny! She does not ask us to stay up late anymore knowing she has swimming lesson in the morning. Also, she gets up quickly now, no snoozing.   She tells me all about the 3 seconds submarine, the pencil body formation, the hand shovel, not fork to dig the water, and … her friend Cody in swimming class.  LOL!  I am really glad that she likes it, more comfortable in the water, and of course, will know how to swim very soon.

Get ready..	Get in the water
more pictures

Nothing fun planned for Benjamin yet, or maybe he doesn’t know the difference anyway! We just don’t know what activities would fit for him yet, but whatever they are, definitely one of us has to be involved.  We usually take Ben and Grace to the park in the late afternoon, after picking them up from daycare. They swing, slide, climb…. you know, be a kid!  Unfortunately, there is no plan for summer vacation this year. With the blurry future of the economy, we probably should stick with Stay-cation instead. Bring vacation home!! Though, this July, we will be in Texas for the Vietnamese Baptist Convention. It’s not really a vacation, but definitely a  short break from our normal routine. To the kids, staying in hotels is like vacation to them.  Then, Summer Bible Vacation will start pretty soon in July.

We were talking about camping recently. We haven’t done that for years.  I love camping and I want the kids to experience it, too.  All the tent setup, sleeping bags, campfire, roasted marshmallow, jokes, songs … all of that… and no bear! But I don’t know when that will become reality. There are still rollerblade, and teach Grace to ride bicycle without the assistant wheels.

So what’s fun for daddy and mommy? None! Just working! … but there’s always volleybal!!! hahaha … We haven’t played much due to bad weather, but I am ready to hit few balls  every week.