February - California

And February's news is Darion rolled over!!!  This blog post is a bit backward.  The events are such that the end of February is first and the first part of February is towards the end of the post.  So here it is.  A twist to keep you entertained.

This is the last day of our trip to California.  We woke up to a wonderful breakfast!

And this is the night before our last day.  We are near the coast of Oregon here at a roadside steakhouse

The Redwood Forest

The Redwood forest has been on the to-do list for quite a while and we finally had the opportunity to do it.  It was beautiful to stop and see and to drive through some of the oldest trees in our country. 

We paid some money to drive through this area.  We weren't sure if our Honda Oddysey would fit but it did!!!!  It was a close fit

 
Our 2nd to last nigh.  We drove until we found a place to stay.

We met up with our old neighbors from Issaquah.  They are the ones across the street from us but they moved to San Francisco for a new job.  He took a job with a start up company.  He's the one that was Lon's old roomate.

As always our trip to California means staying with Uncle Brad and Aunt Sheri.  They are some of our favorite people!  I'm not sure you could find a more warm and friendly and sweet and kind people.

                Darion started balding on the top and he and Brad had the same hairstyle :)
We got to see Rachel and Brad as well.  We treated everyone Pizza for dinner

And we hit Legoland for 2 days because we have done Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood but Legoland we haven't done before.  If I have to rate it, it would be the third.  I think our amusement park here is more fun and less cost but we got a good discount with Zillow for the park.  We got the 2nd day free with the Zillow discount so it made it worth it.  The kids had fun.

Roro was able to do more here than at Our Wild Waves Theme Park.  He loves the toddler driving school.  Reena and Debrie also had their big kid driving school as well.

I think this one is my favorite roller coaster there

Walking through this is the highlight for Dan

Why did we let them play here?  We didn't win anything, just lost a bunch of money

These guys are pretty special to us as well.  We missed being close to them so our first stop was Velencia where we stayed with them for 3 days. We took them out to eat at a fancy Viet restaurant.  One of the best Pho I've had

And of course we had to hit the beach!  Nanette was so sweet and made us a beach bag full of boogie boards, towels, umbrealla, chairs.  We love them

My wonderful sweet sister drove all day after a 12 hour nursing shift to see me when she found out we were going to California.  Ok her wonderful husband drove, she slept for most of it.  But they are so thoughtful and they made us feel so loved.

 

Vasquez Rocks for Valentine's Day

 Thanh and Alex weren't able to stay very long but we did have 2 days with them.  We went to Vasquez rocks where they filmed Star Trek and also hit the beach.  Our friends Chris and Nananete Harvey were so hospitable.  They provided a room for Thanh and Alex as well.  The kids adore their aunt and uncle.  They slept with them and always surrounding them.  I love seeing family bond.

We were able to get together with our other friends Sarah and Taylor Krahenbuhl.  Sarah is expecting their third child.  We met together at a beautiful park and let the kids played.

We extended our trip out as long as we could without making the kids miss school.  They had mid winter break,  a week long break that the schools in the Seattle area creates so people could have more time to vacay during the long winter months.  We had a great time despite the changes in the plans.  We were going to fly,  We had our reservations but were never issued the tickets.  We got out money back.  It was a long story good for a conversation.  Ask us in person sometime :)

The other parts of February included science fair projects.  Reena did hers on her own.  And by her own I meant you will not find her science project on the internet.  She was original.  She came up with the idea after her daddy showed her a part in the movie "Inception".  She did "floating milk", exploring the absence of gravity.  She even has the movie posted on youtube and we brought the Surface to her booth to show it off.  Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqcYSo1zcNc  Debrie did " How to keep a pumpkin from rotting".  We happened to have a pumpkin that lasted since October that we didn't carve.

And February is also Vietnamese New Year.  The kids got rich and grandparents got poor.  We decided to celebrate the New Year by visiting friends bc that's what you do on Lunar New Year...visiting friends!  JoLyn came and stayed at our house for a day.  She had some pain and none of the doctors in Walla Walla could figure out what it was.  Thankfully she has connection here through Zach, her husband's work and was able to find out that she has Asherman's Syndrome which is a result of multiple D&C's.

Stevens and Frasers

And a highlight for Dan this month is going to see Star Wars with me in the 60 ft tall by 80ft (6 stories high) IMAX theater, his 5th time!!  It was amazing of course!!

Baby did great and even took a little bit from the bottle!!!

The rest of the time in February was spent planning, organizing, meetings, etc,,,for my Stake Spring Conference, the weekend Dan went to Vegas for his dad's Ordination as a Stake Patriarch was also the busiest weekend for me.  More of that to follow,  See you on the next blog post!