Summer vacation, 2009

Since Derk works in education and has summers off, we decided to take a trip home to Coeur d'Alene this year. We hadn't seen our friends and most of our family in a year (and had a new niece and a nephew both born last year we hadn't met yet!), plus escaping the blistering (i.e. 115 degrees!) Arizona heat sounded fantastic.

We spent the first week in Coeur d'Alene. I mostly hung out with my sister, Katie, and her daughter, Jonni (Abby, next time tell Noah not to get sick so we can hang out more!), but we did a few fun things during that week. We took advantage of the amazing weather and played outside in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard A TON, went miniature golfing, saw the 4th of July firework in downtown Coeur d'Alene and went to Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane.

Then we changed our plans and decided to spend the second week in Washington instead of staying in Coeur d'Alene the whole time. We spent a couple of days with Derk's brother, Drew, his wife, Rebecca and their 2 girls. That was the most eventful leg of our trip for sure. It started out with Cambria throwing up all over their carpet from eating a bit too much junk on the drive over (thank goodness they still had their friends' carpet shampooer!). We spent a day at Zion's Camp, played in the backyard a lot, went to the Science Center in downtown Seattle, the Nike employee store (score!) in Portland and ended with some amazing hikes, one of which had us all waist-deep in freezing cold river water.

Our last little adventure before heading for home was to stop in San Fransisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge. It took us over 2 hours to finally get to see the bridge (traffic and crowds in a big city are cRaZy!), so that's all we had time to do. But it was pretty neat! Out in the bay, you can also see Alcatraz out on a little island. Kyrie really enjoyed hearing all about what it was and insisted on getting her picture taken by the island (the bottom right picture -- you can *barely* see Alcatraz in the water on the right).

It was a loooooong trip. As much as we loved seeing everyone, we were even more excited to finally be home. I've always been a real home-body and love being home with my family. But now that we actually have a home that's really and truly ours, there really is no place like home.