Costume and Party

It's beautiful because it's all around us. We don't have to drive to canyons and wooded areas to see this. We simply step outside. You see clouds in the sky, we see colors.
(The leaves are all red now since I took this picture)

The past 2 weeks have been unusually busy for the Seattle Stevens. We managed to keep ourselves busy. I see people who do so much busy work and I wonder why. I'm terrified at the idea of aging and there is definitely a correlation between overexerting oneself and aging. Our goal for coming to Seattle was to to be adventurous and keep a blog on our lives while having fun and staying young, which for Dan is long boarding, despite past experience. Aye! (More to come on the next blog about his birthday).
The ordinary of the past couple of weeks for me is taking the kids to different places to entertain them, teaching preschool, visiting the homeless, crafting, going to my composer's house and learning his music. The un-ordinary is recording the music with crazy wild kids in the studio. I've considered joining theater and the Seattle glee club which expressed interest after listening to my youtube video, but I'm a soloist more than a group or choir person. I enjoyed doing Women's Chorus at BYU but again, I like to be a soloist and have my voice be heard singly rather than in a group. Then again, what's more important than spending time with family? Something I think a lot of us forgets when we try to do so much. But we don't want to bore you with the details of the ordinary so if you want to skip down to the pictures, you may do so now.
The ordinary for Dan is working at Amazon, playing with his expensive computer toys, being a great daddy. The un-ordinary for Dan is his new band. He spent a good number of hours picking out songs he would like the band to play for him to sing. For a while our house was full of music. We're both soloists. He inspired me to write a grunt song for his rock band and reminded me that I fell in love with his sexy rock star voice before I completely fell in love with him :)
For Reena and Debrie there is no ordinary. Everything I'm going to mention is out of the ordinary, at least to me.
Reena took a pair of scissors and chopped off her bangs. This was following her painting extravaganza. She and Debrie really love scarecrows. They're had more fun going from one scarecrow to the next rather than picking out their pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. I had fun taking pictures and this one here is my favorite. Reena shaking hands with Mr. Crow. He looks excited to meet her as well.

Debrie because she is potty trained, doesn't like having accidents in her diapers or pull ups. She thinks she owns the toilet. If you're on it, she will fuss and indicates to you that she needs to go potty. She will point to her diaper and holds it just like her sister when her sister needs to go badly. We could hardly believe that our 17 month old is potty trained.
However, here is the fun part. One day when we put her down for a nap she didn't want to go down but instead made the biggest mess I've ever seen. She tried to change herself and you can let your imagination go wild. She had poop all over herself and smeared it on the wall and all over the crib. She was covered head to toe with that nasty stuff. I refrained from posting the picture I took of that event and am replacing it with this one. She doesn't allow us to feed her. So she feeds herself at the dinner table and this is how she usually looks after each meal.


These are the adventures we had in the last part of October and early November that are unique and out of the ordinary.
I flipped through an old magazine I got in college and saw this. Had to make it! So the idea for a tea party came to mind.
I taught the kids how to set the table correctly and fold a sleeping bag napkin
Notice the decor in the background. Reena did the decorations.

The cake was a pumpkin pie cake. Very moist and i love the coconut on top with cream cheese frosting.
I opted for making these ladybugs rather than the ones in the magazine. It had cherry tomatoes on crackers with cream cheese and black olives for the head. I don't think any of the kids would've touched that. But these were a hit and this is my original idea so I was pretty happy.




Halloween Night
I thought I was done with Halloween costume when I made my Reena her Tinkerbell costume and Brie has Silvermist but Reena wanted to be a mermaid instead for this Halloween. So I got down and for a couple of hours I finished it in time for her T party. It was bit difficult because I did it without a pattern but it impressed my seamstress mother so I was pleased. We had a lot of fun trick or treating and chatting with our friends while eating their chocolate.
Reena wanted Brie to be a mermaid like her so that made it easy. Same fabric and almost the same pattern.




Going for a swim with her clam sandwich.
Dan's birthday, the move, the new route. See you on the next blog!