Dragons & Friends

This past Saturday( and oh yes, I do believe I am almost the last person to blog about our special day.....where do the days go??) our family ventured to downtown Chicago to attend the Dragon Boat Races in Chinatown. Having never actually visited Chinatown we were tickled with how easy it was to navigate down there and immensely impressed with the entire area. How could we have been ignorant of this cultural gem for so many years? The day graced us with sunny skies and warm temps and after packing up what felt like half the house, we found ourselves parked and awaiting our friends at the Ping Tom Memorial Park along the riverfront.

And while we relished watching a group of graceful and lovely traditional Chinese dancers, cheered for the dragon boat racers( though Miss Chatty Box here actually only saw the tail end of one lone race due to before mentioned affliction....lol) sampled delicious foods(dumplings with soup tucked inside...yum! yum!), watched a parade of dragon dancers in Chinatown's business district, shopped in the cramped and glorious shops(which reminded us so much of the Night Market side shops in Taiwan), our absolute favorite part of the day was meeting new friends and watching ALL of the amazing children and babies from Taiwan, China & Kazakhstan(not gonna leave my best girl out!) with their forever families. To put it simply, I was in awe. Standing in a circle of blogger buddies, actually being able to meet face to face, was fantastic! There were families from JOH, as well as, from other agencies/programs and if LOVE is a currency, then our bustling group is wealthy beyond measure!!

Just who did we meet?? Board/bloggy buddies AM(who is waiting for baby boy #2....yay!!), Ching(thank you again for organizing our outing!!), Kerry M., Nicole and their beautiful families PLUS Sarah & Kevin, Katie from Around The World to Danny and many others! We also met a darling little guy named Henry who had hair as long as Tyler's & Lynn and family who brought their little guy home just a short time before we traveled to Taiwan through JOH's St. Lucy's Program. It was such a pleasure to meet these incredible families and we hope to see them all again next year if not sooner! :)

I didn't actually take too many photos( hate to sound redundant, but again with the whole socializing thing...) and some I won't share do the privacy wishes of families, but here is a sampling of our day. We will definitely be back to Chinatown again, cuz there are many many more yummy dumplings to sample, shops to explore and folks to meet!

Our sassy monkey swinging in joy at the park!

A good shopper, Lauren always finds a souvenir.....or two! :) That's my girl!

Lookie who we got to meet!!.......yes, that's the beautiful and sweet as sugar Hannah Claire and her Mama and Daddy are equally genuine and fun. And if you look closely you can see our little man was plotting his break-out strategy from our attempted photo shoot, thus teaching me that yes indeed the only thing harder than snapping a great pic. of 2 kiddos, is yes, getting one of 3 kiddos! :) A light bulb Mama moment for me........

After lunch we explored the business district and were so tickled to see this magical parade come our way. The performers were amazing & a short time later we watched a full performance in the outdoor air theater.

Lauren took this picture of Baby Tyler on our way home. He was soooooo sleepy, but always gives his best for his big Sis! Look at that tiny face!

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!