Summer vacation 2012–week 4

This week started off with another family dinner at my mom’s house.  Benjamin had some ice cream and ate every last drop!   

 

The girls played lots of dress up at Nana’s, and today made us flash forward to Kyrie’s wedding day – yikes! 

The next afternoon we met up with Abby and her boys at the park.  Here’s Ben sporting my sunglasses!

Tuesday is when the real fun (and craziness!) started.  Derk’s siblings and their families were able to come up to visit, so there were a total of 20 people staying at Mom and Dad’s house for about a week.  The kids sure loved having all their cousins to play with!  Drew, Rebecca, and their kids were the first to arrive.  The morning started off with me giving all the girlies manicures.  

 
Later in the afternoon, our 2 families took the kids to the Kroc Center to play.  There’s a fun little indoor playground there, and it also has a climbing wall.  Lauren and Cambria had a blast!

Little Dallin wanted to climb, too, and Derk was quick to volunteer to help him.  I just LOVE this picture of the 2 of them!!

Later that evening Jenna and Kevan arrived with their kids.  Here’s Rebecca getting in some snuggle time with Quinten. 

Wednesday we took Drew and his family up to Silverwood (we had to go with them to get them in on our season passes).  Here’s Lauren, Derk, and Abbie walking up to the entrance.  So sweet.

And Kyrie giving Abbie a goodbye hug before we left.

 

The next day we were able to go to Silverwood with Drew and his family, and we sure had fun.  Kyrie opted to stay home with Grandma and have some fun alone time. 

This was a big day for Asher – he was finally tall enough to go on almost all of the biggest rides!  He was super excited to ride the Corkscrew with me and had a blast!

We were especially looking forward to getting him on The Panic Plunge, but he absolutely refused.  However, this summer he really got close to his Aunt Rebecca, and she was the only one who was able to convince him to go.  He said he’d go as long as she’d ride with him, so up, up, up they went!  Derk and I were actually on another ride that was right across the path from this one, and we saw him getting on and were cheering as loudly as we could.  I was so glad that Drew and Rebecca thought to get a picture and video for us as well!  Here’s a nervous Asher (with Uncle Drew and Aunt Rebecca) waiting for the ride to start!

Lauren was so cute and took the video of Asher’s first ride, so you can’t really see much of his face.  But I just LOVE hearing how excited he was when the ride was over!  Thanks for taking a great video, Lauren!!

Asher and Abbie had lots of fun together.  Here are a couple pictures of these 2 cute 7 year olds!

As I mentioned in another post, I gave several of Asher’s baby outfits to Jenna for Quinten.  Here he is looking adorable in one of the outfits.

These cousins have sure loved spending time together this week!

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! 

Summer vacation 2012–week 2

This week started off with a trip to the Spokane Valley Mall with Katie and the kids.  We had fun shopping and having lunch at the food court. 

One of the great parts about our summer vacation is that we get to be here for Logan’s birthday.  Here’s the birthday boy!  It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but he was super excited about his cake.  Happy 6th birthday, Logan!

The library does a summer reading program for the kids, so we went and signed up for that this week.  Here are the kids doing a craft.

Right after we finished at the library we headed up to Silverwood again with Katie and her kiddos – but this time Grandma and Grandpa met us there for a little while, too.  We all had a lot of fun!  Grandma and Grandpa got soaked on Thunder Canyon, and the kids spent lots of time at the water park (again, too cold for me!).  Jonni just loves Kyrie and wants to do everything she does, so they had lots of fun together today.  They even got into a bit of trouble when they ran off alone without telling any adults!  They were perfectly safe, but it sure scared us for a few minutes while we tried to find them.

I very willingly took over watching little Stellan while everyone else rode on rides, and he snuggled right up to me and fell asleep.  He’s just the sweetest!!

Katie, Stellan, Cambria, and Jonni on the kiddie coaster.

We finished off the week with a beautiful hike around Tubbs Hill.  It’s breath-taking regardless, but coming from the desert just makes us appreciate the beauty that much more!  I could have taken 1,000 pictures easily but stopped at about 100. 

The bridge had a mishap, and Derk and the kids had fun climbing across!  It’s only about a foot off the ground, so it’s safe (but to be honest, that didn’t stop me from saying “be careful!!” about 1,259 times!).

We sure love this area!!

Summer vacation 2012– week 1

We finally made it to Idaho!  We got in really late, so it was straight to bed after we unloaded the bare minimum from the van.  The first day we had fun seeing all my family throughout the day.  It was great to see all of my siblings, both my parents, niece, and nephews so quickly!

First we saw my sister Katie and her kids.  Here’s my cutie nephew, Stellan!  We went and shopped at Costco, and he had a great time with the girls’ accessories! 

 

Most of my family at my mom’s house.  It was crazy with everyone but lots of fun. 

My nephews- Noah, Logan, and Benjamin!

Of course Nana had presents for the kiddos when we got there.  They were so excited!

Our second day we wasted no time and went to Silverwood!  Derk’s dad was awesome and bought a couple season passes for everyone, so we wanted to take advantage of that as soon as possible.  We took my little niece, Jonni, with us  and had such a wonderful time!  Jonni and Bri are only 2 months apart, so they were the cutest little best buddies all day.

They had a blast on this ride and wanted to go on it about a million times. 

We got the kids some HUGE ice cream cones.

We went on lots of rides – and Kyrie FINALLY went on Aftershock!  We’ve been pestering her to go on it for a couple summers now, and we finally wore her down and got her to agree.  She HATED it, but we were so proud that she gave it a shot.

Once we got back to Grandma and Grandpa’s, Katie came over to pick up Jonni and hung out with us for a bit longer.  Derk and I had fun snuggling Stellan. 

 

 

Later in the week we went back to Silverwood again.  The kids had a blast playing at the water park (I refused to get in – still way too cold for me!).  Here’s Kyrie going down one of the water slides at Velocity Peak.

They love the water!

Bumper boat fun.

While Derk, Kyrie, and Asher were on the log ride, I got sneaky and soaked them!  It was way too fun. 

After I soaked them they had to go on some roller coasters to dry off! 

My mom took Nathan, Jonathan, and I out to lunch to this amazing Vietnamese restaurant in Coeur d’Alene called Pho Thanh.  It was so fun to sit there with them and hang out just the 4 us of us!  Here are my mom and my handsome brother, Nathan, enjoying each other’s company and the yummy food!

We ended the week  by Asher and I going to Logan’s kindergarten graduation!  It was so fun to be there and see this big milestone, and I loved seeing these cousins together!

James, Abigail, Logan, Noah, and Benjamin.

I love this boy!

After the graduation, Derk and the girls met the rest of us at my mom’s for a yummy lunch.

It was a really fun first week, and we’re looking forward to all the fun yet to come!