We took Buddy to see a vet on Saturday.  Buddy weighed 27 lbs and everything checked out fine.  The vet stressed the importance of not exposing Buddy to the public until his shots kick in which will be 4 weeks in all. She gave us a schedule for vaccines to follow. Also since Buddy was neutered just right before he was opened for adoption, the vet advised that Buddy should be in a cone for at least 7 days.  Buddy did well for the entire exam.  He did not like the cone but he did deal with it as best as he could

      We had set some plans previously for Saturday. and now with the new arrival of Buddy, we felt bad to carry on.  Thus Stuart had decided to stay home with Buddy in the morning while the other 3 of us went to the Merons for a barbeque.  It had been awhile since I saw some of them, so I stayed in the backyard catching up with everyone.  The boys immediately went off to play video games with Rohan inside the house and they only came to the backyard once to eat quickly.  A couple of hours later, we were the first to leave as we had a vet appointment for Buddy in the afternoon.  More on the vet appt later.

    By the late afternoon, we crated Buddy and headed out to the Water Lantern festival at the local lake park.  We walked around the fair briefly, then bought some food from food trucks for dinner.  After eating we found a spot on the lawn to sit down.  We began decorating our lanterns with our wishes.  Logan started making drawings on his right away; Connor hesitated initially, but after getting some advice, he started writing and drawing quickly as well.  Both of theirs came out very nice.  Then the boys went off to play at the playground, and later they got some kernel corns for snacks.  By sunset, the main event began.  Some kids came on stage to talk about their lanterns and the meanings behind their messages; next, people started to migrate toward the beach and took turns letting go their lanterns.  Since we had been away from home and Buddy for over 2 hours then, we packed up and took our lanterns to the water too.  It was very neat seeing all these lanterns flowing on the water, and it was beautiful.  Despite the circumstance leaving and worrying about Buddy, I was glad that we had participated in this festival and it was meaningful letting people express themselves and sharing their wishes.  May our wishes come true!

    Recently Stuart and I thought that it would be a good time for us now to have a doggie.  Thus on Easter, while the boys were at Rohan’s birthday party, we went to check out the city shelter.  We looked around the dogs there that were available for adoption, and learned about their website for searching.  While we walked around some more to the courtyard, we saw a cute black puppy being moved from one room to another by a staff.  Both Stuart and I thought that he was adorable, but understood that he was not one to be adopted.  After that visit, we went ahead and ordered a crate online so that we could be ready whenever we found a dog to adopt.

     Then on Friday, as Stuart and I were driving to the mall, I checked out the shelter website and saw a new addition.  Based on the small picture and the description, we figured he might be the pup we saw and liked during our first visit.  Actually on that day, we did not feel mentally ready to adopt, but we finally decided that we should at least check him out.  So after lunch we arrived at the shelter and we saw him; he was being visited by an interesting party.  When it was finally our turn to meet him, we were tight with time.  “Versace”, his given name at the shelter, was very cute and quite energetic as expected.  Since we had to leave to pick up the boys, we had to take a chance and say bye to Versace.

    We picked up the boys and returned to the shelter as quickly as we could.  All of us tried not to get too excited as we knew that it was possible that Versace would be adopted.  While we waited for our number being called, I was very nervous and finally relieved when we found out Versace was still available.  The counselor told us that we were lucky as there were 3 families who met him while we were gone and they were just not quite ready to adopt yet.  The boys liked the puppy too which was great as Stuart and I had already made up our mind to take him home.  As the counselor put a new leash on him for us, there was a man who was next to see him and told us that he was disappointed.  Our drive home was smooth; Buddy stayed in the back nicely.  The special thing about this drive home was that Logan got to sit in the front seat for the first time as I wanted to be on the second row to be near our new pup.  Logan definitely enjoyed this special ride.

   Taking a puppy home on the first day reminded us how we felt with Logan coming home after birth; we were nervous and it was tiring.  Stuart went out to buy the doggie essential while the three of us played with him in the backyard.  We also had to puppy-ready the house and put together the crate which happened to arrive on that day too.  At dinner time, we were still considering the name Boo the boys came up with, then suddenly we came up with the name Buddy and we all voted for it.  There it is, our new addition to the family, Buddy Brown!

   Written By Bonnie, Edited By Logan Brown,

For Stuart’s birthday on Friday, I took the day off to hang out with him.  Stuart wanted to go shopping so we drove to the Great Mall.  We walked the full round of the mall and Stuart brought quite a few items of outfits and shoes that he needed.  Afterward, we were tired.  It was nice to sit down at a restaurant to eat and rest.  That morning, we also had discovered that there was a new puppy on the City of San Jose website for adoption.  During our lunch break, we finally decided that we should go check him out.  More on the whole story about Buddy is on a different post.  Later, we ended up rushing from the shelter to the school to pick up the boys, then returning to shelter quickly with the boys.  The rest of the afternoon was quite busy with the new addition to the family.  We finally got dinner on the table while watching the Warriors game.  By then, I recalled that I totally forgot to pick up the birthday cake.  After a quick pick up, we sang to Stuart and had some cake.  The Warriors also won the game and moved up to the next round.  This had to be one of the busiest and most special birthday Stuart has so far.

   Connor asked for an egg hunt this year, so we put one together for them.  I stuffed the eggs and Stuart hid them in our backyard.  Connor wanted a hard mode, so Stuart had to be more creative putting away the basket of eggs.  The boys had a good time hunting for them and it was hard mode indeed for some of them.  I had to join in searching as well toward the end; it was fun!  After finding all 38 eggs of them, the boys were excited to open them.  They were thrilled with some good treasure but also had to deal with some “rotten” eggs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JdbLNsS0KY&feature=youtu.be

   In the afternoon, Rohan invited the boys over to his game truck birthday party.  It was a long party, thus Stuart and I took an advantage to run some errands before returning to hang out with some parents.  The boys had fun playing different forms of video games during these few hours before we headed home.

    On this last full day in Vegas, we did not have an agenda or schedule to make.  We decided to check out Circus Circus in the morning and so we took a Lyft.  The hotel/casino was more run down compared to what we remembered; we walked toward the Adventuredome instead, and this place was huge.  We decided to try Laser Tag together; it took us awhile to get started.  It was fun when we actually got in and played.  There was only a father and son in our group. But the fun time was only 5 minutes which was short.  Connor’s gun might have been malfunctioning as he had zero kills, so he was a bit bummed about it.  Logan liked it as he did well.  Afterward the boys played some video games and spent some time in the classic game area while Stuart and I just walked around.  Since Stuart and I could not find a good place for lunch, we decided to head over the Container Park in downtown (a suggestion from a driver) when the boys finished playing game.  There was a brief rain, so we ate lunch there in one of the eateries first.  Afterward the sun was out and the boys enjoyed playing with the building blocks while Stuart enjoyed a nice beer from a brewery.  It was quite relaxing sitting out in the lawn for awhile. 

   We were close to the Fremont Station so we walked over to check it out; there were lots of people there.  This was an interesting place with many older casinos and landmarks.  They even had people doing ziplining along this famous long rooftop, thus this was a cool walk.

    In the late afternoon after our break, we headed back out to look through Bellagio and check out their botanical garden.  Afterward, we went for ramen before walking through Caesars Palace.  While Logan and I were waiting for gelato, Stuart and Connor found this hourly show inside the mall which was pretty cool.  We made a point to see the volcano at the Mirage this time so we walked over, and the show did not disappoint the boys.  Next we also caught the Bellagio fountain show.  By then, we felt that it was time for us to take our stroll back to the hotel for the last time.  Again we had tons of steps (>23K) that day.  We spent some time in the activity room before we returned to our room.  We really enjoyed our stay at this hotel; I know I would miss the beautiful of the strip from our window.

   On Saturday, after a quick breakfast, we checked out and headed to the airport.  The boys had been asking me to play slot machine and I finally decided to play at the airport while we waited near the gate.  Stuart and I walked around some machines and I did a few spins, and finally at the poker one, I got FIVE of a kind!  I cashed out and had won a net of $17; I was happy to have this lucky earning to end our Vegas trip.