Year In Review 2018

I didn’t make a new year resolution last year but my goal was to exercise almost every day and I was able to stick to it and I’m very happy with the progress. It becomes a new lifestyle and hopes to carry this over to next year. I’m taking it one year at a time.

The updating for this blog was consistency at the beginning of the year, then I got busy camping and hope next year will be better. As for me, I’ve explained best with photos and here are some of the photos that I took throughout the year.

It snowed in January.

We celebrated Chinese New Year in February to ring in the year of the Dog.

In March Bo hatched more chicks.

The Cherry blossoms bloomed in April.

The garden was planted in Late April and I was able to maintain it this year, hope to do a better job next year and planting more fruit trees.

We celebrated Songran Festival, the Southeast Asia New Year at Wat Greensboro in April.

We went to the dragon boat race in May, my dad’s memory is getting worse and we looked for him for over 2 hours after he trailed off from our group. After looking everywhere we found him watching the show, so it appeared as if we were the one that got lost.

Lee and I flew to New York to meet our relative visiting from France in May. They said that it’s lucky to touch the Wall Street bull’s bronze balls. There was a line when we got there. The trip was short, we only spent a weekend and staying with my oldest sister in Queens.

Image below from left to right, Lee, my cousin from France, and oldest sister that lives in New York.

We visited my uncle and cousins in France in June for 2 weeks, I took over 4,000 photos and will blog to share some of the photos next year.

I’m glad that I took my tripod with me, it came in handy.

We visited the Louvre, the place is grand and so many art pieces, I can spend weeks here.

One art piece that I want to see was the Mona Lisa, obvious that I’m not the only one. The room was packed and I couldn’t even get close to her.

We camped a lot this year, almost every available weekends.

We had plenty of foods, and I even cooked egg rolls.

My sister made Pho.

I made spicy papaya salad.

Lee turned 17 in October, this was the first year we decided not to do a birthday party for her. Her last big one was her Sweet 16 birthday last year.

She is still a kid at heart, still Trick-or-Treating on Halloween.

The Circus Italia came to town in October, it was a great show but they didn’t allow inside photography.

We celebrated Kathin at Wat Greensboro in October, I have to say that October was one of the busiest months for us. As a temple photographer, this was the last event of the year that I photographed.

We went to my new company’s Fall festival in early November. I’ve been working here for almost 2 years and absolutely loved it. I worked at my last job for 21 years, and glad that I was able to move on to a better place.

Bo, Lee and my sister had a great time.

We still have over 60 chicken and ducks.

We built a shelter for the ducks so that they’ll have a dry spot when it snowed. This was completed in November.

Then it snowed in December, definitely a nice addition to this area.

We have plenty of fresh eggs, and gave some away to my sisters and dad.

After driving my Rav 4 for 14 years with over 160,000 miles, I finally gave it to Lee. She has a learner’s permit now and has to wait for 1 year to take her driving test. The garage was a storage place since we moved in over 3 years ago and obviously couldn’t fit a car.

It took a weekend to clean it and glad that the garage is nice and clean again.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at Bo’s parents’ house.

The Lao food was awesome.

Christmas was simple at our house, we each get a few gifts and this wrapped up the year 2018.