Not a Warning: For the faint of heart

A lighter note to lighten the day.
1. Dan's scrapes are now almost completely healed! Yay! He's happy so we're happy. He loves Seattle VERY VERY much. It rained for him.
2. We put in an offer for a piece of land. (The neighborhood. So pretty)Didn't like the offer so we continue to beautify our home and hope the lot comes down in price.

I added the pillows to this room and made it look warmer. I love it!

3. Went to the Seattle Aquarium with the kids' uncle Mike. Reena loved it! The best aquarium we've gone to.



4. Went to the Pacific Science museum and saw lots of neat stuff. It is the best interactive museum I've ever been to. Very kid friendly. Easily could use up your whole day. We did it in 2 and 1/2 hours so we're going to get a pass and return. It has an IMAX theater so you really do get your money's worth. The kids enjoyed the water show, grossology lab, dinosaurs, learning about the Universe, and riding on the aircraft they had.
5. One night we picked up 2 large Papa John's pizzas (My favorite!) for dinner and then went straight to Bybee Blueberry farm by the beautiful mount Si and picked blueberries. We came home with so much blueberries. It was so much fun and very tasty! We also go on walks on the trails near our house and pick blackberries quite often nowadays. Blackberries are the weeds of Washington.


6. I went to a country concert and saw Sugarland and Kenney Chesney at QWEST FIELD. The concert was awesome and the best part of it all is that I got the ticket for free when the ticket normally runs at $60. I got it from my best friend who knows somebody that works at Qwest Field and got them for free.


7. We all went to the dentist (who is in our Stake) and Reena did so great! She got a full cleaning without much of a fuss because I was holding her the whole time. I got my wisdom tooth pulled out because it was starting to hurt a lot and sadly had to cancel a duet performance with my song writer. Dan went and saw our orthodontist, which is next door to the dentist office(who is in our ward) for braces. He's thinking about straightening his bottom teeth or maybe this is another attempt to feel younger. LOL. I don't know, take your pick.
8. We beach hopped again because the weather is warm. This place has lots of beach parks which usually has swings, slides, picnic tables, gazebos and shades for the adults and sand for the kids to make sand castles. Reena loves making sand castles with her Uncle Mike. I love to sit back in the shades with Debrie and enjoy the ocean view. It's very relaxing.
9. Reena and Debrie are my two favorite girls in the whole wide world. Reena loves her sister a lot...Almost too much. She wants her sister to crawl and to walk and doesn't understand yet that her sister is still a baby. She had to go to time out several times because she wants to wrestle with her sister. All day long the words that come out of my mouth are: "Be gentle, be soft, please be careful". Anyways you get the idea.

10. Debrie is yummy and delicious. I know, it sounds weird, but that is how everybody describes her. Somehow everybody wants to eat her. LOL. She is a cutie mostly because she gives us 8 hour nights now. Ok she is a cutie not just because of that. She can hold up her neck without bopping. Our little girl is growing up so fast.

Our lives are fast pace here and are rich and wonderful. We love having our families come and visit us. Our friend in the ward gave us a book that had over 180 hikes to do in this area with kids and we look forward to be able to do them. I found this website one day by doing a search for affordable attractions in Seattle. Exciting!
http://www.smartdestinations.com/attractionList.ep?filters=_d_Sea_Att&pass=go

Special Features This Week:
1. My friend Tammy informed us of this wonderful thing!
Regal cinemas in select areas does showings of kids movies on Tuesdays and Wednesday for free..First
come first served basis....
http://www.regmovies.com/nowshowing/familyfilmfestivalschedule.aspx?state=WA
2. Also in this area
http://www.5thavenue.org/
50% off tickets for 2 days in Oct and Nov. Their cheapest balcony ticket
normally goes for $22 per ticket and goes up to $80 but I got 2 tickets for $24. Great
deal!

Warning: Not for the faint of heart

Today's guest writer is Dan.

I am officially going through a midlife crisis. OK, maybe not, but recently I've been thinking I wanted to try something new. You might be thinking knitting, or writing short stories, or some other simple thing. You would be wrong. I have been wanting to pick up skateboarding for my commute. I was thinking -- certainly like any level headed man of my age who has only skateboarded less than a handful of times in his life -- that a skateboard would be a perfect thing.

"Why not a bike?", you might ask.

Bah! That kind of thinking leads to offering a cane to a man with a limp, a crutch to a child with a sprained ankle, or a walker to an elderly lady (I picked those analogies carefully). In other words, it's like offering help to someone who has a handicap. I have no handicap.

Well, at least not a physical one.

Well, at least I had no physical handicap.

I researched skateboards and decided on a longboard. They have bigger, softer wheels, which roll over rocks and sidewalk cracks easier. They are also longer and typically wider which offers more foot space which can help in balancing. Then I found out a friend of mine had one. He let me borrow his so I could try it without having to invest any money if I decided it wasn't going to work.

Now that I think about it, maybe he was trying to kill me off. :)

So today, I took the longboard to work. Our house is on a hill. Not a particularly steep hill. OK, our neighbor's second floor windows look into our first floor windows. The point is, I wasn't riding down the Matterhorn. In either case, it didn't take long for me to attain a relatively high velocity, at which point I started to wobble.

Before proceeding, let me reiterate that I had researched this. I knew how to stop. I knew how to slow down. I knew that doing either of those things is the easiest way to get out of the wobble. Now let us proceed, because I didn't do either of those things. No, I just jumped off running. This is where the rubber hit the road. And by rubber I mean my hands, and by hands I mean hands and knees, and by hands and knees I mean hands, knees and chest. And by road I mean road.

Those with weak constitutions are now advised to keep reading and suck it up (much like I did).

I stood up and assessed the damages. These consisted of a cut on my right hand, a cut and a scrape on my left, and both knees had scratches. I also got to watch the longboard roll down the hill. Then I looked back at my left hand, which was hurting. That's when I noticed that I didn't have just a simple scrape. A 2x2 inch piece of skin had been entirely stripped away and pieces of it were hanging off. So I tore those off.

Many men would proceed home to clean it up (I was only 200 feet away). I am only one man, which is to say that I am not many men, which is to say I went to work. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly, surprisingly. It was the pus that continued on for quite some time. To make an increasingly longer story short again, I cleaned and dressed the wound at work with some supplies from the first aid station. I also rode the longboard home after work.




So in conclusion, I had lots of fun. It was unfortunate that my first injury was on my first ride. I enjoyed it enough that I will probably do it again. I'm in enough pain that I will probably not do it again for a while, and when I do, I will wear gloves.

Beach Hopping

About a year ago we had a strong prompting to move. It made no sense to us why that would be the right thing to do. We had purchased a home, worked really hard to put in a yard and was starting to feel settled down. But the prompting kept getting stronger and stronger so Dan started looking for a job, here in the Seattle area. He got an interview with Amazon and we were waiting to hear back from them when his company decided to let go 30% of their employees. Although Dan was not one of them, he was glad that the Lord was looking out for us and inspired us to look for something better. Amazon offered Dan a better paying and more promising job and we took it in a heart beat. They provided us with luxury living for 2 months in one of Seattle's best high rise living apartments. We were on the 21st level looking out to the bay and it was beautiful. Our house in Spanish Fork is still ours and we are renting it out but with no regrets we are glad we're here. We love our families and hope that some of them will join us up here someday. Two of Thuan's sisters are sold on the idea of settling here after grads school.

Every time I get a chance to talk to someone they ask "Have you been to so and so place?" This city is full of endless places and things to do. We love it! There's not enough time to hit all these places. Not enough energy! But recently it has been extremely hot and I will resist the temptation to talk about it because enough have been said on facebook but know this, we've had 7 times less rain than Phoenix, AZ this month if that says something. It's finally cooling off. too cool for my likeness but Dan likes it. Last week the kids and I went to a friend's house and used her kiddie pool and took advantage of her air conditioning house. The only thing that bothers me about Seattle is that 800,000 900,000 homes around here don't have air conditioning built in. It's an upgrade! What?!!! So off to the beaches we went First to Pine Lake Park Beach with some friends. One of the prettiest places I've been to. The next day we drove to Groveland Beach and then 2 days later we all went to Clarke beach in Mercer Island to see the Blue Angels. They come every year and have an air show here over the water. We need a better camera but we're saving up for a nice one so this will have to do for now.