Gung Hay Fa Choy – Happy Year of the Dragon!

Congrats to Jennie and Jeremy and big-sisters Ellie & Gwen who welcomed Preston on May 29th!

Congrats to Camille and Jon and big-brother Alex who welcomed Aiden on June 3rd!

We are also excited about the new little ones that will join the Bush and Stowell families in the late summer/early fall!

We have some neat things planned for the Blog and the website so please stay tuned.

Please note that you will need to update your blog readers with the following URL:

RSS- http://bennionz.com/bennionland/feed/

It is good to be back!

We met them at Balboa Beach. It was a ton of fun!

James played Frisbee and badminton with the boys for a while. Well, you cannot actually play the game with them – rather you just hit the ball, they scream with delight, and then you have to go pick the ball back up and hit it again. James was a good sport:

Steph’s Mom (my Aunt Cindy) and sister Stacey were there when we first got there. It was fun to get caught up on the whole family:

We couldn’t wait to start the campfire though. It was fun to sit around, chat, watch the boys’ delight in such simplicity (hot dogs and fire), and enjoy a little bit of nature.

The boys treated us to an original song:

Thanks Steph and James! We had a glorious time!

For those of you who don’t know Eric and I are both huge Billy Joel fans, with Eric nearing fanaticism. It was an incredible show. We’ve been as a couple to see him twice (once with Elton John) and Eric has seen him a couple of other times. For Eric, Billy Joel’s music is not only a emotional fit, but a religious experience. We always have fun on our date nights, but getting to rock out, watch Eric be overwhelmed by the music, and laugh at Billy Joel’s self-deprecating comments was a special treat.

A nice dinner full of adult conversation.

Adult conversation? What’s that?

Yes! Adult conversation!
And Billy Joel?!?! It’s like Christmas!
Waiting for the show to start!

We didn’t take any other pictures inside since I had left my camera in the car and Eric’s phone camera wasn’t getting good shots. We were in great seats – made even better by the fact that Billy Joel’s piano turned to face both directions throughout the night. While Billy Joel looks significantly older the night made me feel like it was ‘back in the day’.

So much fun!

Still I will always be in favor of a holiday that promotes the sharing and verbalization of love. Regardless of what tacky card that love might be written in.

At our house we had an abundance of Valentine’s excitement…

Will made this adorable Valentine collector in class
and brought it home filled with cute notes and goodies:

I got a package from my uber-talented friend Susan
with some homemade sugar scrub she made:

and surprised me with this incredibly cute wallet
that she sells through her company, Freshly Picked:

Grandma Steph sent the boys a great package with lots of treats. They carried their heart slinkys around all day and colored with their fan crayons after naptime.

One of the highlights was getting to have a Valentine’s Day date with Walker at a local bagel shop. He was thrilled to have a chocolate chip muffin with just his mom. He chatted my ear off the entire time and was utterly charming.

The boys then got to spend the evening with Papa, Goosey (who is in town), Aunt Pat, and Uncle Doug. Eric and I had a unique evening spending the first part in therapy (what better way to say I love you? Really!) and then enjoying a nice dinner together. I got gorgeous flowers but forgot to take an individual picture. (You can see them on the table in my Chinese New Year party post.)

One of the best parts was watching Walker ride the train. He is in a phase where trains are his sun, moon and stars. My Dad took some great shots of him on the train, as well as the parade, so I’ll have to post those when I can get a hold of them!!

Here are some of ours:

Walker’s not sure about the dancing dragons:

Will was most enthused by
the confetti and spent the majority of his time
watching it get thrown and then picking it off the ground
to throw it again:

One of the best parts of the parade, as is always the case, was the people watching. This cute man was standing near us with his wife. He was thrilled to greet anyone and everyone on the floats as they came by…but it was a special delight when any of the Chinese New Year royalty came by on their floats. You’ll have to turn your head sideways to watch it, but this is what he’d do:

The parade website said that the parade would go from 2:00pm – 5:oopm. I thought there was no way it would go that long, or that they were marking time from the start at one place and the finish…boy was I wrong! At about 4:00pm we decided to walk around Chinatown. It was fun to see ALL of the people out for a good time.

We decided to forgo trying to get Chinese food IN Chinatown given the crowds. In the end we trekked back to the train station and rode back towards G-town.

In what seemed to be a strange move we decided to celebrate the Chinese New Year at a Mexican restaurant! (Chinese food is hard to find gluten-free!)

The boys were famished and exhausted….a great day was had by all! I’m still hoping that next year we can celebrate the real deal