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.