My mother's aunt step mother's uncle's aunt twice removed cousin's friend's aunt's grocer's brother in law

Hey everybody who checks our blog. So you strangers or should I say acquaintances who I have never met who are my mother's aunt step mother's uncle's aunt twice removed cousin's friend's aunt's grocer's brother in law, apparently when I went to my contact list on Google and sent you all the link to this blog, I failed to look in details who you all were and how you got into my contact list (duh, why should I? with my hotmail and juno account, I have to add you in my contact list). But apparently Gmail will put email addresses from forward messages and cc lists and just about any open e-mail into our contact and although we have never sent you a single message, our my mother's aunt step mother's uncle's aunt twice removed cousin's friend's aunt's grocer's brother in law did and so you're now our friends and you're in our contact list. My apology for you all who happened to get a strange e-mail from us recently about some family in Washington and hope you will still enjoy reading our blog. Thanks for stopping by. Love, Thuan

Some Reflections

Today after talking to my sisters I realized something very scary. I'm only 25 now and that's not too bad but April, April is my fear. May is happy because the baby is coming then but April, what's coming for me is a scary number 26. Holy cow it hits me, finally. 25 is not too bad but 26, all of a sudden that's old. Wait until I turn 30, that would be scary but for now 26 seems extremely old. I thought that I was still a young buck when I went to Relief Society the first time in our ward and they thought I was one of the young women. I felt pretty good then and Sunday a brother in our ward thought I was 20 but after talking to my siblings who are younger then me, that's when I realized that I'm getting older. Somehow the last 5 years I felt like I'm just 20 years old just graduating from BYU. What have I accomplished in the last 25 years? I've always wanted to be as smart as Dan by the time I'm 29 and know all those random things he knows but can I? It made me ponder the things I've done and callings I've had since I joined the church. I was called on Sunday to be our Relief Society Instructor (It's my 2nd time now); I was a Gospel Doctrine Teacher in our last ward; taught CTR 4 and 5 twice as well; I was a choir director for our ward and a pianist for our Relief Society, both callings have increased my understanding of music a little more and got me into theater and Women's Chorus at BYU which was a great success because of the opportunity we got to sing in General Conference. But when I was asked to play the piano for our Relief Society because the pianist never showed up, I realized that I hadn't practiced the piano in months. Thankfully they were Christmas songs and it wasn't too bad but I was not prepared. I taught myself the piano because I was not fortunate to have opportunities when I was younger to take any lessons for anything. My parents were too poor. I don't understand those people who were given the opportunity and never took it and I'm jealous of those who did. But it's never too late to learn a new instrument or take voice lessons. I'm recording my first CD in January and I'm way excited! At least that will be a great accomplishment before I turn 26. I got my Master's degree in Counseling and although that's a huge accomplishment, I won't use that for a while. I'm hoping to be able to use a little bit of it when I work with a brother in the ward who owns a women and children's center. I don't want to go on and brag and brag about the things I've done but as I thought about big accomplishments in my life, the biggest 2 accomplishments I've had in my life was being married to my sweetheart and bringing a beauuuutiful and healthy 8lbs 15 ounces Reena into this world and carrying this baby that will join our family in May. It makes me so grateful for all I do have when yesterday I was reminded of a fellow I acted and modeled with whose picture showed up at one of the medical websites I went to who had a terrible experience with their first child. His wife carried the baby for 6 months and got everything prepared and announced when they found out that the child died but she still had to carry it to full term. It was extremely difficult for them as everyone was asking when the baby is due. They didn't want to go out in public and when the baby came there was no joy because it was dead. What a sad sad experience that was for them. I pray that this baby stays healthy and strong and that our other children will as well. There is one big dream of mine that I want to fulfill someday when our kids are all in school and that is to teach Counseling Psychology at a University but that dream is still not as big as the dream that all of our children will be healthy and faithful in the church. I have this hope for everyone...

The Weather

I just have to add this. The sun is out!!! After almost 2 weeks of snow and cloudy days (Yuck!), the sun finally decided to come out. I'm so happy. It was pouring this morning and I thought for sure it would be cloudy all day but the rains here are so weird, they come and go and come and go. Reena and I were so good at walking on our 4 mile trail when the weather was good and Dan and I were just beginning our work outs at the gym and it snowed on us. Nobody here knows what to do when it snows and everything is closed and everyone stays inside the house except of course those crazy people who think jogging is a must no matter the circumstance. I swear some people exercise so much there's nothing but skin and bones on their body, it's scary. But the snow is gone, all gone now so it's really nice and you can actually see people on the street and it's all alive again.

Dan and I have been playing games like crazy. Just 2 days ago I realized, holy crap, we've got a lot to entertain ourselves with that we don't even have the time to do them all. We both love Warcraft, especially DOTA and we love all sorts of video games like Trackmania and the Wii of course with games like Rock Band and Mario Kart that are so hard to stop playing. Then we also have lots of board games and two of my very favorite strategy games Settlers, especially Cities and Knights (oh yeah don't mention trivia games, I hate those! People who are older than you always win because those games seem to be geared towards their time) Then we've got a list of movies we want to see and we bought a big screen TV for that reason and the Wii so yeah, we've got enough to entertain ourselves. Just then I also realized that when I finally drop video games so I can have a more interesting life I scrapbook and make cards and they all seem to contribute to my family and Dan, Dan, well what does Dan like to do that could contribute to our family and then it hits! Dan could be our trips and vacations planner! Yes it was perfect because Dan loves to look up places and learn about them on the computer so why not make him our planner so he can get hotels and directions all planned out for us? With big cities like Vancouver, Canada being 2 hours away and Portland about 3 hours away and many other cities and places of attractions so near by, why not go see these places. I mean these are so close to home. How many other people out there can drive just 2 hours away from home and see all these attractions? So Dan's planning a trip for us this weekend to go to Canada. We're both so excited and Dan is way excited that he found something he likes to do with his free time that actually contributes to his family a little more and I'm so excited because that's one less thing I need to do! Yeah! Boom baby!

Oh the fun world of gamer nerds!

So we stayed up until 4:00 AM this morning playing DOTA (A Warcraft expansion game). OK how many other couples out there are as stupid as we are, oh please let me know so I can take comfort in knowing we're not the only idiotic ones? Thankfully our daughter slept in until 8:00 this morning so I got 4 hours and Dan got about 5 and a half hours of sleep. It was too fun and it had been too long since we last played so we stayed up killing, I mean fragging each other and arguing about the details of our moves. We made up later and it's all good now but yeah that probably was not the best thing to do when you have kids. Maybe 1:00 or 2:00 but 4:00? Oh the joy, joy to the world of gamer nerds (Sing it to the tune of Joy to the World)

Thuan's little ranting about Christmas!!

Candies and food and more sweets and treats, yes I'm so glad I'm pregnant. If I'm going to gain weight, it might as well be for the baby, which holy cow I've already put on 12 pounds. How do people not be able to tell I'm pregnant, I totally can. I was mistaken for a young woman at church!! I'm 25! I was only 102 pounds after Reena and now I'm back up to 114 pounds. When I'm pregnant though, I take every pound I'm allowed. I'm only allowed 35 pounds and I've got 5 more months to go? That's scary. Well, good news is in 2 more weeks I can find out the gender of my baby. Another girl would be ideal for Reena and for us because we already have all the girl stuff. A boy would be neat because then we would have one of each. If it's a boy, it would be Ronan Quin Stevens and if it,s a girl, it would be Debrey...Stevens. Don't have a middle name yet. Suggestions? Send them my way. Happy weekend to everyone and happy holidays, too! Oh yeah, take a peak at these before and after pictures!!!

Christmas 2008

Seattle Life

Fun Stuff

Random pictures

Christmas preparation near the end

Today we have officially finished with our Christmas shopping. It is so nice to get one stress out of the way. Our cards are mostly done and hopefully tonight we will get them all in the envelopes and on their out tomorrow. I'm so looking forward to playing lots and lots of video games (Yes this is Thuan speaking. I'm not just a creator, I'm a gamer, yeah!) Even a game of chess sounds better than Christmas shopping. The last time we played a game of chess Dan thought he would win in an hour or less, I carried him out 3 hours and almost won, too. This Christmas holiday should be nice and relaxing for us. We're going to get our first live Christmas tree tomorrow and we're so excited.

Christmas Newsletter

Five years ago a very confident boy met a dazed 19 year old girl and convinced her that she's the one for him. Now, five years later, they've added to their happiness, a fruit of their love with another one on the way. Now you know the premise of how they met, here is a sketch of their wonderful life together...


This year has been good for us. We have a lot of exciting news, so here it is in 500 words or less. Thuan was in the play Pirates of Penzance and did a great job as one of the General's daughters. Our yard started off as nothing but clay and rocks, but we put in sprinklers; laid sod; planted a garden, some trees and bushes; put in some rock and mulch, and now it looks great, though it's not yet finished. Thuan's sisters, Thanh and Thao, moved in with us in April after their graduation for a couple of months. In July we went on a trip to Sea World, Santa Monica Beach and Six Flags with them and Thuan's brother Michael. We stayed with Dan's Uncle Brad and Aunt Sheri while there and appreciated them letting us do so. On our way back up Reena got to see her cousin Aspen. A couple weeks later Reena turned 2 and had some friends over for a fun party. Then life got busy. In early August Dan was hired by Amazon.com. We went to Philly in late August to celebrate our 5th anniversary. We spent a couple of days with Thuan's family, then left Reena with them while we traveled to Rehoboth Beach and the Washington, DC temple for anniversary pictures. On our way home we were delayed in Chicago for 8 hours, thus missing our connecting flight. When we finally arrived in Vegas, we slept for a few hours at Dan's parent's house then caught the earliest flight home the next day. We got home just before the packers gave up on us. The next day the movers had cleaned out our house and we found renters for it just before we left. Our Fit had been shuttled off to Seattle, and our Toyota was in the shop (we sold it to Thanh later) so Dan's brother Lon let us stay at his house, and drove us to the airport the next day. Once in Seattle, we stayed on the 21st floor overlooking Elliot Bay with a view of the Space Needle behind us.. It was beautiful. While there, we learned that we are expecting our second child and we are very happy. We are now in Issaquah, 15 miles east of Seattle. We became good friends with another recently transplanted family with kids Reena's age. We had Thanksgiving at their house and it was delicious. We also started working out at a local gym. Now, we are settling in and starting to relax. All in all it was an exciting year for us. Reena did a lot of growing up and is quite a talker now. She is adorable. We are happy to be here in the Pacific Northwest but are most excited about the addition coming to our family. We love you all and hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love Dan, Thuan, Reena and ?

November Newsletter

November 2008
Ahoy Maties,
It has come to our attention – through vicious rumors and lies no doubt – that some of you have some strange belief in a sky god that mysteriously shows up every morning and then disappears again every night. Though this is a nice explanation for the light during the day, it goes beyond reason that you would also call the sky blue. This is how we know these are delusional fantasies. While we may not be able to explain the brightness differential from noon to midnight, we can confirm that in all factuality, the sky is gray. Also, to claim your little ball of flame could be seen riding its chariot across the sky is nothing less than whimsical fancy. Surely one would realize that such a phantasmic speciousness is incontrovertible trickery. Seriously, we haven't seen the sun in a while.
Every weekend this month we spent with the Frasers (a family that moved here at about the same time we did that we've grown to like), alternating which home to go to. We went to the zoo here in Issaquah, which you can imagine is pretty big. They had about about 10 different species, one of which was llamas which Reena enjoyed being able to pet. We had fun. We celebrated Thanksgiving at the Frasers as well, splitting the cost of food, the preparation and the leftovers, which we have already gone through as of this writing.
Reena continues to grow and learn so fast. She knows the alphabet and the single digit numbers, but neither in order which is most apparent with the numbers. While she was helping to empty a box of cans she would count the cans, “7, 8, 7, 8, 7, 8. 8 cans.” Recently however, she has reverted to just 0, 1, and 2, with 2 meaning more than 1, “1 finger, 2 fingers, 2 fingers, 2 fingers...,” etc. She has also learned how to ask “Where is it?” which was an improvement from “Where mommy is?” and the like. She started getting two more molars in as well. She drooled quite excessively on her chin. We said, “You drooled all over your chin.” She replied, “Oops, sorry chin.” She has a little stool that she uses to get into trouble mostly, but she used it as a booster seat one day. Halfway through dinner she leaned over and hugged the stool and then kissed it and said, “I love you, stool,” then said “I love you, daddy.” She had been saying “I love you, mommy” all day long, so now we know her priorities: mommy, stool, daddy. Also, due to the Itsy, Bitsy Spider song, Reena now likes Spider-Man. Also, Reena seems to have some kind of artistic talent as she placed stickers on a scrap-booking paper with a very good sense of style, not just randomly.
Thuan is over her morning sickness and car sickness and food sickness where foods she normally loves made her nauseous. Fish still makes her head spin, but for the most part she is past the worst of it all. Since that is all gone, she has now started the sweets phase. She made banana bread one day and she ate a whole loaf within an hour. She has also made several batches of chocolate chip cookies and ginger snaps. Thuan has become a drummer. She plays Rock Band with Reena on guitar. She's gotten pretty good at it too. She has been working with the missionaries in our previous ward with a couple of ladies that speak Vietnamese. Mostly she translates but she is also sharing her own testimony when needed. She and her friend saw Twilight and had a great time together. She also had a great Thanksgiving making all sorts of yummy food. She can't wait for May 26.
Dan has started ripping all of our DVDs. This is just the beginning of his HTPC (home theater pc) project. He spent two weeks trying to rip Goblet of Fire with various rippers and different computers, googling everything to figure out how to get it to work like the others, then finally found out that it has a scratch on it that keeps our DVD player from even playing it. Oops. He uses his bus ride commute to read and enjoys the peace it gives him instead of driving. Since Amazon pays for the bus, that also makes it more pleasant.
Actually, the sun comes out quite regularly. It's not that bad, honest.

Dan, Thuan, Reena and ?

small plates: We have been born of goodly parents. It's brief, but it's true.

October 2008 Newsletter

October 2008
So let it be written, so let it be done,
The honeymoon has ended. At least, that's what it kind of feels like. We've left our corporate housing on the 21st floor overlooking Elliot Bay with a view of the Space Needle as well. It was hard to do. We found a nice place in Issaquah, WA. Where we are is really an unincorporated area known as Klahanie. Most of our stuff made it here in the same condition it was in when it left. With the exception of a few things, we were kind of hoping it would have all been destroyed by a meteorite and we could start over. We did however pretend our computers were lost while we were at the corporate housing and bought a laptop and an iMac. We now have every operating system, hurray!
Reena has been a great little girl during this whole ordeal. There were two kids from the ward in Seattle that she has become really good friends with. She couldn't go over to their house once because one of them was sick and for the next week she kept saying “Isaac sick or Sophie Sick” and would get real sad. She's putting together words much better and even making some sentences. Thuan asked her if she was okay and she responded “I'm alright,” so we know she can associate okay with alright. She was really excited to get her bikes back when the movers came and enjoys riding around the kitchen island. Her room was the first to be all unpacked in hopes that she wouldn't be distracted by boxes during her nap. She has said “Please Nama” when referring to her blanket many times because her mom told her that Nama made her the pink blanket. We think she likes the queen-sized bed she had at the temporary housing more than her crib sized bed that she had before. We'll see if she can get used to it again. She went trick or treating for the first time. She started with a ward trunk-or-treat where we camouflaged our Fit as a spider-infested bat cave. She had a good time and got lots of treats. On Halloween, we took her down a couple of streets. She's been saying “Halla ween” for a little while but didn't start saying “Trick or treat” until halfway through the night. At first she didn't like when people came to the door after she knocked. But once she realized that she got candy every time, she would fuss when we started to go to the next house.
Thuan is excited for the place we are at. As soon as we saw it she announced that our search was at an end, and we hadn't even seen the inside yet. She has also worked tirelessly....well, not really, she's been tired, but she's worked all the same at getting us out of boxes. She was so excited about us getting into a house that she forgot how much she liked our corporate apartment. She was really sad the days leading up to moving out; almost to the point of backing out and just renting there (having people clean your house and make your beds and do your dishes? Of course I miss it). Part of that, though, is that she will be moving away from her new best friend. However, they have still been seeing each other since the move. Thuan even invited her family to come and they came to celebrate Dan's birthday so we know they'll still see each other often.
Dan is happy that he has a pretty straight shot into work on the bus. It only makes two stops between where we are and where he gets off, so it's not a bad ride for him. We're about 18 miles from work, but it the bus ride is only 25 minutes. We're 2-3 miles from the Park and Ride so he's still trying to figure out how he'll get there. He's considering biking now that he's seen the terrain, but at one point he was thinking about taking up skateboarding, but with the hills around here, we'll see (it's quite like San Francisco around here except a lot greener). Dan also had a wonderful birthday with breakfast in bed, banana cream pies and Reena singing the Happy Birthday song to him. What a joy that little cutie pie is. Joyful singer was the right name for her.
We are happy to be here and can't wait to have any and all of you come see the area.
Love,
Dan, Thuan, Reena, and ?
small plates: We've been in several wards in the last few months. It's wonderful to know that wherever we go, the church is the same. Each ward might be off a week or two on the schedule, but we know that we could go to any ward and be assured that the Lord has called people who will be teaching the truths of the gospel.

August 2008 Newsletter

It's sunny here in Seattle!!! 14 days straight and counting!
July was busy. We thought that would be the end of our busy months in the summer, but August showed us that it is possible to pack more stuff into a month than we ever care to.
Dan had an interview with Amazon at the beginining of this month so we started searching for homes, schools, commute times, cost of living differences, et al. so that we could make the best decision. By the next Friday, the 8th, we had an offer letter. We considered it for all of an evening and decided to accept. Saturday the 9th would have been when some of you heard about it. We let our friends in our ward know also that weekend and then let Amazon know on Monday the 11th. That same day Dan gave Wahoo the feared two weeks notice spiel. This was made worse by the fact that the company had laid off about 15% of their employees the week before for financial reasons. Wahoo decided to get their money’s worth out of Dan and worked him until late hours every day until his last.
We finally decided to buy a Wii and get Rock Band for it. For those of you not in the know, Rock Band is essentially a musical Simon with up to four players. The day we got it, Reena lost a drum stick, and the guitar was defective and had to be returned. However we had the Wii in working condition and Jeff's family came up to visit us. We had a great time together.
Another eventful event of this month is that our Toyota died. It ran out of oil (wanna a long story, call me). The relocation allowed for only one moved car, so we planned on driving up, which would allow us to take more stuff. However, the car had to be in working condition. So we decided to get our Toyota fixed.
On the day that we were flying out to Philly, we wanted to meet a friend from BYU who was in town for only a short while so we stopped at a restaurant. While there, our parked Honda was hit in the door by a lady who was courteous and admitted fault. Her boyfriend or whoever was not so nice and used some very colorful and aggressive language to suggest we were at fault for having our door open in a parking lot. Who would have figured you open doors while parked in a parking lot? Thankfully we exchanged insurance information without incident and had witnesses to boot. We were already behind schedule when this happened so we quickly got going. We made it to the airport in time.
While in Philly we went to a pick your own fruit and veggies farm and had a good time. We also went out with Thuan’s family for a buffet and even had a big BBQ the following day with lots of friends, family and members of the branch. The following Monday (which was the 25th for those keeping score) we left Reena with Thuan’s family and drove down to Rehoboth Beach, DE where we had dinner, walked along the beach and watched a movie about zombies (we’re really romantic; ranks right up there with the black hole movie on Valentine’s Day). That was the last thing that went according to plan. In fact, we hadn’t planned on the movie, so we were already going to bed later than we wanted, which meant we woke up later than expected. We also did not expect to be all dressed up and changing a tire. The Rental car people told us to stop in Annapolis and swap cars, which we did on our way to the D.C. Temple. There we took lots of pictures that we wished we had had time for 5 years ago(Dan:Thuan looked lovely in her wedding dress). One family drove by with their windows rolled down and shouted congratulations to us. We just said thanks and kept our secret to ourselves. At this point we knew there was no way we were going to be able to make it to New York on time, so we went to Shelley and Matt’s for dinner and pleasant conversation, before heading back to Philly.
The next day we flew back home. Remember that four hour layover in Vegas we had planned to see Mom and Dad? Well, Mom was in Phoenix with Krista and Ryan, which didn’t matter much anyway since we spent it in Chicago trying to get our airline to put us on a plane that didn’t have parts needing to be swapped. They probably ran out of oil just the day before they were going to get the oil changed. Six hours after they should have, they finally got us to Vegas, they still charged us for luggage, and they still had the audacity to charge $2 for even a glass of water, and they tried to sell us on their frequent flyer program. Thankfully, Southwest (from Vegas back to Salt Lake) was willing to change our tickets to a morning flight at no charge. Dad picked us up from the airport and drove us home where we slept for a few hours before taking the first flight in the morning back home. Why the first flight? Didn’t we mention that the movers were going to be there that morning bright and early to start packing us? Must have slipped our frenzied minds.
We arrived in Spanish Fork 2 hours late for the packers, but had left frantic messages for them at midnight from Vegas the night before telling them of our predicament. So they just waited for us. We arrived just a minute before they were about to leave. We haven’t accumulated much stuff, so even though they started 2 hours late, they finished an hour early.
The day before we left, Thuan managed to find a renter for our house. A guy (Ammon)she met in her play earlier in the year was going to rent out one of the rooms. He came out and got the keys from us. That afternoon Thuan was talking to the cousin of one of our neighbors, who is in the neighborhood a lot, and found out that she wanted to rent the house out with her husband and two sons. Thuan called back Ammon and he was very understanding of the whole thing. No contracts have been written up and signed yet, but we’re working on it. An hour later, Lon came down to pick us up so we could stay with them. We had a short night, but a good morning together. We ran races, played at the park, and ate breakfast and lunch with them. Lon and Braden drove us back down to the airport before heading off to the BYU game. We arrived in Seattle to a cool 64 degrees. Our apartment is on the 21st floor overlooking Puget Sound with the Space Needle just behind us. In short order, Reena became infatuated with boats.
All in all, the month has been very good. Reena is talking a lot now. Every day she learns at least one new word, sometimes several, and is putting words together to from short sentences. Her sleeping pattern coming in to August wasn’t all the great, but she has gotten so much better. She loved the hammock at her grandparent’s house a lot and would sleep long naps and the whole night in it. In all of our traveling she has been really good and slept well.
We are looking forward to a few days of having nothing to do.
In all of this, despite the craziness we’ve had, and some of the trials, we have tried our hardest to recognize all that we have been blessed with. For example, even though our car was hit on our way to the airport, no one was hurt, the car was still operational, insurance information was exchanged without incident, and more. It has helped us tremendously to acknowledge the Lord’s hand and his blessings.

Check out my Slide Show!

May 2008

We have been busy this month. We have all but two of our sprinkler heads in now, as well as most of our flower beds laid out and some brick work is starting to become more official. Most of our topsoil is spread as well. All of it will be done by the time you get this newsletter. We would have been done this week but we took off the Memorial Day weekend for a trip to Lon and Gaylynn's house and Grandma and Grandpa's house. While in Perry, Reena played with her cousins, jumped on their trampoline and rode their bikes. We also got to bring some raspberry shoots with us from their garden. While in Soda Springs we got to see Colter's seminary graduation and Reena played with her 1^st cousins once removed. They were a big help. We were going to see the Joseph Smith movie at Temple Square that weekend but ended up seeing it on the last day of the month (another reason why we aren't done with the yard yet).

Reena gave her mother the best Mother's Day present; she woke up saying “Mom.” She only said it a few times before then, but she woke up that morning and that was all she wanted to say all day long. Her vocabulary is getting bigger now, though she doesn't always know what she means to say. She likes to say “up,” whether she means up or down, and she'll say “no” to us even when it is most obvious she means “yes.” For instance, we asked her if she wanted to go outside (which she loves to do) and she said “No,” then put on her shoes and stood by the door waiting for us to open it. “Do you want ice cream?” “No,” and then she'll try to open the freezer while making the sign for ice cream. She does it so much, we've decided that she really means yes when she says no, and when she means no she ignores the question or fusses. She and Thuan went to the library and read a book about potty training. When they got back Reena tipped her step stool over and sat in it like it was a toilet, but she hasn't started potty training yet. However, she has learned to take off her clothes and her diaper. Several times we have caught her lying on the couch buck naked. Thankfully she hasn't gone to the bathroom anywhere as we catch her pretty fast. She likes to give kisses and hugs to everyone. Sometimes she'll grab you and push her face into you while she kisses you so that it's a pressurized kiss. We've found that we need to be careful of what we do around her as she has become a real imitator. Thuan was sneezing for a little while and now Reena loves to fake sneeze. In fact, almost the entire trip up to Temple Square she sat in her chair going “aah...aah...choo,” and then giggling to herself. And when we do the fake sneezes, she would laugh and imitate as well. Her other favorite word is “what”. She would run far away from you, most of the time to another room and then call out “what?” even if you didn't call her. She is such a pretty girl with her big round eyes and pretty smile. Thuan is enjoying her longer hair in little pig tails on each side. She looks a lot more grown up with her long hair.

Thuan is enjoying the warmer air. It gives her an opportunity to take Reena outside of the house more and she has been working in her garden even more. She ripped out half of her garden (that is to say half of her cilantros) so she could grow strawberries, cabbage, tomatoes, blackberries, the above-mentioned raspberries, and marigolds to keep the garden bed bugs from biting. She also cleaned out our garage on a whim and now we're back to parking our car in the garage since her sisters moved in. She was hoping they would be able to baby sit more but they took off for Vietnam not long after she put them to work in the yard. All of Thuan's exercise nowadays comes from Reena. Reena loves to dance so much that Thuan just turns on music and dances with her until she (Thuan) gets tired, while Reena just keeps going.

Dan is happy that our yard is coming close to being done. He has had plenty of setbacks and worries. Apparently our back yard is 10 feet longer than he originally measured it so where we had good sprinkler coverage we now had a large gap where there would be no water at all. Thankfully that turned out to be an easy fix that required only two more sprinklers to be added and two to be moved. We had to have the trencher guy come back out since our mattock only got down about one inch along 10 feet of the 40 foot trench we had to add. (Thanks for buying it for us Dad, but with all the rocks we have, the end is now bent). We also had a leak in the sprinkler's water main, but it turned out to be just a valve that hadn't been closed tight. Irony of ironies, it turned out to be the valve that we added the two new sprinklers to, so that when we tested those sprinklers we closed it tight and haven't had a leak since. So it was a good thing we had 10 extra feet (not to mention the extra 650 sq. ft. of yard it gives us).

small plates: As mentioned previously, we got to see the Joseph Smith movie this month. While there was nothing in it that we didn't already know, and there were lots that we know were left out, it is still amazing to think of all the things he and the early saints went through to give the restored church its start. Grandma and Grandpa also spoke about our religious forbears on the Sunday we were up in Soda Springs and reminded us that we should also memorialize our religious forbears on Memorial Day.

Reena