Visitors we had this summer

 

See?  I came back.  Took me a few more days than I planned, but I am doing this…

So…when you live in one of the corners of the continental United States, you tend to not get very many visitors.  (When we lived in Utah, I think we had people in our guest room every 3 weeks.  Seriously.)  But this year we LUCKED out.  We had so many different people head our way and it was such a treat!

Visitors #1:  The Seeley family

My uncle Cade and his wife Stacy and kids were so nice to take a little detour on their way to Canada at the end of June.  (We impose on their hospitality quite a bit when we travel to Utah, so I was so happy to repay them.)

Unfortunately June weather in Spokane in crazy and we went from 80 and sunny to 50s and rainy in one day and then back to 80s.  We had to be creative and flexible as we rearranged our plans to match the weather.  See if you can guess which activities were Rainy Day and which were Sunny Day?

Local farm team baseball game:

Games--both families are big board-gamers:

Coeur d’alene’s famous restaurants (Hudsons for their yummy simple burgers and the huge Gooeys at Dockside for dessert):

 

The movie, Brave:

Riverfront park:

Thanks for taking a few days to visit the lovely….

 

Visitors #2: The Johnson Family

Ryan’s sister and brother-in-law drove all the way from Oklahoma to hang out with us!  We see those southwestern relatives so rarely that we think it’s such a treat to spend a few days with them.  Brooke and Spencer are so easy to talk to and so enthusiastic and positive.  It was fun to share our life with them for a few days.  The weather was unbeatable…Spokane in late July is truly the best place in the country.  We went on some runs and bike rides and did a lot of the same things we always do with visitors:

Hikes (a new loooong one):

Visits to the lakehouse on Hayden Lake:

Riverfront park (again!):

Swimming at Doug and Marcy’s:

I was teary when they drove away.  Anyone know of an optometry school in the Northwest where Spencer can teach?

 

Visitors #3:  The Greg Romney Family

This one is hilarious because Greg and Christy live in Texas.  Friday morning we get a call—“Hey what are you guys doing this weekend?”  We told him what our plans were, and he says “Well, we’ll be there tonight!”  Compete surprise and everyone was cheering.  Heather (Ryan’s sister) secured her family’s lake cabins and we all stayed together about 30 minutes away on a gorgeous lake for 4 days.  It was the most fun, little mini vacation.

It included LOTS of tubing, volleyball, Gabe and Seth’s birthday celebrations and so much fun cousin time:

Visitors #4:  Grandpa Mike and Grandma Genie

Gabe was ordained to the Melchezidek priesthood the weekend the Greg and Christy came and my dad and Genie were already planning a visit to be a part of it.  Luckily, our families are very interconnected after originating in the same ward and town many, many years ago and so no one felt awkward (I hope?) when Mike and Genie joined the Lake House Party. 

I’m so grateful that they came to participate in the special ordinance and that we had such a fun opportunity to play at Hayden while he was here. He was SO FUN about swimming and joining in the tubing.  My kids have a good Grandpa and I have a good Dad.

 

Visitors #5:  Grandma Dorrie and Bekah

We were so glad that they squeezed in a trip over Labor Day weekend.  The kids are heaven while they are here and they are always up for anything.  We conscripted them to be judges on our Amazing Race birthday party for Gabe and took them on our new favorite hike and they even ate at Golden Corral as part of Gabe’s birthday celebration.  My favorite part was temple baptisms for the first time with Gabe and with much of our extended family.

See?  See how much fun we had?  We were so lucky this summer!

The Things We Didn’t Do This Summer

(Look at me!  I’m here!  I’m blogging again!  I hope people actually check and see that: I’m blogging again!)

So.  I had these grand ideas about my Summer Schedule.  It was going to look a lot like previous years, with Summer Bingo and a calendar of planned events and daily themes.  I was going to start…just as soon as school got out.  And then I was going to start just as soon as we got back from our trip.  Wait, no, I’ll start as soon as we have a new week.  Or maybe I’ll start in August.  Yes!  August…month of Summer Schedules. 

And it never happened.  And it was Oh! So Lovely.  AND! I didn’t go crazy and no one’s brain turned to mush and we kept busy and happy!  We swam a lot and played with friends a lot and went to the lake a lot and went to camps and hosted visitors and had birthdays and rode bikes and napped and read.  (And fought with our siblings and had a messy messy house and gained too much weight and lost our tempers because our kids were in our faces a lot.  I mean, come on! That’s a lot of time with a lot of kids.)

I miss it already.  And I’m planning on reliving it here on the blog over the next few (7-8?) posts.  Here are some sneak peaks:

 

May

I’m not even exaggerating when I say that I think May was the busiest month in my entire life.   Really.  I think it was.  With 4 kids in Spring Sports and music and playgroups and a birthday, I just ran from thing to thing to thing.  But it was such a fun busy.  Here are some of the things we were doing:

Faith completed her “Potty Chart” (10 days of dry panties at NIGHT), which earned her a new bike.  She’s easily the most adept New Biker we’ve ever had.

 

 

Seth and Jane played Spring soccer.  Seth is cute as can be on the soccer field, but didn’t really get a hold on the actual game…we had to make goals for how many times he actually TOUCHED the ball per game. 

 

Jane, on the other, really got the hang of it by the end of the season and scored a few goals.  Going to games was fun, especially because we had such nice weather in May.

 

Gabe marched in his first band parade and, like a weirdo, I was tearing up when he walked by.  (What in the heck??)  Our high school has the best band in the country (seriously, they won State and then the competition after that), so the feeder middle schools are really excellent as well.  It’s fun to have him be a part of it.

 

Mother’s Day was lovely (breakfast, sweet notes, permission to not clean, nice church services, cute outfit, thanks to my awesome friend Tammy who had just given me her skirt when I went to visit her!)

We did Jane’s birthday with a family party at breakfast (the only time we’d all be home).  She had cinnamon rolls and got fun gifts from her grandparents.

We did lunch at Wendy’s and grabbed her class some donuts (like last year)

Dinner was at Red Robin and after we headed to the store to pick out a bike.  It was fun watching her choose.

For her “friend party”, Jane wanted a Spa party.  (f I do say so myself, it went awesomely.) We had 4 stations:

a do it yourself pedicure station

a hair station (complete with a PowerPoint presentation of the available hairstyles designed by Emma):

a make-up station

and a manicure station (thanks cousin Mallory!):

That took about an hour, and then we had a cheesecake bar (cheesecake with a variety of toppings: blueberry, strawberry, caramel, oreos, chocolate sauce, toffee bits, whip cream) and presents.  They finished the night by watching the movie “Princess Diaries”.  Fun night, huh?

 

I also got to visit my dad when I went on my Girls Weekend.  I just forgot to add pictures till now.  It was fun to spend a day and a half with him and Genie without kids…lots of talking and calm meals and an early morning miniature golf game.

And I ran my 3rd Marathon.  That always deserves it’s own post but I will just say it was my hardest yet, but I apparently love that kind of pain because I have Marathon #4 planned for 2013 (Utah Valley on June 9 for all of my running friends who always say we should run one together… Kara?  Erin?  Come on!)

Emma was involved in Track this year and REALLY enjoyed it.  She ran the 100, the 200 (her best event) and the long jump.  She would have placed at the district meet (she was 7th overall at the semi-final) but…

she had her final  choir concert of the year on the same night as District Finals.  Bummer!  She has really learned a lot and was invited to join the highest, touring choir group but she decided it was too much time, considering she does piano, track, and Young Women’s every week. 

We finished May with Memorial day:  frisbee golf, a walk along lake Coeur d’Alene, a stop at Jamba Juice and a Low-Country Boil at our friends-from-North-Carolina’s lake house. 

We had a fun Spring but are looking forward to some lazier Summer days for sure!

Faith says funny stuff every 6 seconds

Here's 4 excerpts from the last month:

#1
Jane and Faith were playing mom/babies:
J: "Faith, now you need to get that and bring it over"
F: "I'm a baby. I can't even undohstand what you are saying. I just can only crawl away from you."

#2
Mom: (referring to post marathon leg pain) "Tell dad to turn to stairs into a slide"
F: "Mom, but he'th not even magical..!"

#3
Mom: "what did you learn in primary today?"
F: "um, I don't know. Oh yeah! About having no handth."
Mom: "what does that have to do with Heavenly Father and Jesus??"
F: "I know! He can correct them for you!"

#4
Faith: (while on a walk) "hang on a sec...I need a scwatch" and then proceeds to do this:




She's a nut.


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