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.

I love my new Blackberry Tour phone, especially with the unlimited data plan that I don’t have to pay for. So many things I could do with the phone when I don’t have my laptop with me, like writing this post. That’s just cool!

Anyway back to the main topic, we are going snowboarding today for the first time of this season, taking advantage of the 4-pack ski pass we bought in the Fall. The forecast looks nice, 38F and snowing. Gotta love the fresh snow. The sunrise is just beautiful. We got our breakfast at McDonalds, and now ‘enjoying’ the 2.5hrs drive to Keystone. Traffic is flowing.

(to be continue…)
Hmmm… Can’t seem to attach pictures for some reason.

We just had snow on Sunday. We’re still “full” ye here comes another one. This time, it lasts for 2 days. Most schools are closed and kids enjoy their snow day.

Pikes Peak photo gallery is updated. I added several pictures of Pikes Peak that I haven’t had time to post.

Pikes Peak	Pikes Peak
Pikes Peak	Pikes Peak

I took Grace and Ben to the playground at Memorial Park on Saturday. Grace had fun feeding bread to the ducks, but Ben was terrified of them. They two are so opposite. Grace loves animals, but hates bugs, flies, bees.  Ben has no problem with insects, but he clings on me like a magnet when it comes to animals,  whether it’s a dog or chipmunk. Or duck!

We went crawfishing again on Sunday night. This time we had 22 people. It was a blast. It was raining in the late afternoon, so the water rose high which made it harder to catch crawfish. So I thought we didn’t have enough crawfish for everyone, but turned out we had plenty.  Dien and Lan were great host, and their crawfish recipe was awesome. We finished eating around 2AM and even brought extra food home.

We all had Monday off, so the youth groups want to hang out and we don’t have anything else to do, so we decided to go to the State Fair. My co-worker, and friends who have been to the State Fair before don’t have good things to say about State Fair. You know, when someone warns us not to do something, aren’t we all a little curious to wonder why and attempt to find out, then regret the decision and wish that we should have listen? This is the case for us with State Fair on Labor’s Day.

Well, everything about the State Fair was just pretty much as people had forewarned us.  It was a 45-minute drive, very hot, crowded, farm animal stinks, expensive foods, boring, etc… Hahaha. It was still fun we get to hang out together. I was looking for the local food favorite, the steak-on-the-stick, that we had at the Territory Day back in May. We walked the whole area, and found only one place that had steak-on-the-stick, however it wasn’t the same. We stopped by the carnival rides area before we headed home. Grace and I went on couple rides together. I was afraid she would be terrified, but she really enjoyed it. She insisted going on roller coaster ride, but she is too short for it. Kids and dizziness, not sure why it is fun for them??!!

We got home in the afternoon, chillaxing, played some Sequences games, and then had springrolls for dinner. It has been a while since I last had springrolls, and it was so good!!! We wanted to play volleyball afterward, but when we got the the park, all lights were shut off.  We ended up rent a movie and watched together to conclude our long weekend break. It was fun hanging out.

Yesterday, I was invited to go crawfishing afterwork. Crawfishing on the weekday?Absurb, yet somehow I couldn’t refuse. Actually, I haven’t gone crawfishing since last year so this should be fun. After checking with Thao that she’s OK keeping the kids and put them into bed, I headed to the lake with my fellow friends whom have already prepared cooler, buckets, strings, and baits.

After 2.5 hours of  hard manual labor, our dinner was filling up the cooler, to the top. We still wanted to catch some more, but it was almost midnight already and we needed to get home to cook them. You don’t want to eat crawfish the next day or later. Gotta eat them while they are still fresh. So, we gathered at Dien-Lan’s house,  washed the crawfish, and cooked them. Actually, I deserved no credit in the preparation part (yeah, shame on me!)  While waiting for the crawfish to cook, we were tortured entertained by Nhan’s karaoke singing. After a loooong hour later, crawfish was ready!! Dien-Lan wonderfully prepared the crawfish Louisianna’s style. It was very flavorful, and the corn was great addition. We finished eating around 3:00AM. I soon headed home after that to rest and to wake up at 7h30 to begin my work day.

Strange but I did not feel sleepy at work today. Must be the crawfish.

Cooking	Dinner is ready
Crawfishers	Chefs

See more pictures. Sorry for the low-res pictures. I didn’t have the camera with me so I used my cell phone.

Praising God with the 25,000+ crowd was quite an experience, and I’m glad to be a part of it. Heaven Fest was where it all happened. It’s the (annual???) Christian festival in Denver area that involves with 80+ artitists in 8 different stages, ranging from worship, rock, hiphop, indie, testimonies, workshop, comedian…. There were too many things to see but too little time, so we had a selective set of events we wanted to attend. Definitely, there were plenty of music to check out for all day long, besides all the foods and booths of the festival. 

Very nice logo of Heaven Fest 2009. We didn't find a T-shirt with this logo. Maybe we were too late.

The first event we wanted to see was the Matthew West band. It was an hour show, started at 1:00PM. However, we sat in traffic just about 2 miles away for nearly 2 hours. Finally when we got to the parking lot, it was around 2:30PM. There were 8 different stages, but we only got to check out a few of them. Most of the time, we were at the Worship stage, the Hip Hop and the Main Stage. We switched between stages to catch the event we wanted to attend, but some of the events we wanted to see, such as the comedian show, the poet, the hip hop dance, we ended up missed them too. Other bands  we wanted to see but also missed the opportunities were Switchfoot, and Kutless.

Rock stage

Main stage lighting

It was a hot day outdoor, so many signs around the premise could be seen, reminding attendees to put on sunscreen and drink plenty of water. There were many portable potties around,  but of course they are pretty gross so flushable toilets were available for a fee. The whole area was a huge flat dirt field. The weather wasn’t too windy but the wind blew dirt around quite a bit. By the time we went home, we probably collected enough dirt in our nostril to grow tomatoes with.

Put on sunscreen	Drink water
Bugs spray	Potties

But don’t let those details deceive you, we really enjoyed the festival, the foods, the music… We had a good time at the Worship stage. The Hip Hop stage was a blast, too. They got the crowd worked up doing the electric slide dancing move in a tight room with probably 200  packed full of people.  Hip hop is not really my type of music, but I really admired the effort the singer and his dance team put in their performance.  They sang and danced all out, song after song for an hour, and not tired. It was simply amazing.

Worship	Hip hop stage
Crowded	Foods

We were at the Worship stage to see Phil Wickham, and the auditorium was chock full of people, shoulder to shoulder standing and worship God… except for this couple. They set up their folding camping chairs right in the middle of the action. The guy brought foods into the auditorum, bumped into me and not even said a word just to be polite. They just sat there, ate, and took a nap while people standing around them joining in worship. To me, that was just wrong and very disrespectful, regardless if they were Christian or not!!! I understand that it was hot outside, but there were many covered shaded areas right outside the auditorium. They could have made a better choice of the location.

Phil Wickham

The odd couple

The best of the festival was definitely the main evening program at the Main stage. It started with the Third Day performance. I am a huge fan of Third Day, and they sounded even more amazing live. There was a short delay before Third Day’s performance due to the weather change. We had been experiencing afternoon thunderstorm almost everyday for the last couple months. But the weather had been great on this day. However, around 7:00pm, the cloud rolled in and light thunder was on the horizon. The announcer came out and asked the crowd to pray and ask God to do something about the weather. Certainly God heard the prayers of 20,000+ of people. We stood near this one guy; he probably is American Indian. He wore a skull cap, and carried a long horn of some animal. When we prayed, he blew the horn. It was kinda … interesting and weird! But if that was his way of expressing a prayer, then let it be, right?!… Anyway, just few minutes after that, the dark cloud quickly rolled out to the east, and we did not see a single drop of rain the whole evening. By the time Third Day band finished their performance, the sky was clear and you could see the starslight above. It was awesome!

Blowing horn	Clear sky
Mark	Third Day band
Worship	Huge crowd

The festival’s last event was an amazing worship session lead by the very young worship group from the local church. It was a great time singing praise songs, dancing, jumping up and down, praying, and also receiving communion. The event concluded at 10:00PM. As we headed out from the parking lot, we were afraid traffic was going to be horrendous, but it was smooth as butter. Not a problem at all!

It was an awesome festival and I’m very glad I could go.

See more pictures

Last weekend, our church was invited to join the Family Camp with the Vietnamese New Life Church in Denver at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park. Since we were guests, we didn’t have to do anything much but mainly just tagging along. It was different from our church retreat last year, which we had prepared everything from foods to programs. The camp was only one night stay so it was very short, (not counting the 2.5 hours drive back and forth) and there were lots of activities packed in to a tight schedule. It felt a little bit overwhelming, but still fun nonetheless. On Saturday, we had a picnic at the Lake Marina of Estes and the New Life Church prepared an awesome unch with Korean BBQ, chicken wings, beef… They were excellent! We spent the afternoon playing golf, boat paddling, hiking, volleyball, and then had a worshop session in the afternoon before we headed to the lodges at YMCA, where we spent the night.

Picnic	Hiking

 
The YMCA facility is huge, and they have plenty of lodges. On that weekend, they booked problably 5-6 different groups. Due to the tight program schedule, we didn’t have a chance to take advantage of what YMCA provides such as swimming pool or the gym, therefore we didn’t run into other groups either. The only problem arised was at the cafeteria. Since the YMCA has very specific time slots (and very short) for serving meals in the cafeteria, you can imagine the long line outside, and jampacked of people inside. They were running out of foods at some point, too. The foods were buffet style, so there’s is nothing special to write home about.

Mountain view

Buffet foods

We had a service after dinner. Our youth sang the song “You Never Let Go” after the sermon. We also prepared a skit which we had practiced the last 2 Saturdays. It was supposed to be funny yet meaningful short skit with a Christian message, though I couldn’t tell from the reaction of the the audience how they received it. There wasn’t much of laughter, nor discussion. Maybe it was late, almost 11pm, and everyone was tired. They had a long day. Someone cooked cháo cá (Vietnamese rice soup with fish) and it was so good.  We headed back to our lodge. Too bad the gym was closed for remodeling, otherwise we could have hit some volleyball. The pool was closed at that point. We went back to the room, played some Sequence games before calling it a night.

Evening service	Service
Skit	Skit

Bright and shine at 6h30 to get ready for Devotion at 7am. Breakfast at 8am. Room checkout at 9am. Another service at 10am. Not so much as a relaxing morning as you can see. Hahaha. The service concluded around noon. After taking group picture, it was right about lunch time. Instead of eating buffet at the cafeteria, we decided to drive back to Denver and have some Vietnamese foods at the restaurant.

Group picture

Khoa and Grace

It was tiring, yet fun time time to fellowship together with familiar friends and friends from other church.

See more pictures

New vs Old

I just replaced my old  “brick” with a Blackberry Pearl. It’s much lighter and slimmer, better camera, actual music ringtone… hahaha. Not that I don’t know about these features before, I just didn’t think I actually need it. I was thinking of getting an MP3 player, but now there’s no need since this Pearl can play music and video just fine.  Expandable memory via microSD. I like! I like!

I was horified when the Sprint customer service said he couldn’t transfer contacts from my old phone to my Blackberry and said I need to re-program them one by one. Fortunately, the Blackberry Destop Manager software can simply import Contact/Calendar/Email straight from Outlook. Nice! That saves me tons of time.

At the church camp last week, I didn’t have the camera with us when we went paddling boat. So I used the phone to snap couple pictures and they turned out better than I expected.

Grace and Me

Group Picture

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

It sort of becomes a church tradition that we celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in the park.  Within the past few years, we have been to most of the public parks in Colorado Springs. This year, we celebrated the Father’s Day in the America the Beautiful Park, which we haven’t been to before. What makes this park special is its water fountain, which has a structural O-shape that spins around and a water wall showers down from it. I don’t know the significance symbolic meaning of it but it looks cool nonetheless.  I was a little surprised to see the water fountain was running. I heard due to state budget cutback, the water fountain was going to be out of service for the summer, but apparently some lady donated money to keep it running.

There was only one pavilion in the park, and we reserved it for the service. We began service around 10:30AM. My brother, Bao lead the program and he did a great job. There were several tributes, poems, and thoughts dedicates to Fathers besides the message from our pastor.  Bao also shared his very emotional testimony, about how much love Dad has treated him that has much to do in turning his life around. I’m very glad to see the transformation God did in his life. It’s truly made possible by God, but no doubt with countless of prayers and love from Mom and Dad.

A highlight of the event for me was a chance to sing with Grace, my daughter. Actually, it wasn’t planned. Earlier in the week, I wanted to sing the song “Your Favorite Name is Father” by Newsong, but I haven’t be able to play the guitar for the song yet. Fortunately, I found a sheet music for it, and started practice on Saturday. Grace heard me sang it couple times when I was practicing. On Sunday morning, when we were on the way to the park, I was singing and hear Grace was singing along the chorus part.  So I then asked her to sing with me.  She echoed what I  sang in the verse, and sang the chorus together with me. I think she did beautifully. It is such a wonderful song and meaningful lyric, but it has become even more meaningful when Grace sang it with me.

If you are unfamiliar with the song, check it out on this YouTube video.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

With many tributes and messages from the Fathers, our program stretched a bit passed 12:30pm. After presenting gifts for all the Fathers, we ended our service with closing prayer. I was very hungry, but fortunately, the  ladies in the church had already prepared wonderful lunch for us, readily in boxes.  Don’t they look awesome? There were several dessert dishes too, but I was too busy eating and forgot to take  pictures.

After lunch, we took several group pictures, hang around a bit. Many people came to the park now, and it just got way warmer.  We brought volleybal net but apparently they don’t allow us to set it up the field, so we decided to play volleyball in a different park where we used to play.  We cleaned up and headed home.

We and couple friends just hung out, watched soccer game, and the pictures from Linh and Peter’s Vietnam trip, then played some board game.  My sisters, Linh and Nguyen, prepared the chicken wings and steaks. We had a sit-down BBQ for dinner, in the backyard, and it was great. Lots of fun and foods.

Around 8:30pm, we head to the park and played some volleyball until 11:00pm. Ah, not to be surprised but we play volleyball this late all the time, after church service, every summer. That concludes a long, eventful, and memorable Father’s Day for me.

See all Father’s Day  pictures here and here

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.

It was so… last week,  thing in the past, but I didn’t get the time to blog it. Just busy, busy, busy, you know?!  So let me quickly write about it before another weekend is coming!

It was a good weather warm and sunny weekend. It’s June already but we still have snow on Pikes Peak. That is not unsual at all!

Snow-covered Pikes Peak in June

So, it was time to hit the park with the kids. The bicycle gang is ready for some laps!

I'm ready	honk! honk! Coming through
Daddy push me!

On Sunday, after church service, the weather was just perfect for volleyball. We haven’t played volleyball much lately due to rainny weather.  I was so ready to hit some balls, and I got my sports clothes with me in the car. Oh wait, I forgot to grab my tennis shoes.  Shoot! Anyway, we didn’t get to play: not enough participants. We figured 2-on-2 would waste lot of time in collecting the ball on the open field. 

We sat on sofa, like an hour trying to figure out what to do. We’ll try to think or remember any news or commercial for weekend community events, but we got nothing.  Finally, we decided to drive to downtown and would more more decision from there. But t here was nothing in downtown. It was Sunday, and businesses  closed early.

Well then, we thought we might just have some ice cream while we already made the drive to downtown. We  stopped at this ice cream hut in Old Colorado, called Colorado City Creamery. It was a very nice little shop, with lots of flavors, buffet topping, inside and outdoor sitting, and with live keyboard music.

Colorado City Creamery

Jazzy tunes from the organist

We enjoyed our ice cream outside, picture posing with the cow, and strolling couple blocks in downtown before heading home.

Our family	Bao and Hoa
Destiny	Nguyen
Nhan	Grace (and the cow)

It was just in time for dinner. So, on the way home,  we stopped by groccery store and grabbed some chicken legs and wings for  BBQ.  Few hours later, our hunger was satisfied. The chicken was very tasty. Sorry, I was too hungry and forgot about taking pictures.

But, you can check out the rest of the photo here.