Chasing Fireflies

I named this blog "Chasing Fireflies because it's the biggest event of this past week. Chasing Fireflies CASTED our Debrie Camli as their model for the Fall Catalogue! She did amazing at her audition. Every time she walked in the room with a new outfit, they all said "awwwwe". Dan took Friday off and we all did a day trip down to Mt. Hood Oregon for the photo shoot. She will be in the Fall 2010 catalogue. We also met up with our friends Christiaan and Kelly and we bought Reena and Debrie a 50's diner set at TOYSRUS since Oregn doesn't have tax!
The beauty queen after her photoshoot. No I will not turn into a pageant mom because I love my child.

As for the weather this week, it's pretty crazy. Of course as I'm writing this it's in denial because it's sunny outside.. Last May we brought Brie home from the hospital and it was nice and warm. My sis came up and went out on Lake Union on the ride the duck. This week the weather has been wet. The rain is a beautiful mist spray, but it has been wet so we haven't done much outdoor. So what do you do when it rains in Seattle? You go out to EAT! When we were in Oregon the weather wasn't any better (t was drier in Seattle than it was in Portland, but Seattle's the bigger cityso it gets the name "rainy") so we also went out to eat at one of Portland's famous restaurant, Newport Bay Seafood Grill. It was really good and the kids especially enjoyed being messy.

After eating with our children we realize how tiring it was so the next day we got a babysitter and the two of us went out to eat at "What the Pho?" There's nothing better in my opinion than eating a bowl of Pho when it's rainy.

$9 for this plate. Pretty great deal.

What people do with their money in America.
I drove around Newcastle (15 minutes from Seattle) to get ideas for the exterior of our house and really like this one. Talk about lots of windows for more sunlight. This is a perfect Seattle house! I also like the stone work on this.

And then there's this one which is ridiculously goddy.

Usually on Sundays Dan watches the kids in the morning so I can sew but this last time he for some reasons disappeared for a half an hour. After a while I walked into our bathroom and saw this! Hair greased up and jelled down and brushed to the side. I laughed and didn't think he was serious but then right when we were about to go to church he still didn't fix his hair. I told him to go change it and it wasn't until I threat that I wasn't going to sit next to him if he shows up at church looking like a total nerd head that he went and fix his hair normal again. LOL. Dan.

I have to post this one to take away the bad image of my nerdy grease head looking husband. Much cuter!

Unlike last week where I ran around town looking for carebear stuff to decorate our house with for Brie's birthday, this week I have had a lot of time doing creative things. I will be doing a class for the Young Women in our ward and with the ladies at the House of Hope that involves repurposing so I have posted some samples. See this for my samples. Those of you who are not familiar with my other blogs, these are them:http://thatcreativecorner.blogspot.com/ (This one for flower clip purchases) andhttp://seastevensphotography.blogspot.com (For ordering your photoshoot)

Have a great Memorial Day and come back to visit our blog in the coming week. I will post a song "A tribute to our soldiers!"

Tonight I'm writing up a few words of an event that happened a year ago this very day when I brought home the sweetest little angel God created and handed to me. She came at 9 lbs 3 ounces through my tiny body and God himself would've said it was a miracle too and he was there. I thought I seriously was going to die when my doctor announced that it was too late to give me my epidural. I closed my eyes and prayed (and screamed) and with 3 long pushes she came out. It was a miracle and she was a miracle.

I can hardly believe it's been a year. Where did the time go? Has she been a part of our family for a year? We feel so blessed. She has been a wonderful baby. A sweet sister to Reena who often tells us that Debrie is her best friend. What a perfect gift she is to us.



She loves stuffed animals, most especially bears. She'll point and says "be be" for bears and when she is given one she'll hug it, kiss it and lie down on top of it. So carebears was her theme. I made her a wish bear cake and for care-a-lot look alike castle spirals I used ice cream cones filled with cake mix. For the activity we had a "Build your own carebear workshop" where I made Molasses gingerbread cookie dough and everyone cut out their bear shape cookies and decorated them. We had the kids do a sack race to Debrie. She enjoyed watching them. We invited people she knows and her babysitters. There were more people than our house could hold but the fun was well worth it.

Besides planning for Brie's BIG 1 party , I also went shopping with a friend of mine at some of my favorite stores. I spent too much, way too much on clothes. Someone once told me that she hasn't seen me wear the same dress to church yet. Yikes! It's truly a weakness and I have a husband who spoils me and that doesn't help. But I did find that cute dress for Brie for her birthday from H&M when I took them for the first time in a looooong time to the mall. The kids clothing company Chasing Fireflies wanted to see Reena and Debrie for some photoshoot and I brought them in to model for them in some cute dresses. There were so many kids there and they picked up a runny nose. I don't think I will make them go to many of these. The fame is just not worth it. Reena loved trying on their clothes though. I love having girls!

Every week we discover something fun, something beautiful that makes us love Seattle so much. This week's discovery includes a 28.5 acres park in Redmond with beautiful sceneries and playground that the kids had a great time at and Newcastle golf course which is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Mama's hands held their annual dinner and live auction to raise funds for the shelter. Tickets were $125 each and we got free tickets for volunteering. Unfortunately Dan's ticket came late and we weren't able to get a baby sitter so I just went and did some photography for them. They raised over $200,000 so lots of rich people showed up to hand out their $$. Thanks to good people and their kind hearts, the women and children at the House of Hope get another chance to better their lives. The auction was so much fun but the food and scenery of the place is really breath taking. I really felt on top of the world. It is definitely our new favorite place to show people.

NEWCASTLE. The name says it all.




Lots of things happen this week. I was super busy and my super husband had to put the kids down most nights. Thanks sweetheart.
Monday I woke up early and did a wedding photography then took Reena to dance class. Wednesday Dan worked from home so Reena and I could be an audience for King5's New Day Northwest show. Mama's hands was featured as well as David Lawrence clothing designer David Balcolm whom I knew from the Seattle ward. It was a lot of fun and we got the third row so we got great exposures. You can see us under New Day Northwest on King5's website.
Me and New Day NW's host, Margaret Larson.


Spring started in February this year. The white magnolias which were green all year round bloomed from about March and some are still coming in. They come in a variety of colors. I have seen red, white, purple, peach, cream, and pink. We have white and red and they're all around our house. I told Dan to not buy flowers for me but rather just clip a couple of branches and bring them inside for Mother's day. These also grow in the wild so we see them on the roads, too. Beautiful!

Besides those things I just mentioned, we also did a lot of outdoor things. We put in more vegetable plants in our garden. The kids love watering the plants. No, even though weather.com says it's going to rain, it's spring and we gets some spinkles for about 5 minutes and then it's sunny so we still need to water. We went to Golden Garden beach together as a family and then met up with Dave and Kim after for ice cream. We told them about 2 beaches Alki and Golden Garden and miscommunicated our plans so they went to Alki while we went to Golden Garden. Well the summer is quickly approaching and we'll go again probably every weekend.









What makes Seattle unique is their focus on preserving nature. Their goal is to not turn Seattle into New York, Chicago, or Philly. So all around us are trails, parks, beach parks, and natural wild flowers, trees and shrubs that stay green all year round. Have I expressed enough yet how much we LOVE this place? It is the prettiest place any of us have ever seen or lived in. Everyday we wake up and asked "Is this true? Do we really live here or are we just visiting?

Week 2 of May

Are we seriously almost half way through May? My baby is almost 1? She's walking all around the house. Life is moving fast. Friday I took the kids to the Bellevue Botanical Garden, which is bout 13 minutes from our house for a "fairies garden" walk, according to Reena. The last couple of days has been ast was beautiful and we feel like summer is here. We've been treating it like it anyway. Friday Reena said "Let's go to the beach!" She got all of her beach toys in a bucket and everyday this week she's been doing the same thing and everyday my answer is "Not yet". But I'm a nice mom so I try to substitute with things we haven't done. And since Debrie is turning one I dressed her up and took her one year old pictures. They turned out quite nice.
The botanical garden is a beautiful place. It is a 36 acres of display gardens, rolling hills, woodlands, meadows and it was so beautiful. The best part is that it's free! Always free so I can take my clients here for wedding photos or family photos. We liked it so much we convinced Dave and Kim and their family to join us there for a picnic on Saturday. Then we convinced them to take our kids for a couple of hours for us so we could go to the Temple. They had a lot of fun in the sun and playing at the park. You could tell they had so much fun with Reena's clothes covered in dirt and mud from rolling off the hill and Debrie with wood shavings in her diaper. Too much fun gave Debrie a runny nose so we hope she'll be over it soon. She loves bears so much that if she's a little tired or fussy, we just give her a bear and she's happy. She cuddles it so cutely it melts my heart every time. Careabear is just the right party for her!


So far this week's been great. I did some wedding photography for a lady who used to be in the ward. The pictures turned out wonderful. This is a fun profession. Also, "Little Hand" is going on air on King5. Denny Hancock decided to use it as the background music for a movie he is showing at his interview with King5's host Margaret Larson. Way excited to see this live! Tomorrow.

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A Tribute to Mothers

Mothers, Happy Mother's day. My composer wrote this song and had me sing this. I'm glad to have this opportunity to share with you all one of my songs. Enjoy! At least the music if not the pictures. Happy Mother's day to all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzYMLOzjyVQ

Cousins, vacations, and things

Boating season is back on! They just had a boating parade on Saturday. I smell fun in the air!!!!

First off, I'm such a mom for girls. I love dressing my girls up and making them look beautiful. Not that that's so hard since they have the Stevens genes in them. I created this blog not for bragging, but for counting my blessings. Counting our blessings has helped us to be happy and to live more righteously. We feel very blessed to be here in the Northwest, which is why I try to go see and serve the homeless in Seattle every Wednesday. My repay for all our blessings.

Cousins!

Last year we took Reena down to Phoenix to go treat or treating with her cousins. She had so much fun she told us "I want to go trick or treating with my cousins every year". Well we didn't agree with the idea then but it's looking like she will be trick or treating with her cousins this year after all. Dave, Dan's cousin on his dad side just moved to Seattle for a job with Microsoft with his wife Kim and 2 kids, Damon, Melynn. Reena heard that she'll have cousins here and immediately loved them. Damon and Melynn, Reena and Debrie play really well together. We've really enjoyed the dinners and games we've had together so far. We've done something together every week. We met up the second Sunday at Snoqalmie Falls and the kids really enjoyed getting to know each other. What we're really looking forward to is the babysitting exchanges. It's nice to have families nearby. They're in our stake. Dave and Kim are awesome!

Third, Dan has credits on an xbox game "Kingdom for Kiefflings". Dave was talking about a game that his daughter likes to play. He told Dan that Melynn likes to kick the sheep and Dan's thought was "there's a game that I made that I also liked to do that". He asked Dave "what's the name of the game" Dave said "Kingdom for Kiefflings" and Dan said "I programmed that!" So out came Dave's xbox and here you see Dan's name in the credit. Wow my husband's famous!:)

Dan and Dave enjoying some game time together.

Talk about famous. My daughter loves to show off her mom's picture in a magazine to everyone that comes to our house. I guess she's proud to have me as a mom. Anyway so I thought I would sign her up with my agency for commercial prints. Here she is on Copeland Williams website. She had her first audition today and since they needed to see kids Debrie's age also, Debrie is also now represented by Copeland Williams. They look fabulous at their audition whether or not they get the part, I'm so proud of how well they did and the fact that they smiled in front of the camera. I'm so glad my Reena isn't as shy anymore.

I LOOOOVE my empire red 575 watt 6qt. professional 600 series Kitchen Aid!!!! One of the best birthday gifts.

Reena goofing off with daddy. She put on those tiny glasses and then said "two daddies" We all had a good laugh.

Brie is Walking!

She's 11 months old. My kids walk really early. They came out fast and they're just excited to do everything early. She took 8-9 steps while great grandma and great grandpa are here and at the end of their trip she was pretty much walking. Now that's how she gets our full attention. She also LOVES stuffed animal. It's really cute watching her give her bear hugs and kisses. She'll give you a big kiss with her mouth wide open if you ask her for one, too.

Dan and I are taking a preach my gospel class. We're pretty excited about this. We invited our nonmember neighbors that I got to know at the park over for dinner and FHE. We had a great time!

Strolling on the beach (pictures from phone)

For this I can stand some cloudy days!
Downtown shopping experience!

Lastly, on a whim I took a pair of scissors and cut off 8 inches of my hair.

Trip Plans for this summer
Clam Digging at Whidbey and Camano Island
Whale watching at San Juan Islands
Camping at Mt. Rainier
Hike to the Hoh Rain forest
Forks and La Push (Twilight experience)
Sight seeing and hiking to Cape Alava and Cape Flattery
Cruise to Victoria, BC
Crater Lake

There are so many things to do around here. If we drop everything and do everything we want to do it would take years. We love this area. We can't express enough how much we love it. This is heaven on earth...for us.