A Day in the Stevens' Life

For many people the clouds are undesirable. For us however, we love it because it keeps us warm. For being very far up north, we spent a lot of days in the low 50s in January.
January is becoming one of my favorite months. Every January so far we've had visits from our families. We were fortunate to have my sister Thuyen come to visit for a week and then 3 days later my sister Thanh also came up for a visit. We have a common friend that got married to a girl from Seattle. The day Thanh came up we took her to one of our favorite museums: The Museum of Flight. She loved it and was so interested in learning about everything, especially the space exhibit. The kids excitement also helped out. She was so cute with them, constantly kissing and holding them. I love my sister. My kids are so lucky to have such great aunts!


The week before my sister came I also took the House of Hope's kids to see the flight museum. We really took it for granted that we are so fortunate to be able to see all these museums. We've gone to the museum of flight many times but for those HoH kids, that was their first time ever. My job at the House of Hope is to share with those kids opportunities they have not been able to have. It's so neat to see the excitement in their eyes.
DJ and Britney's Wedding (They were sealed to each other at the Seattle Temple)




2011 Day Trip #1
The weather was 57 and sunny so we decided that would be a great time to go discover some of the islands around here. Dan was our trip planner and he did a great job finding out all the fun places to see. It started out a bit cloudy but soon cleared up. We drove to Mukilteo, about 20 minutes from where we live and hopped on the ferry to Whidbey Island. We made a stop at Useless Bay merely for Dan because he wanted to stop there and then say "Well, that was useless" and he did and we all had a good laugh, even Reena who thinks everything her daddy says is funny.

A little historic light house by the pier in Mukilteo. We had a little time before the ferry came so we walked around this historic park.

Useless Bay. "Well, that was Useless"

Scenery we saw on our way to our destination. Off in the distance is the San Juan Islands and Victoria, BC. We have plans on going to both to go whale watching and exploring in the future because we never got around to it last summer.
We made a stop at Greenbank farm on Whidbey Island where they make cheese and yarn. We came here for cheese tasting and a stop for a lunch picnic and park. They had whine tasting, too. We skipped out on that part. We saw how sheep's wool is turned into yarn and that was cool. The guy that was working on the wool turned it into yarn and made all sorts of purses and cute little crafts.

Our third destination. Deception Pass and Deception Pass State Park Beach. As we were driving we thought wow our trip is shorter than we thought it would take. Until...we got there and saw how much there was to see and do. We could spend a whole day there easily but a week would be funner. We drove through the campsite and decided we would come back here and camp out. It was so beautiful. The history of Deception Pass is also very interesting if you have time to read it. Though I won't take up your time with it here.


Reena had a great time but for whatever reason she didn't want to smile for a family picture.
From this rock the view was breathtaking. Even Brie tried to climb it.







Our final destination. Coupeville Wharf. We saw the skeletons of a gray whale, a dalls's porpoise, and a northern sea lion.

We had so much fun roaming the coast and the best part happened the next day when at church our Bishop told us that while we were doing so, he was building igloos with the YM a half an hour east of where we live. That's what makes this area so neat is you have both the beaches and the mountains for snow activities such as skiing and snowboarding all within a half an hour of driving. We love it! It's only fair that we get the rain and clouds.

A little update on the house progress.
Dan has taken over our finances. I did the researching and the customizing of the plan but he is doing all the important stuff that I don't care for: Math. He's spending hours adding up charges, fees, and mortgage numbers. He keeps things going with the progress of permits and such. We're starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, which is really exciting. It's been a really long process of learning and a lot of work and WAITING for everybody to approve everything we submitted. I can see now why people just buy existing homes or build a home already drawn out by the builder. Doing a custom home for us is fun though and in the end will save more money. We should have the foundation dug here in about 2 weeks. Fingers crossed.