Going to Grandma's

The family vacay this year consisted of a trip north to see my parents in September.  We wanted to take the kids camping, but opted out of camping in a tent with a baby.  Luckily, my parents have a trailer and really like it when we come for overextended stays.  So, we flew up to Spokane (because driving that far with kids isn't our favorite thing to do), and drove to the campground to spend a few days.  

Waiting for our plane.  We almost left our camera after taking this picture, and Roxi and I had to run back off the plane to get it!

We had a great time up camping.  The kids did really well.  Noah loves being outside and really enjoyed fishing with Papa.  Within minutes, he had already caught a fish!  Holy cow, does it get any cuter than this?  I have never caught a fish, so I'm pretty proud of the little guy.  Roxi also seemed to enjoy the great outdoors and managed to stay fairly clean.  It was kind of a miracle.

I can't even tell you how much I love this picture.  I think it is SO cute! (the world's smallest fish)

Grandma is smart and remembers to bring a high chair when camping with babies.  (Also, notice how tan I am!)

After the camping part of our trip, we spent about a week at my parents house. Steven worked from there and the kids and I just hung out.  My parents have a beautiful yard and Noah enjoyed helping Papa and Grandma do yard work.  He also had fun running around and trying to sit on Papa while he was resting.  They were good little buddies.  His other favorite activity was playing hide and seek with Mommy.  You'll never find us!

There is a farm with donkeys down the street from my parents house, so we went and fed the donkeys a couple of times.  Noah thought that was pretty good fun too.  I was kind of amazed that he wasn't afraid of them at all.

This will be my "before" picture.  Yuck.

My best friend in the world lives in Spokane, so it is always fun to go up there and see her.  We went downtown one day and took the kids to see all the touristy things in Spokane, while her older girls were at school.  We rode the carousel, which is the oldest hand painted carousel that is still running in the world, or something like that.  (You'd think after living there for nearly 20 years, I'd know these things).  We also fed the garbage eating goat, which is a must when going to Spokane, and played on the big red wagon.  We even took the kids for a train ride around Riverfront Park.  It was really a pretty epic day!

Noah was a little afraid of the carousel at first, and definitely wanted me right next to him to hold on to.  (It is pretty high), but he ended up loving it by the end! 

These boys were fascinated with the goat.  (And why wouldn't they be?)

Steven, Rachel and I all went to the fair one night too.  But alas, we were too busy stuffing our faces to actually get pictures.  :)  We realized we were officially old, when we spent the majority of the night talking to the girls at the Jamberry booth, and when we realized we had free tickets for rides, only to then notice the lines were much too long to actually care about the rides, we opted to give our tickets to some little girl and her parents.  Yup.  We are old.

We had a great time in Spokane though!  I do love Spokane in the summer time.  Hey, and look... we actually remember to get pictures with the grandparents this time!  That never happens!

~ 7-14 Sept 2014 ~