Summer coming to an end!

It is August 30th and we are staring down the start of another school year! How did this happen exactly?? We have been taking it mostly easy since we got back from our road trip. Brian and I had a Facebook party the Friday after we got back at GasWorks Park in Seattle and it was a lot of fun! The weather was perfect, beautiful setting, good food, fun times. On that following Sunday, Lynsey and I went to a Seattle Storm game (WNBA) and had a great time! We are now officially interested in the playoffs, in which the Storm are killing it by the way! 

Lynsey had her week at Sambica Bible Camp last week which she really enjoyed. There was a lot of smoke in the air which was unfortunate, but I just had to keep reminding myself how lucky we were not to have to deal with actual fires, just smoke! The boys and I didn't do a whole lot, I've been going to Orange Theory Fitness for the last few weeks and it's a challenge! It's a combination of treadmill, rowing and weight room work, and I like the variety of the classes. At first I thought I could never do a class with so much treadmill running, but they switch it up enough that I can tolerate it - and I know it's helping my cardio fitness! 

Yesterday, we went down to Vasa Park on Lake Sammamish for the Facebook Messenger group party. It was a great time! A little stressful at times, Adam went out to the waterslides and then we think he must have hit his head at some point because he didn't want to go down anymore, and complained about his head when he got back. Thankfully he at least swam back to the dock on his own, he did seem to recover and enjoy the rest of his time there. Nathan had fun on this monkey jump thing, Lynsey and Brian had a good time on the jet ski, I went out on the kayak with Nathan briefly but the waves from the jet skis drifting in made it a bit too scary for my "thrill seeker":-). All in all it was a nice few hours down by the lake, a last gasp of summer! I took Lynsey to another movie in the park last night as well which was fun, The Princess Bride - talk about a blast from the past! 

Road Trip to Yellowstone!

We are back from our 1 week road trip! It all went pretty well, with a few hitches here and there (to be expected, although always still frustrating). The kids had a great time seeing their grandparents again, did a TON of swimming in hotel pools, and tolerated the sight-seeing we wanted to do:-/. I hope that one day they will look back and remember the sights and think it was a cool experience to see Yellowstone for themselves, but I guess time will only tell whether that will happen! 

First fun thing we did was go to Lewis and Clark Caverns. We drove to Spokane Wednesday and stayed overnight, and then drove to the caverns to meet Mark, Frances and Stella. Mark, Brian, Lynsey, Nathan and I did the longer tour, while Frances and Stella took Adam on the shorter one. Adam really liked the cave! Made us wish we had tried taking him on the longer one, but we just weren't sure how he would like it, and who wants to be stuck in a cave with a boy that's losing his mind (the answer is, NOT ME!). I'm glad he liked it, and next time we will take the chance! The kids had a great time and it was a stop well worth making! On our way to West Yellowstone, we stopped in this cute restaurant in small town Montana and had a delicious dinner. They even allowed us to go next door to the saloon to bring in our own alcohol since they weren't licensed, that was interesting! The bread pudding was amazing, would eat there again!

Onward to Yellowstone! We spent our first day in the park at the Old Faithful village, saw Old Faithful erupt a few times actually. I should also mention that we saw a bison on the way into the park, the only one we saw while we were there. After the first Old Faithful eruption, a group of us went for a walk to see more geysers and other cool things. The kids tolerated that, Adam actually did really well (better than Lynsey who really couldn't be bothered) but it was really hot so that didn't help everyone's hardiness. We also stopped at some "paint pots" after leaving Old Faithful and saw some bubbling mud and more geysers. Adam was really done at this point and had to be coerced into coming along on the short walk, but he did it eventually. The kids did some swimming before dinner, Frances and I went for a walk, we went for dinner, and called it a night. The heat really takes a lot out of you! 

The next day (Saturday) we got up a bit earlier to beat the crowds and the heat and we were so glad we did! No traffic getting into the park and we felt like we were one step ahead of the crowds all day. Our first stop was Artist Point at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, spectacular views! We stopped at a few waterfall viewpoints as well - we all saw the brink of the Upper Falls, and some of us hiked to see the brink of the Lower falls at the next stop. So many amazing views. The kids did okay on this day, it was helpful that it wasn't very hot until our last stop really, we ended up going back to the hotel in the early afternoon. The kids went swimming, the adults had some down time. Frances, Stella and I went to this little theater by our hotel in the evening that was showing "Newsies" - it was really good! I very much enjoyed the show! It was a bit hot in there, they could have done with some A/C, but thankfully we managed by fanning ourselves with our programs:-). Another good day at Yellowstone!

Sunday morning we parted ways with the Alberta clan and made our way to Boise for the night. We had a lovely stay in Boise actually - great room, nice pool, all in all a good experience. Didn't do any sight seeing so I still have no idea what Boise actually looks like! I lumped all our hotel swimming pictures into one folder, so here are all the pictures I took of the kids swimming at all the different hotels we stayed at, as well as a few hotel and road pics.

Monday morning we were off to Portland! The scenery was really quite lovely heading through Oregon (see picture above that did it no justice). So strange to just see all rolling, yellow hills - very different from the Pacific Northwest for sure. We stopped at Multnomah Falls which was a cool sight to see. Our hotel in Portland was okay, not as nice as our Boise one but it worked out fine. We went into Portland Tuesday morning and visited Powell's books, the kids had a fun time picking out some new books. Then we walked over to Voodoo donuts which was interesting, not the most beautiful part of town! We drove downtown to find a place to park, get some lunch and eat by the river. Honestly I am still not sure we saw the nicest part of Portland, it was okay but nothing I would go out of my way to see. Oh well, we tried to see Portland! I was really happy to be on my way to Long Beach in the afternoon!

Off we went to Long Beach on Tuesday afternoon! I had been looking forward to this last leg of the trip and it did not disappoint! We had a unique hotel room, nice but it was a bit noisy (thankfully I can sleep with ear plugs!). We went to the beach when we got there, it was not super warm but the kids didn't mind one bit. Lynsey even got in the water, brr! We had a lovely dinner at the Pickled Fish in our hotel, even got to experience some live folk music right by our table! We didn't know what Adam would think, but he loved it and cried when we left because the music was over! We were speechless - time to take him to see more live music apparently! We couldn't have predicted that since he is so upset when we sing or play music on our Echo. Very interesting! After dinner we headed down to the beach to make a bonfire - so much fun! The kids loved it! We made some smores, Adam sat around the fire with us, and Lynsey and Nathan were running around in the dark, having a great time. Adam was done first so Brian took him back to the room, and Lynsey would have stayed all night but Nathan started getting really tired around 10:30 - probably the latest he ever stayed up! We went back to the room around 11 and the kids went straight to sleep - what a great day! We love Long Beach, will definitely be back! 

The drive back home on Wednesday was pretty uneventful, it was nice to be home. Lots of unpacking and laundry to do of course! Great road trip, we feel emboldened to do another road trip next year - I guess we'll see if it happens;-).