Here and Back Again

How it came to be
When we first created our blog, Dan asked me to record all of our travels, day trips, getaways, vacations and it all started with that. We added our family activities, updates and stuff about our kids. He recently asked me again to include things about our kids a little more so the first part of this blog is...
Our kids
DINOSAUR LOVERS
Our kids LOVE dinosaurs. I'm constantly being eaten by dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus (we nicknamed him Ticklelasaurus Rex) is most popular following Triceratops, then Apatosaurus, Archeopteryx, Iguanodon, Allosaurus, etc...They are obsessed with anything related to dinosaurs. Shows like Dinosaur Train, books about dinosaurs, coloring and drawing dinosaurs are common activities we're involved with during any particular day. Besides playing dress up, my kids love cars, trucks and robots. Lately it's been robots. Growing up I didn't play with barbies or dolls. I made cars, houses out of sticks and leaves, and played with bugs, and shooting birds and setting beehives on fire. I think my kids might have somehow picked up something from me. And I'm not a tomboy in anyway. I love clothes and I'm big into the latest fashion trends. I love that my kids are like me in that sense.
Here and back again. Spring was here last year and now it's back with all of its wondrous colors. These were taken with the iphone on our walk. Not too bad of quality for a phone.

Kerry Park and Sand Point Beach
Warm enough for park hopping and beaches again. My kids especially love the pebble beaches. They love to stand there and throw rocks in the water and occasionally get greeted by some ducks and then feed them bread. But speaking of beaches, one morning we received a call from the kids great grandmother telling us to stay away from the beaches that morning. Confused by the message I called her back and she informed me of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. My heart broke as I went online and saw images and video clips of the damage done in that great country. How panicked the whole country must've felt. How scary it all was. Our hearts and prayers go out to everyone in Japan. They are an amazing and prosperous and blessed people who really are an example to us all of what civilization should be. A poet wrote a beautiful poem describing the beautiful manner in which they all behaved as aide was given to them. They are a people with a tremendous amount of respect for humanity.



My kind of relaxing!
Here and back again. On a nice sunny day when we were walking around, I spotted this cyclo and was brought back to memories of riding the xich lo in Saigon. Of course we had to stop and get a ride.


I'm of course not the only one that loves to see my kids play with dinosaurs and is into robots. Dan is ecstatic about getting Reena into robotics. He found out that QwestField in Seattle was holding a regional robotics competition and he took Reena to go see it. There was a lot of down time waiting for the robots to get lined up and Dan thought Reena was bored. He asked her what she thinks of it and her first response was "Daddy, when are we going to build our robot". He was ecstatic about her wanting to build a robot so this last week he and Reena have been researching and looking into robotics. I was part of the Girls' High Robotics Team when I was in High School but really don't remember much of anything. Reena and her daddy and Uncle Mike who will be staying with us this summer will work on their robot. They have much to learn before building me a robot that will do all of my chores. I wish.
Game Day at Science Center
Anyone care for a game of tic-tac-toe or chess? I can see the 2 sisters 60 years from now sitting down and playing an extensive game of chess and having a good time together.


My goal before leaving Redmond is to hit all the fun mom and pop shops. This was our first stop and we got pizza bagels and cinnamon twist bagels. Yum!

We got a pony. Not a real pony, though the girls do want to learn horseback riding. We inherited this pony from the House of Hope. They were given this and thought that it would be a great prop for my photography studio and gave it to me. They think the kids at the shelter would destroy it in a day so it would have better use at our house. First prop.


There and Back Again
So there you have it. Our 2 weeks of fun. Now back to what I started with, the kids. Just in case you forgot. This is our first daughter. She's a ballerina and a swimmer. She's going to kindergarten this year and is an excellent reader. She says some really funny things, like "daddy, are you doing the dishes because you should be." We love her.

This one is Debers. Her name is really Debrie but we call her Brie and she calls herself Debers. She's the cutest little annoyance we ever did meet. She loves "paint color" referring to nail polish, and anything that involves competition. If you want her to go to the potty, just make it a competition. If you want her to pick up toys, just make it a competition. Her favorite phrases nowadays are "I got it," "I won't," "hold me," "hug me," and "THISSA ONE." Yes, she's become a very autonomous girl, independent of anyone's help, like reading a book to herself. She can count to 15 all on her own. Need I say more about autonomy?
Her daddy went to Target one day and came home with 2 sets of pj's. He was so excited to have her wear this and she does look so dang cute with it.
Brie looking like a model walking down the runaway...in pj's. This is Brie when she's not a dinosaur going "rhrhrhrhrhrh" and chasing you around the house.

Here and back again. My birthday is in a week. I want to make sure I still have it in me to be a fun girly girl again so I had a movie, pizza, popcorn, pool, pj's party with my primary class kids who happened to be all girls. Of course they suggested it and I just happened to agree. We had a blast though and will do this again. They taught me how to have fun. If you ever want to have fun, ask the 8 year old girls. They know what FUN is.

Here's a bit from my RE business

Real Estate Column
I read this in my Real Estate reading. "In the past, most homes were single-family dwellings bought by married couples with small children. Today, many real estate buyers are single men and women, childless professional couples, unmarried couples, and domestic partners." What has happened to our world?! My analysis - there are going to be a lot of unhappy old people when my generation is old.

There's already a lot of unhappy people. I brought the whole family out last Wednesday to visit the homeless and bring music to brighten their day. Dan is enjoying some rock punk music here with James Jackson who was famous at one point but became homeless. He found us and we are helping him get home to some distant relatives in Texas. His only home for now.

Let's Be Happy!! Stay tuned for the Star Wars Exhibition Experience and March Madness, which we're rooting for our "The one free man" to win.

Seattle meets Houston

Update on the House: Why is it taking so long? When they first told us how long it would take for the permit to process, they told us it would take 4-6 weeks. What they didn't tell us was that they don't include weekends, holidays, vacation days on their end, and the first 4 weeks. Our documents sat in their cubicles for the first 4 weeks without it being touched and when the 7th week came they touched it and responded to us that we needed to have a better firewall on the street side of our house so our engineer fixed that and resubmitted and again it sat in their cubicles for the first 4 weeks without being looked at and several people went on vacations and 1 week later we saw another status on our permit and it said "OFC" -- Out For Corrections. More corrections needed to be done. This time it was the driveway apron being too short and even worse than this was incompetency on the part of the Architectural Review Committee in our HOA that failed to see in the first stage of Review that our garage is in front of the entry which is against the guidelines set out forth in the Issaquah Highlands standard. I was told yesterday that from designing and engineering to meet the code of the city and HOA can take up to 2 years. Seems like ours is pretty close to that. Wouldn't be so long if people get on with it but it sits in their office until their time of procrastination catches up to them. Need I say more about my patience with these people? It is running thin...

So pretty with the frost and the snow. The lot is still empty. But the house directly across from our lot is currently for sale for $699,999 if anybody's interested in buying. It is a beautiful home. We'd love any of our friends or family members to be our neighbors.
What? Spring you said?
Last week, the last week of February we were hit with a freak snow storm. We don't get much snow at all so this was surprising. The whole west coast was hit with it so no surprise Seattle was hit also. We got 2-3 inches of snow but about a half an hour from us towards the Cascade mountains, there was about 3 ft of snow. It happened just when we thought of going up to the mountains to play with the snow before the end of the season. We were too busy going to the beaches that we forgot we have mountains half an hour away where we could go sledding or skiing. But we didn't have to.

We thought there wasn't enough snow down where we are so we traveled north. We're switching on an off with our exploring Washington. We went off into the islands again and this time took it to Anacortes. If you look on the map, Anacortes lies at the very edge of the main land so it overlooks the beautiful Friaday Harbor islands. Last time we went up to Deception pass which divides Camano and Whidbey Islands. While in Anacortes we saw beautiful scenery, visited and hiked to 2 Forts, Fort Ebey and Fort Casey. We had to stop at the shore to get a fresh crab of course. We got a live large Dungeness crab for $11. He was almost 3 lbs so that's a great deal. If we were to ask our children what the best part of Anacortes was, they would say the crab. They loved it when he moved and that kept them happy for the rest of the trip.

White sand beaches?

Overlooking Burrows bay.
Anacortes overlooking Cypress and Guernes Islands.
A historical snagboat. W.T PRESTON.


Seattle gets to know Houston a little bit during the spring. The rain comes pouring down for 5 minutes and then moves to a different spot leaving the sky blue in an area for a while before the repeat of the same pattern. So don't be alarmed by the weather forecast if you find yourself coming up to Seattle for a spring break. Spring showers are pretty much everyday but the showers usually last for 5 minutes and then there's sunshine. Although unlike winter where it comes in sprinkles, spring showers really is like showers. It comes down quickly enough that you might want to be prepared. But lots and lots of sunshine lately have brought all the flower trees to bud. It is looking beautiful. I believe winter is over for us here.

DINO DAY at the Burke Museum
Reena is fascinated with Dinosaurs. She's got a lot of the dinosaur names down and will love to tell you how they look like. It happened that this last Saturday was the annual Dinosaur Day. There were about 1000 people there but Reena had a great time digging for an ichthyosaur fossil in fossil dig pit for kids, cracked open rocks with the Stonerose Interpretive Center, colored dinosaurs with professional scientific illustrators, and played in a special dinosaur dress-up area for kids.

Not all of it was dinos, some of the exhibits were a little more recent like this mastadon.

The Burke Museum is located inside the UW's campus (University of Washington) so we took some extra time touring the campus. It was a beautiful campus as can be seen by these pictures. There were many areas so perfect for photography. It is my new favorite location to take my clients to for portraits. We did some of our own here for fun.


OUR PERMIT IS APPROVED!!!
I can hardly believe myself. Talking and e-mailing everyday to the city people worked!! I kid you not, I started writing this blog Monday and life got busy so it's now Wednesday and things have changed drastically. I've been leaving it up to the MDRT, ARC, and building permit specialists to take care of everything, but I discovered that you simply cannot leave your project to get done by others, you must be the motivator behind them to take your project up a notch on their list of priorities. I went and talked to many of them for 2 hours on Tuesday, after which I was confirmed again this time through unspoken words that Real Estate is right for me. Dan is very grateful I did the talking because he simply ran out of patience. After much talking everyone affirmed to me that our permit will be their priority and a day later, our permit was approved. HOORAY! YIPPY!! Now we go pay them $12,000 and they hand us the permit. Donations anyone?! Hopefully it will be done in less than 2 years. We're pretty close to that time. We're about a year and a half out so 6 more months to go. Well, we're pretty happy today.

House of Hope Phone Home Program
Speaking of Hope, we've been having a lot of the youth groups from LDS churches nearby come with us to visit the homeless every Wednesday. They bring a lot of vibrant energy to the homeless crowd. Somehow I got drafted in to lead our group in songs. I lead them in singing a lot of fun songs from Glee and the park and the homeless people lined up to sing with us. It is really fun. Tonight was extra special. We talked to James Jackson, who is an amazingly talented guy with an incredible voice. James was well known in his time of fame and did many tours around the country. His mother died when he was very young and that scarred him for many years. Although he has the voice of a rock star, living a life of a rock star found him homeless many times. He found Mamma's Hands tonight and shared with us his story through music. It's looking like we'll be sending James home to Austin where his cousin will help him with shelter and a career. (More on Mamma's Hands facebook page.)