April - Showers

 March madness result came in.  Guess who won in the family?  Yep...ME!

On my last post I mentioned how much friendship means to a person as we surround ourselves each day around people.

April started off with my birthday and that was great.  I went to a concert with some girl friends at Vino Bella, a cute pub and restaurant.  Our friends Fred, Rachelle, and Andre are in a band called Flash Nations and they spotlighted me and my birthday so that was cool.  We hung out for an hour and a half and then Dan crashed the party because I told him to.  Reena is old enough to babysit, especially when the boys are already in bed so Dan made the escaped and joined me until midnight.  Food was great and the music was familiar to our tastes.  

Happy birthday to me.  34

 Conference weekend we spent time with extended family

 Zulily delivered a box of gifts for everyone as my birthday presents.  It's tradition around here that on my birthday I get to give gifts to everyone in the family.  It was especially great this year because the gifts were given from gilt free shopping

 April brought a lot of worry related to the house in Utah.  March came and went and we never got the rent from our renters.  They have been consistently late but they paid, except this time.  Then we got news from our friend across the street that he saw our renters packing up and left in a hurry.  We sent another friend of mine over, and he confirmed it.  He said they didn't want to talk to him and seemed to be in a hurry.  The friend across the street took some pictures of the house and it was so badly messed up.  Everything from the flooring to ceiling.  It was so dirty and things were broken intentionally.  There were holes in the walls, cracked doors, busted locks, water damage and a bunch of things just to name a few.  We have been too trusting and they have taken advantaged of us being far.  Our oven was missing! There were drawers missing because they were too lazy to take their things out without ripping out the drawers.  They used the crawl space as a dumpster.  The carpet was so damaged and the backyard which we left with nice grass has nothing but weeds. Our friend sent about 20 pictures of various damages which I won't post here because it only makes me angry.  We got so angry to the point of pitying them for the manner of life they lived. 

I didn't want the kids to feel the stress their parents had.  We had a garage sale and sold a few items that they left behind.  I scheduled a handy man to fix the busted garage.  Hired a painter to paint the house, hired a landscaper and went shopping with Dan for flooring.  Then I took the kids to the Thanksgiving point museum.

 Roro loved this museum

The best part of this trip was seeing our best friends the Strobells.  Wendy made some yummy delish cream puffs for us and our kids had a blast playing together

As you can see in this pic that they adore each other.  They are often found clumped together playing board games

The other awesome part of this trip was seeing grandma and grandpa Evans.  We drove up to see them for 2 days, went bowling and stayed with cousin Colter and his family.

 We got to see great grandpa Evans again and Nama and Papa

Then we went back down to Utah and explored the new Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving point with our friends.  What a cool museum!  Very interactive.  The girls did a rope course that is suspended over 40-feet in the air. Very cool experience for them

Even Darion got to experience a little rope bridge

On the way down to the house we stopped at BYU.  I pulled out my phone and messaged nephew Chad.  He was available and could meet for ice cream.  How fun for us!  We got to meet his girlfriend, too!

                          
I took my friend Wendy out to eat the night before for her birthday present and then in the morning Dan took their family to eat at the pancake house.  We were so grateful they let all of us crashed at their house. We had fun playing the guitars together and sang songs.  Then I took the kids by myself and we headed north for Boise.

With a quick stop in Idaho Falls.

We got to Boise and booked a hotel because my sister's boys were sick.  Major bummer the kids couldn't play together too much but they got to play with their aunt

We met the little cousins at their science center and played with slime, Debrie's favorite thing to do.

But those little cousins weren't all that well so we played outside at the park and movie times at the hotel and swimming

Lots of swimming...

With the boys asleep I had Reena in charge and my sister and I snuck out for some Viet food.

We drove home after 2 days in Boise and this boy was so glad to be home.  We had to make several stops along the way but I felt pretty proud for having driven that far by myself for the first time ever!

I was pretty exhausted playing single mom so I flew Dan home from Utah on the weekend.  It was the most expensive one way flight I've ever had to pay.  Even more than 2 tickets to Hawaii.  But he didn't have to drive home and that's worth it to us.

I had some more modeling with Zulily.  Hard to turn them down for some more guilt free shopping

This year's crazy schedules stopped me from saying yes to volunteering at the kid's school's Cultural fair.  So many countries were represented. I was amazed at how diverse our school is.  It was great to be on the audience side and walk the booths and eat some amazing treats.

I continue to enjoy being an MC and co-hosting our community's open Mic and performing once a month in front of an audience and meeting other musicians in the community as well as watching my children perform.  I love where we live.

I love SSSSPRRINGGG!!!

March- A new win

Make note that our blog is now gohaveanadventure.blogspot.com

I'm trying so hard to catch up on the blog if for nothing else, for my husband to remember to write home to his mother.  He updates her once a week so I think that's why he's less motivated to write and I do instagram and Facebook so same for me.

I should make note here of one of the best events that I had recently with some friends.  I know some people are very comfortable with sticking with high school friends, or college roommate friends, or church friends, etc.  I have friends from each of those categories.  I got together with my friends from Girl's High a few years ago and that was a beautiful event and I'm due for one with my college roommate from BYU Deseret Towers and such but I've never done something like this before with my friends but because we all live near each other this was easily doable.  My friend Ashley wanted to surprise our friend Liz Ashby for her birthday so she got us girls in on the event so we got in Ashley's car and  showed up at Liz's house at 7:00 AM in the morning.  Her husband was in on it but she had no clue. We showed up at her door and her husband opened the door for us and we went upstairs to their bedroom and totally surprised her in bed.  Her kids were all snuggling up with her it was adorable.  We pulled her out of bed and went out to eat at a yummy restaurant for breakfast.  What a memorable event!  I think this gave me idea for mother's day.  More to come on that later.

March is one of my favorite months because it means the end of Winter!  Finally!!  Winter here is miserable.  It's not that cold, just cloudy.  I hate it as much as my sister hating the Summer in Tucson right now.  She said it's miserably hot and you just stay inside in the air conditioned rooms which is a shame because it's Summer and when you have kids home from school you want to be out and about.  Our winters are like that, you stay inside and it's a shame. The sun comes out but it's short just like you can go outside in the summer in Tucson but you just got to do it early in the morning.  But March was much better.  We were able to go on bike rides and not get soaked. Rain jackets and rain boots are fun for the backyard but they won't keep all the rain out. Darion loved the trailer and Roro is slow on the bike but the park in front of our house is fairly flat relative to the hilly community we have so he does great around the soccer field.

 We made plans for the tropics and bought our tickets in March.  Flying to Vietnam is the part I dislike the most.  It is anywhere from a 17-20 hrs flight.  It's exhausting.  So I started looking into the options.  I love all the islands along the way.  I love Australia.  I have a few friends from there and have always wanted to go.  I thought, what if...what if I could break up the trip and make it less boring.  Yeah!  I started looking into tickets to Maui, to Bora Bora, to Sydney and surrounding areas.  What I found is Bora Bora is super expensive to fly to but Hawaii wasn't.  People in our area go to Hawaii all the time so it didn't seem quite as a novelty to go there so last year we made plans we thought Bahamas.  Bahamas was further, and less popular so more of a cool topic of conversation I guess.  But Hawaii is on the way to Vietnam and will help the kids adjust a little bit to the time zone difference.  So I got tickets to Maui and O'ahu and Sydney Australia with a stop in Malaysia and then Vietnam.  We spend 8 days in Hawaii and 10 days in Sydney.  I'm quite happy with ticket prices.  We listed our house for rent starting August and had a nice list of interest renters.  We figured since we could get $4000/month in rent that we could splurge a little and vacation on the way to Da Nang.

Pacific Science Center
 We took the boys to the butterfly exhibit and had a wonderful time pondering about our trip to the tropics when we were in the tropical room

 And this is random but Dan came home from the store one day and bought me what I think is my favorite yogurt - coconut!  It's only meant to be that we are going to a place with lots and lots of coconuts :).  I grew up eating coconuts all the time as they grow all around our land.  It will be so nice to have it every day again.

As the snow started to melt and the Snoqualmie pass was getting safer to drive on, I took a leap of faith and met up with my sister at our half way point in Richland, WA.  She drove 4.5 hours from Boise with her husband and kids and I took Roro and Darion and drove about 3 hours.  So it was shorter for me but I was nervous not having help.  I left during their naps and they slept all but the last half hour and it was so great to see her.

We met at my brother in law's brother's house.  The cousins had a lot of fun playing with each other for a whole weekend.

Introducing Tiny - our Hamster
      Debrie begged and begged to get a hamster.  She even paid for everything with her savings.  The first hamster bit her and Reena so we took it back and got an even smaller hamster.  She called her tiny because she was so tiny.  She was so tiny that she crawled through a small gap from her cage and got out.  She disappeared for 4 days so we thought she was dead.  Later one night Dan and I were sitting in the computer room and I saw something moved right by my foot and it startled me.  We looked down and there was tiny.  She was ALIVE!!  We fed her and got her a big box so she wouldn't climb out.  Debrie was so happy when she woke up to see her hamster.  We fed her food and water but it seemed that the 4 days being missing and not having food or water perhaps made it so that she was too weak.  She did not live long after.  Oh well, not meant to be and we weren't going to replace her because well, we're going to be living abroad.

She was super super sad that her hamster didn't make it.  So with all my hundreds of Zulily credits I bought her and her siblings a tons of clothes.  She's a bit of a fashionista

Children's Quest Museum
My best friend Jana bought a membership here and took us there.  It is 2 stories high and full of fun things for the boys to do.  Very cute compared to the one they closed up to build this one.

On there quiet time the boys love watching Moana.  Roro is very excited to be in Maui. 

Zulily had me model for them a lot recently.  Sometimes there are nice outfits, other times not so much.  Seriously high time mom jeans are coming back.  Ewww

The 80's coming back.  No!!!

Ewwww...is Darion's new favorite thing to say.  That and "I eat your nose"

This month I tried really hard to introduce the kids to more Vietnamese food than I normally have.  I went way traditional and made this traditional dish that has sticky rice with mung beans and salted pork wrapped in banana leaves.  It was quite a hit for Darion but everyone else was a bit hesitant to eat it.  They ate it though so that's something

A new park - Lake Sammamish State Park
This part has existed for long time but they put in new sand and a gorgeous and fun playground.

What a view for the mommies and daddies to sit and enjoy while the kiddos play.

I sent my mother in law this pic to say happy spring!  She was in awed.  Spring is magnificent here.  I do love the 4 seasons we get here.

We selected our renters by the end of March.  We got smarter and did credit scores and salary reports.  I couldn't believe how much people make around here.  One guy said his salary was $25,000 a month.  I thought, why the heck do you want to rent from me for???!  I also can't believe my neighbor sold her house for $1.2 M.  Why am I still here and not sell my $1M home yet??  I don't know.  I guess where do you go after the Highlands??  I think when we come back we will appreciate what true beauty we have here even more.  I want to volunteer at the orphanage in Vietnam and give those sweet unfortunate kids what I can offer.  I look forward to our adventure abroad.

Thanks for visiting our blog!  See you on the next one