Wedding and a Square Dance

Last week we got a chance to get away from the kiddos and head to Lynden WA for a wedding.  It was a great opportunity to get out on the motorcycle and travel like we used to.  This means we only packed one extra pair of clothes and did not have to bring the required 300lbs of children necessities.

The wedding we attended was outdoors.  The weather in Lynden was crazy warm for the previous two weeks, but as luck would have it on the day of the wedding it was 65 windy and rained (although it did not rain during the ceremony).

We were sitting at the reception talking to people and Brenda commented that she liked the music.  I asked her if she recognized anyone in the band...I'll be a son of a gun... the band was her old roommate from Dordt and her husband.  I guess if you know one person in Lynden you likely will run into them at some point in time.  Rochelle actually lives in Bellingham, but when you are Dutch, the world really is a small place.  Last time we saw them was when they sang at our wedding 11 years ago.

The reception was lots of fun and it ended up being great weather after the ceremony.

The wedding was fun, but the ride out and the ride back were the cherry on the top.  Since the fires in central Washington shut down most of the passes through Washington, Brenda and I opted to head to the great white north and go through the cascades in Canada to get to Lynden.  This added about 3hrs to the trip, but was an awesome road we had never been on so it was well worth it.  On the way home the fires had sort of died down although they were only 18% contained so we rode right through them.  Lots of smoke and devastation, but we were surprised at how many homes they could save.

 

When we got back home the next day were had a joint Birthday party for Izumi and Brenda with 50 or so of our closest friends.  The party was a real blast and then we had a square dance caller come.  It may sound kind of lame to some of you, but it is the only kind of dancing a dutchman should or could do.

The food table was a hot spot.

James doing so crazy dance move and showing off per usual.

Here is everyone enjoying the fun.  Please notice the guy on the far left in the cutoff denim shirt.  He is apparently someone from down the block who heard all of the fun and decided to crash the party.  Yup, nothing says fun like an uninvited guest.  He was nice enough but when he started talking about his 73 year old super hot girlfriend I had to take a couple steps back and exit the conversation.

 

Last night was looking to be a pretty nice night so we decided to go for a hike up at the top of the hill by our friends Jim and Jan.  They took care of our kids when we were at the wedding earlier in the week and probably missed them so we called to see if they wanted to go with.

The lighting was perfect and although the temperature was a bit cold we had some good pictures taken.

Just another day in Spokane

Look at those cuties.

Fouth of July Campout

As the end of the month draws near I noticed I have not been very diligent at keeping up with the all important downloading of the pictures of the kids but finally got around to it.  I will attempt to summarize what we have been up to in this post but will be posting another more up to date entry soon as well.

 

It has been very warm up here in Spokane and with two or more weeks of over 90 degree temps it was time to get out to the local lakes and have a swim or two.  We also had a chance to go on the annual church campout which was held at a state park on south lake Coeur d'Alene.

 

This is one of the calmer moments of the campout and this is after a day at the beach and fishing.  When I say a day of fishing I really mean about 30 minutes of fishing where I was very excited for James to catch his first fish.  Once it was on the line he reeled it up like a champ, I helped him lift it out of the water.  As soon as he saw the fish and it wiggled he dropped the pole and ran down the dock screaming like a little girl.  I did the appropriate thing a called to him and tried to make him hold the line with the fish on the end, but he continued to be a scaredy cat and would run away screaming.  Needless to say it is not exactly what I envisioned for this first time catching a fish and there was no time for taking a picture.

We had a chance to bike to Harrison ID for some Ice Cream.  Cotton Candy was the flavor James decided on after much deliberation and maybe he got that just so me and mother would not want any.

Then we went down to the Harrison beach.  James loves playing with his loader and dump truck.  He is constantly loading and dumping the sandy dirt from the beach.  It was a lot of fun to watch.

The beach at Harrison has a floating dock with a diving board.  This is a ton of fun and is even more fun since they do not have one of those pesky life guards who tend to put a stop to any activity in the water that may be considered fun.  Here, it is swimmer beware and you had better get out of the way before the next kid goes off the board or you are going to be in a world of hurt.

Here is James and Noah sharing trucks and hanging out at the campsite.  When kids aren't crying, fighting or whining they can be very cute.

Dinner time. Notice the cornbread on the table I cooked in the dutch oven.  It came out a lot better than I thought it would, but then again how can you go wrong when you add twice the butter the recipe calls for.

Here is Matthew enjoying a little desert and whipped topping.  That kids loves to eat, but only what he wants to.  He can be quite stubborn at times.

All kids love to "dip" and ours are no exception.  Matthew usually eats more Ketchup than food, but here he got more on his face than he got in his mouth.

Lastly, nothing like washing the car on a hot day.  This boy must get this from his grandpa DeJong, because I only wash a car when absolutely necessary and I am not sure if he has seen me do so (although I do wash the motorcycle).  My father on the other hand washes his car about once a week and I feel bad every time the kids get in to it because I know it is not going to look nice for long.

Washinton Coast

Now it is time for part two of the adventure.  After we left Jim and Sandi's we headed for the Washington coast to a little town called Moclips.  It is only a town because there in one store in the vicinity of houses and I guess that counts as a town.  Own family rented a room at a small motel on the ocean while Jim and Sandi and the Bollocks had a apartment across the street.  Each set of accommodations was adequate but not glamorous by any means.

Once we arrived, we immediately headed out to the beach.  The weather was a bit windy the first day, but you don't get nice weather like this in this part of Washington too often so we couldn't complain.

The beach had the softest sand and went on and on.  There was a way to access the beach by car and we actually got a chance to drive down it later on in the week.

Action shot of James trying to catch up with his cousins.

Matthew loved taking his shoes off and getting sand in every place imaginable.

I mentioned the wind...poor Matthew had sand blowing all up in his face but you could not drag him from the beach.

The next day we headed off to Lake Quinalt and had amazing weather yet again.  The lake and lodge are very cool to see and have great spots to have lunch.

Here is the family on a hike.  We hiked on a short hike near the lodge and James walked the entire way, which is a big deal.  I think it had a lot to do with his cousins running in front of him, but I sure was happy.

Salmon berries, mountain blueberries, and mountain huckleberries all were in season so the hike consisted of a lot of eating while hiking.

Here is the largest spruce tree in the world (or so the sign says).  It does not look that big in this picture, but if you look at the base you can see how big it is compared to a normal adult.

Here are the adorable crew we dragged around all week.

After a day at the lake we headed back to the beach and the sun was perfect for some pictures.

Sooooo cute.

The sunset was great for picture taking.  The end to another great day.

 

The next day we headed off to Port Townsend with a couple of stops in the middle.

First stop was to Ruby Beach.  There was no wind the it was about 75 degrees.  You do not see more than a handful of these days each year along the rainy coast in Washington.

The mom's hanging out along rocks.

Matthew is never far from the blanket and dog he sleeps with...even on a hike.

Then we stopped at the Hoh rainforest where it was, you guessed it, sunny and beautiful.

James was getting pretty tired and it was painful to get him to walk so on the shoulders he goes.  I went along the trail for a while like this, but it got old after about 30 minutes.  When we got back in the car he was fast asleep in about 30 seconds.

 

The next day I flew out of Seattle for work in southern Idaho.  The family stayed a about three more days and got a chance to visit hurricane ridge.

Here are the kiddos at the top.

I guess Sarah went over this ridge hoping to pop a squat but found these guys.  The mountain goats apparently can be quite aggressive and have gored and killed a guy a couple of years ago.  I don't think Sarah or Brenda knew that otherwise they would have kept the kids farther away.

Matthew obviously had a great time.

 

All in all I got to take three days off and vacation with the family, but did not have to take a single vacation day since I worked through the weekend.  I should try and schedule a bit more of that in the future because it was a whole lot of fun.