thelennards.com

I took a vacation day today in order to get caught up on things around the house that needed to get done. One of the things I need to check off the list was getting our latest set of photos updated.
They are in the list below from oldest to most recent. The sets run from June of this year through just a few weeks ago. The big events included are my trip to China (more photos than those on Facebook), Ben’s third birthday, and our recent vacation to Durango, Colorado. There are a few other sets of various events peppered in between. I don’t think you’ll run out of things to view. I apologize for not spending any time on captions either. I wimped out by they time I’d culled through and resized them all for the web.
If you like the colors of autumn, I recommend the pictures from our vacation. Durango and the surrounding area were beautiful and ablaze with the fall. The kids also enjoyed their first quarter-size snowflakes in Silverton. It was a great time! It was made even better by getting to see my family that lives in Durango. It had been much too long!

Enjoy the photos!

Photo Updates:
• Ben and Rachel at a local park
• Farewell Party for Kent
• The kids faces were painted at school during one of their summer activity days.
• Becky, Rachel, and Ben attended their first circus. Several other families from their school attended as well.
• My second trip to China in August
• Ben turned 3 in early October.
• One of our first outings on our Colorado vacation was a visit to Silverton.
• We had a great hike in the San Juan National Forest on the Hermosa Creek Trail.
• Animas Overlook was beautiful, too!
• Our final hike on the Raider Ridge Trails overlooking Durango

After 5 months of slowly getting the pictures up on the site and putting in good descriptions, I am done with everything from my business trip to Asia in May. I traveled with one other guy from work, Keith. We were there for two weeks and visited Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Huizhou, and Taipei. I have a few shots from the business side of the trip, and I have lots of shots from our evening and weekend trips.

Photos from Trip to Asia:
Flight to Hong Kong
First Day in Hong Kong
Evening at Victoria Peak
Temple Street and Mong Kok
Hong Kong and Tai Po
Shenzhen
Po Lin Monastery and Tai O
Hong Kong Museum of History
First Day in Huizhou
Second Day in Huizhou
Arrive in Taipei
Taipei 101

Before I go any further, I must thank my hosts. This was my first chance to travel to Asia, and I could not have been more impressed with the hospitality and gracious nature of everyone I met. In particular, my hosts in each location, being experts at it, made sure every aspect of our trip was planned. We didn’t have to worry about anything other than what kind of food to try next. So, please let me extend a special thanks to all of them for making my first trip to Asia unforgettable.

Fortunately, Keith was not intimidated by unfamiliar food. Since I don’t have this issue either, we got an opportunity to try several different types of local fare. In a lot of ways, the meals stand out in particular – Indian food around Temple Street, the seafood with Vincent, Regina, Winnie, and Thomas, a typical “Hong Kong breakfast” brought in by Vincent, the Peking Duck, the meal cooked on the giant flat irons with Daniel and Bryan, and the dumplings with Shao and Renee. Again, thanks to everyone for treating us to a variety of food experiences I will never forget. You’ll find lots of photos of the meals we shared in the photo sets as well. The one photo we missed was of Stinky Tofu.

April Family Vacation to San Antonio:
San Antonio Zoo
San Antonio Children’s Museum
SeaWorld

When you look through the photo sets, I hope you can get a feel for how interesting a trip it was. I enjoyed it and look forward to a chance to visit again someday. Who knows? When the kids are older, it might be a vacation destination for us. I have now visited the dragon, and it was a trip I’ll never forget.

I’ve also posted photos from our April trip to San Antonio. We had a great time on our short family vacation. I think the kids really enjoyed it, too. Enjoy the photos. Now that I have finally caught up on these, I might actually get a few more updated before long. You never know! <wink>

Just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy Lunar New Year! Chuc Mung Nam Moi! Gung Hay Fat Choy! May you and your family have the most prosperous of years. May you be rewarded with great health and happy lives!

Here are a few links that explain more about Lunar New Year traditions:

Chinese Traditions:
• Chinese New Year Festivities
• South China Morning Post’s New Year’s Page

Vietnamese Traditions:
• Happy Lunar New Year! Chuc Mung Nam Moi!
• Tet Nguyen Dan