Stevens Reunion 2011

WOW, is it really July already? What happened to June? It went by too quickly. I can hardly recall what happened in the early part of June. Let see, I think at the very beginning part of June I wanted to resign from teaching at the House of Hope for the summer. They called, told me they like that I started the preschool program and would like me to continue, except they would pay me this time. Then I had an audition, taught some voice lessons, made a friend who is a good potential investigator, and took the kids to parks.
The middle part of June was the Stevens Family Reunion. So yes, after 4 years the Stevens clan finally got together for a reunion. We loaded our suitcases and headed for Albuquerque, NM. We spent Sunday with Dan's brother Troy and his family along with Dan's brother Lon and his family who came down and stayed with Troy's family. We stayed at the same hotel with the kids' Nama and Papa and got a pre-reunion visit with them. Dan got quite emotional reminiscing. He missed his siblings a lot, especially just being with them which is harder now that they're all married and have children. Someday he would like to just have his siblings, without spouses and kids together for a reunion. They could stay up and reminisce all night.
We started off the reunion with a trip to the Alamogordo area for pictures, park, Space museum, planetarium and White Sands.



The Space Museum in Alamogordo
We saw some scientific experiments here and then headed over to the planetarium there and saw a 3D documentary about caves. That was really fun. It was to prepare us for the next day event to Carlsbad caverns.
Love this pic of Micah.
We have silly children. Brie saw this potty for astronauts. We told her "Brie, look, a potty!'" and immediately she sat down and said "I'm going potty"

White Sands




Carlsbad Caverns
We came here the night before to view the bats flight...pretty awesome.







How precious is this picture of Nick holding Brie. 750 ft underground was cool enough that Brie fell asleep. Just like the temperature of Seattle when we left it.

I have to say that swimming with the Blairs, Applegate kids, and Lon's family was great, the Space museum was awesome, White Sands was pretty cool, Carlsbad caverns was even neater but my favorite part of the whole reunion was on the last day when everyone sat around talking to everyone else at the park. The fun is in getting to know one another and joke around. Those are the times you remember the most. We went swimming with the Blairs, some Applegates, and Perry Stevens and that was also very fun. Dan had a chance to play with his nieces and nephews and that was priceless to him.


Brie looks so stunningly cool in her sun glasses, which she broke before the reunion was over.

The reunion was GREAT! I believe I lost my voice towards the end because of talking. Our kids bonded with some of their cousins. Reena and Jacey hit it off quite well. The kids loved their cousin Amber. Reena was the social butterfly. She surprised us then and has been surprising us since. She talks to everyone now, even the lady at the library who was also looking around for books. She talks to all the kids at the park. We have no clue what happened, but we like it.
International UFO Museum
After the reunion we started heading back to Albuquerque. On the way up we made a stop at the International UFO Museum. The place just makes me laugh. There wasn't much in the museum at all, just a few things. The pictures you see below are pretty much all there was to see.



The whole town gets into the aliens thing, just like Forks gets into twilight.


Now we're back in Seattle and Dan's back to wearing contacts! He ordered a whole year supply's worth of contacts. They didn't come in time for the reunion so he didn't wear them. Plus the weather was too dry for his eyes to wear them down in NM. We're happy to be back and we're gearing up for a summer of FUN. Since we got back we've gone boating twice already. We wish Dan's whole family could come up to enjoy all of this. Maybe it would take a reunion for that to happen. At least we get to have Lon here for a little while. The kids adore their uncle Lon. He loves Seattle. We had the pleasure of seeing him over the past weekend and we took him kayaking and showing him Seattle (more to come on the next blog). Seattle is the best in the summer with temperatures in the high 70's. We still haven't hit 80 and we feel very grateful for that. The beaches are full of people, the lakes are full of boats. Seafair events are happening. Berries are coming in ripe and ready. We have 26 lbs of strawberries to can. Busy week coming up ahead....