Summer vacation 2012–week 3

For some reason I didn’t take many pictures this week!  I mean, I took a lot of pictures, but I only have pictures from our trip to Manito Park in Spokane.  We drove out there with just the 5 of us, and we really enjoyed it.  It’s such a beautiful place, and I especially love the Japanese garden! 

When we were walking by and saw this bench, I instantly had a flashback to being here last year and taking a picture of the kids in the exact same spot!  So of course I had to get another picture of them here again.   I can’t believe how much they’ve all changed in the past year!  2011 is on the left, 2012 on the right.  Bri has changed the least I’d say, but Kyrie has definitely lost her little girl chubby cheeks and looks SO much more grown up!  Asher’s face thinned out a lot as well, and you can even tell he got taller.  It’s amazing to see how they change, but it makes me so sad at the same time!

I couldn’t get over the beauty of the flowers!  I don’t even think my pictures really do justice to how perfectly amazing they are.  The softness, delicacy, and beautiful lines of the petals amazes me, and I love the contrast between the shape, texture, and colors of the flowers with the green leaves in the background.

I really loved the staircase in this picture!  From where I was sitting, it looked like you could just walk straight up into the clouds.

 

At the rose garden, there was a large tree that had been cut down, and Derk stopped to teach the kids about how you can count the rings and figure out how old the tree was.  Asher and Bri were especially fascinated by this.  I love watching Derk teaching the kids!  He’s so passionate about learning, and it just makes my heart happy to watch him sharing his knowledge with our children.

Bri was very fascinated with the petals on the roses as well and was SO excited to see some petals on the ground that she could pick up.  The second picture is really neat because she found this petal that looked like a heart (she is very into hearts right now and draws them on everything ).

A couple random pictures throughout the day.

Derk and Kyrie went to check out the greenhouse, and Asher and Bri wanted to stay outside and take some pictures.  They were so cute using my camera, so I had to get pictures of them taking pictures! 

Beautiful girls!

This next picture makes me laugh!  Asher is big on wanting us to call him “Ash” right now, and he tells me frequently that he’s upset his name doesn’t really have a nickname (I have told him that out of all of us, mine and Cambria’s names are the only ones that can really be shortened, but he’s still upset with his name, lol).  Well, we were walking around and looking at the flowers, and he found this flower and insisted he get a picture because part of the flower’s name was Ash.    Side note: my boy has THE most beautiful eyes!!  And he was in desperate need of a haircut- yikes. 

 

Before heading back into Coeur d’Alene we stopped at the park.  Unfortunately we got rained out pretty quick, but the kids had fun for a few minutes burning off some energy.
The sky was pretty incredible!  I snapped these once we were back at Mom and Dad’s for the night.  It ended up being a really cool storm with lots of cool lightening and pouring rain.

And here’s little Bri passed out after a very busy day!