Philadelphia

City of Brotherly Love. Love Park

Philadelphia. We really miss it. We had so much fun there and my parents and siblings did everything for us. They adored our children and treated them like priceless gold. We were no doubt pampered and because of that I believe we're still in vacation mode. We expect someone to do our dishes and clean up and take care of the kids in the morning so we can sleep in. Where is my mother?!!! No, really. We really had such a great time in Philadelphia this last trip. We made it so that our vacation was 10 days long rather than 4-5 days like we did before, which gave us no time to explore Philadelphia. But this last time we had 2 weekends and the labor day holiday and Rosh Hashanah (My little Bro got 2 days off for this) to spend with the family and while they were at work and in school we did many things. We saw lots of places including outdoor sites, museums, historical sites, and eating fresh crabs, cheese steaks and tastycakes.

At the branch's Labor Day picnic at FDR park
The picnic was great. The food was phenomenal. My mother made the most amazing eggrolls, the skills of which she did pass on to me thankfully. The weather was a beautiful 80 degrees. It was a beautiful day.
My daddy diving for the ball. Still a healthy man.


Brie modeled for 2 Temple students as seen in the picture below. They wanted to have Reena do it but she was a little shy so Brie took the part. She was a super friendly baby on our trip. She waved her cute little wave and said hi and bye to people as they passed by.
My parents brought 2 hammocks out to the park and the kids loved it. One fell asleep here with my mother.

The Game Park

We took a visit to City Hall and saw many neat sculptures. Brie was a daredevil and wanted to just jump down. Scary that her little body could go through that.
This hall's columns have unique sculpted statues of the 4 major races in the world.
Carpenter's Hall

My sister Thuyen had a birthday while we were there. Doesn't happen too often so we made it special. We took the party out to the boat and had wonderful views from the Delaware river to celebrate it.


We took a little night walk around UPENN. It is a beautiful campus. Each of their buildings is built with such beautiful Collegiate Gothic architectural style. They also had art sculptures like some of these.




Independence Hall. It was so neat to revisit the places where our forefathers stood and lived and fought for this country. We took some time to ponder the uniqueness of this place.

Natural Academy of the Sciences



Franklin Institute was so much fun. We spent 3 hours here and still didn't have enough time to explore everything. The entrance was most amazing to me. The architectural details could only be captured through video not photo imaging.

About to make some real paper. Doesn't the guy look like Einstein?!


Museum of Art
Rocky!

My best friend from 7th grade happened to be home the day from college so we arranged to meet and hung out before I left.

Other fun things we did were hanging out with my family and eating the great food my parents cook. Food is a very big thing in the Viet culture and every meal we had was a big feast. It was so great to be pampered.
Dan did the vanity and I cooked for my parents. I made chicken cordon bleu and my mother thought that was the best American food she had ever had, except it's French. See more great recipes on my site thatkreativekorner.blogspot.com.

My cute parents spent so much time cooking for us. I love these authentic Viet food wrapped in banana leaves. Somehow I can smell the tropical freshness in the taste of the food. I don't make these so they were a treat!
Our photographer for the trip. Isn't she so cute?!!!!

More pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=309300&id=747639656&l=51

Last several days of summer

So much has happened since the last blog. Earlier in September we had a friend from Philadelphia visited us. Her son works for Microsoft so every year she comes out here to visit him. I took her around town showing her things she hadn't seen. Then we had her and her son over for dinner and caught up on old time. Just in time for our Philly trip so I don't feel so out of touch.
We took the kids to see the circus exhibit and to explore science at PACSCI.

Dan the dare devil. I was too scared. Maybe next time :)


Dan and I are still loving big city life. We love Seattle because it's just the right size. Not too big not too little. There are a lot of theaters around for me so opportunities to be in plays, especially now that I've stopped nursing Brie. It's an ideal time to dedicate more time to singing and dancing to keep the figure. Dan has been picking up the guitar again and even recorded a song. One day we'll have a studio of our own and we'll have lots of fun together. We spend a lot of our time together playing video games and he thinks I'm the coolest wife in the world because of that. That's us!

Reena had a lot of fun at her Primary activity with her friends this month. She's adored by all the 10 and 11 year old girls at church. She really loved the splish splash water park and while we were at the park she made a friend. She still talks about her friend which I forgot the name but she remembers. Allison was her friend's name. Unfortunately Allison was visiting and is not close by. But they sure clicked and played real well together at the park. Reena really misses her aunt Thuyen and often prays that she'll get on the airplane to come back to Washington. She's growing out of her shyness but she still has a little bit of socializing left to work on. She says the darnest things and she has 4 best friends she talks about a lot. Isaac, Sophie, Ellie and Connor.

And Brie is as cute as ever when she's a good girl. She is often mistaken as a little baby I babysit for rather than my daughter. She definitely has more hair than her sister and are pretty light. They are strawberry blond. I really never thought Dan's hair color would win over mine. Brie is my very friendly and social baby. She says hi to everybody she sees. Her new words are "Bye bye yad" "dadda, daddy when she really wants daddy, meow for any animal, nama, papa, ngoai, ong ngoai, and she can mimick almost any sound. It's real cute to hear her try to say thank you and Amen is real clear and usually said right after she hears Jesus. She likes to climb, especially onto computer desks and onto our kitchen table. She knows she's not supposed to do those things so once she's on top of the table or computer desk, she'll say "whoa whoa whoa" and "no no" to imitate you. She has cute little curls in the back of her head, also a pretty prominent feature in the Stevens genes. She has also been real good at going #2OK here's a good laugh. Brie is 16 months old. She loves going #2 in the potty. She looks at it when she's done and says "Bye bye" and waves at it. She also likes Reena to put her diaper back on and not mommy. Now we just have to potty train her to do #1.






Reena and her park friend Allison. They met and played together the whole time we were there.

The weather was starting to cool down around here. The leaves were turning colors and the trees were looking beautiful. But we weren't ready for fall. We wanted to extend our summer days and Philadelphia was the destination chosen. We were supposed to be in Philly in March but our flights got canceled due to the late crazy snow storm they had this year. We didn't want to go there during the summer because summer there is hot and humid. But Fall is a beautiful time to visit. The weather only got up to 90 degree and most of the time was in the low 80's and several times high 70's. It was great. See more on the next blog!