Chinese New Year, Butte Falls and my Birthday

On Saturday we went to Jacksonville's Chinese New Year Parade. There weren't very many Chinese there, but it was still a nice, small parade. Perfect for kids. I enjoyed the alpacas wearing chinese clothes. There was a little girl sitting with us (because she couldn't see behind the crowds, and we had extra room on our blanket). Every time a person walked by wearing traditional chinese clothing, she would say "it's a chinese person!" Usually they were not Chinese, they were caucasian. Which made it even more funny. We had a discussion on what a chinese person was. "Do you see one?" I would ask, before the people wearing the clothes came out. She said she didn't - she really didn't know I was chinese.

The big blowup Dragon was a highlight - Adele enjoyed running through this inflatable obstacle course.

Then we made our way to Butte Falls. There is no instruction anywhere as to where this place is, and a lady in town said it was 2 miles down off the main road. Well, the road was closed, which was disappointing after making the drive out there. But Aaron suggested we just park the car and walk. Since "road closed" to Aaron meant only to cars. So we walked it, and the 2 miles turned out to be half a mile. Glad we walked.

You can tell from our blogs, that our favorite activities involve outdoors and water, mostly creeks and waterfalls.

There was an old flour mill and its ruins were still around. They moved the mill to Eagle Point, which is a few minutes from our place. We visited it the next day.


The mill still runs, and is powered by water from the creek. They sell all sorts of flour and grains. The mill opened back in 1892, so it was neat to see this old stuff still working.

My birthday started off with Aaron making me a special breakfast, followed by a special lunch.

Aaron bought me chocolate ice cream, since I much prefer ice cream to cake. Adele stuck the candle in and added blue sprinkles. (We bought the blue sprinkles for Aaron's birthday last month, Adele picked blue specifically because it's Aaron's favorite color - foregoing her favorite color green). Aaron and Adele also made me lemon bars, which I highly enjoy. It was a wonderful birthday. Thank you for all the phone calls, e mails, cards, and packages which I have yet to pick up at Julie's house (we don't have a real mailing address and our packages go to our sister in law's sister's house in Medford). Aaron did a wonderful job of making me feel special, but then, how is that different from how he makes me feel every day?