Family Frisbee at the Beach

Last weekend we had a great time with mom, Larry and Ty (and Manh!). Of the many awesome things we did (including but not limited to eating điểm xấm, stuffing ourselves with boba, pizza night, driving around for an hour looking for our hotel at 1:00 am, etc), frisbee at the beach will probably be the longest lasting memory. Maybe because of the bruises. Or maybe hitting the guy's truck while he was sitting in it. Or maybe hitting the vw bus AND THEN the nice car with the alarm. Or spraying sand all over the sunbathers. Whatever reason it might be, we'll remember this trip because of the frisbee.

This weekend was reminiscent of last year when we did some serious ice blocking at Sugarhouse. Here's a video we put together of the event:

Our Family Connection

We have come to a conclusion that Ben's blog is for "ranting" purposes and this will be our blog to serve as a connection from our "2-persons" family to yours. Update! Update! Fresh of the computer "press," come and get it!!!! Since we like to think we are bilingual, we're going to try it in Tiếng Việt.

Hai đứa này đã quyết định là cái blog của Ben là để dành cho sự "mát dây" của chàng. Và cái blog này sẽ là đường dây "móc nối" từ tiểu gia đình tới đại gia đình. Mong rằng mọi người cứ thoải mái nói chuyện vì mình là người nhà cả mà!!!! Ben và Mai Vi rất nhớ mọi người và mong gặp mặt "soon." BMV thích nghĩ là mình thông thạo hai thứ tiếng nên sẽ cố gắn viết tiếng Việt và Mỹ nhưng "sometime" sự thật hơi phủ phàn!

Love (thương),
Ben & Mai Vi (a.k.a. BMV)
p.s. Tuấn và Thư là con của chị Liên và anh Thiện, gia đình của BMV chỉ có 2 người và sẽ không có thay đổi "anytime soon" but we love our niece and nephews.

Tết Pictures!!

Chúc mừng Năm mới!! Cung chúc Tân xuân! Happy belated New Year! (can we even say that?) We've been so busy with our other projects that we haven't been able to organize these pictures until now. Now we've finally finished, or at least we're not going to work on it anymore. Now that we've got our condo cleaned up (kind of), we're refocusing. Life is much better with a little less chaos and a little more order. We're now focusing our efforts on the next-of-many items on our to-do list: Planting our own herb garden. California just went through a state of emergency and we were going without fruit for several weeks. Herbs might not exactly equate fruit, but it's a step (we don't have room to grow fruit trees, anyway).

Everyone have a great one and we hope you enjoy our Tết pictures! (click the link below to view:)

OUR TẾT PICTURES

Truong's Pictures

Derick Le's Pictures

Jason Boulanger's Pictures

Tet pictures - on the way!

Hello All! We're pretty beat from last weekend. Tet seems to have that effect on us. We're now focusing on the replacing the floor. See Ben's personal blog for a few of our pictures. We'll be taking a break for a few weeks, then posting all of our pictures in a slideshow, so we'll see you then!

Life update

What a beautiful day today! That little image on the left is the weather we had this afternoon. Quite a contrast to the snow in Utah. We've both been quite busy as of late, hence the break in entries. Mai Vi has been running to and fro (as always), trying to balance work and school and family, and doing a great job (as always). This is the first time she's faced a full load at school in a very long time, and it's proving to be very full indeed. Ben is on the verge of recovering from the last election held on Feb 6th and is looking forward to more time at work to develop the meager Access database he created for recruiting Vietnamese election volunteers. UPDATE: Put a TBA on the recovery part, the Registrar announced that there will be a recount. Yeah, more overtime!

The next project is re-flooring the condo. We've had this in mind since we bought this place last year, but we've just never had the chance (or the money). We still don't have the money, but my dad said he'll come lay the floor if we buy. Woohoo! We figured that was the sign we needed. The carpet is quite old anyway, and very hot in the summer. We ordered the materials last night, now we just need the dad. Here's an idea of what we're hoping for (just the floor, not the other fancy stuff).

Tết đã đến! No matter how hard we try, we always get pulled into some kind of involvement with the annual Tết festival. Come to think about it, if we really didn't want to help out, we'd probably try a bit harder. hehe Anyway, it is upon us again. Tomorrow is the opening day of the 3-day festival, fortunately overlapping the actual Lunar New Year which falls on Feb 18th this calendar. No matter what they have us doing this year, it will be a fun (tiring, but fun) experience. One year it rained like crazy and everything turned to mud... and we still worked!

Well, that's about all for now. Hope to keep in touch little more frequently.

bmv

So, how's married life?

Thanks to everyone who so diligently trudged through our infant website, with all of its broken links, confusing twists and turns and extremely long slideshows. Many more thanks to those who actually told us what needed improvement, whether through the guestbook or email. We are working on it: so far, we've updated two of the four picture sites (Đám Cưới Cali - California Wedding ; Đám Cưới Utah - Utah Wedding) to a much more visually-appealing format, fixed several minor bugs that probably most of you don't notice but drove us nuts (like who brought Mai Vi out during the Đám Hỏi, bố or mẹ), and added an enhanced sidebar to navigate the whole website and a links page that's pretty bomb. That's it. More updates are on their way, but Mai Vi started school this week and Ben has another election in two weeks, so everything besides bathroom stops are on hold. Thanks again to all who helped review the site and gave us their comments. It's your site, too!

See the title? Yes, the one that says "So, how's married life?" We have heard that so many times since July. We didn't realize that there's so many ways of phrasing 'how's married life,' but it seems to grow by the day. After careful analysis, we have concluded that this phrase is more of a cliche than anything, a catch-all phrase that expresses feelings of happiness and excitement. We're guessing that when we talk to friends, the first thing they remember about us is, 'OH! They just got married!' and hence the inquiry into our 'married life.' We never know how to answer - it usually comes out something like this: "Um.. good." How does one express the joy and "completeness" of being united with your best friend, with someone who has already become part of you, with your other half? Being married is not the burden that is ofttimes portrayed in the media and society at large. Rather it is the pinnacle of a relationship, the time and place when walls are broken down and where lives and dreams intersect. We had no idea how good life can be... until now. And we're still learning. So in answer to the infamous question, perhaps the best answer is "Perfect." People aren't perfect, but two people who are giving everything they have and are to each other is pretty darn close.

And the best part is, when our friends get married and we feel so happy and excited for them and just don't know how to express ourselves, we realize after the words have escaped our mouths what we just said: "So, how's married life?"


bmv

bmv wedding - behind the scenes

Being the beginning of the year, I thought I'd give you guys a look into what we did to plan for our wedding. It started in January (whether we knew it or not!) and lasted up until the wee hours of the morning on the day of. As you will soon see, we had tons and tons of people helping us out - THANKS YOU SO MUCH! We couldn't have done it without you. Please click on the picture to view slideshow:

Official Website Launch!!

Today is the day!  We are officially finished with the website design and content, and we will officially launch it tomorrow, or whenever we have time.  It's been a joy putting this thing together - remembering the fun times as well as the almost-stressful moments of our wedding (we were never "officially" stressed).  Hopefully you we be able to share in our joy as you browse through the pictures. 

We had a vision of keeping in contact with everyone after the wedding and sending all our guests beautiful thank you cards with their pictures and them and.... well, needless to say, we got a little sidetracked and now, 6 months afterwards, we feel a little bit xấu hổ.  So this is the fulfillment of our vision, for now.  Enjoy the memories (if you didn't attend, we're sure you were there in spirit)... we sure did.

BMV

snow in socal!

jk, there's not really snow here, but there sure was in Utah and I'm sharing some of it with you. I won't share the blisters I got on my feet from my cheap shoes, though. ben

South Willow Canyon

My beautiful wife all bundled up

Our attempt at a snow storm

This is what you get with people from SoCal in Utah for Christmas who are dead set on bringing back pictures of snow - like snowing - when there's not a snowcloud in sight...