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.

Combine demo derby

We had the chance a couple of weeks  ago to go as a family to the combine demolition derby.  Yes, you heard it right, combines slamming into each other at all of 25 miles per hour.  The real highlight of the day was the truck races.  These trucks would race at full speed around the track and there were little to no rules for the race.  I love watching awesome events like this where safety rules are reasonable but not ridiculous or over the top.

Dirt would fly all over the fans when the trucks would go around the corner.  If this was anywhere else (like California) the fans would have been so far removed from the action because the rocks and dirt flying through the air would have been deemed unsafe.  This was not the case here.  Here, the fans had to stand up and shake all of the dirt off of them between races.  It was quite comical to watch.

I got a lot of videos of the combines and it was cool to see them run around without their rear axles but you will have to settle for this picture.

The weather was perfect for the fun out in the sun.  This is unless you are Sarah, and in that case it was too sunny and you needed to have 3000spf sunscreen on. I forgot to mention that Brenda's sister and her family came out as well so they were there to join in with the fun.

Here is James and his cousins snacking on a snow-cone.

Nothing like smoke in the air and hydraulic fluid spraying all over the place.

Brenda and James enjoying the show.  After the derby we continues on to Jim and Sandra's where we would spend the next day and then we were off to the coast.

We could not go there without a ride on the T.  James was all ready to go, and got to take a short ride.  In the afternoon I had a chance to take the car out for my first ride without Jim and Brenda came along.  She really had a blast and only screamed a little.

There are seven new kittens at grandma and grandpa's house  James had a good time holding the only kitten they could catch.

Here is Dan getting a ride in the T.

Then it was time to go inside of the shop and check out all the other T's in there.  The kids were acting quite crazy and I could only imagine what they were thinking.

 

I broke this vacation into two blog posts since I think I have about 34 pictures and don't think they are all going to fit into one post.  Next post will be the rest of the fun we had on the coast.

Neighbor Day

So another month goes by and the summer is really in full swing.  It has not officially started till I take a vacation and since I got that out of the way I am now ready to kick back and relax.  I thought I would write a little and bring the blog up to backdate.  I say backdate because the last pictures are new to the blog, but about 6 days old at the time of posting.  Here are the highlights.

 

Noel had a birthday party and had a bunch of people over.  James had a great time and loves to hang out with her.

A couple weeks ago we had an afternoon storm run through and when that happens in the spring you get a chance to see some rainbows.  This one was right behind the house and it made an awesome sunset in the east as well as the west.

The sunset looked so good I had to get up on the roof and check it out.  That was a great time to get James on the roof for the first time.  He liked being up there and had a blast.  I assured him it has lost its luster when you are cleaning gutters of fixing shingles....but he will learn that later.

We had a campfire the other night and cooked some smores.  This was a chance for me to take my camera out and see what it could do.  I really like the functions of this new camera and found that taking pictures of fire is almost as mesmerizing as starring at a fire.

It is so nice to get Matthew up in the morning or after a nap.  He is a  very happy boy that like to snuggle and laugh almost immediately upon waking up.

This is a normal days activity and James would do it all day long if I could handle it.  Matthew loves to climb up on board as well, but when there are two on the back I have to take it easy for fear of having two heads collide.  You don't need to ask how I learned that lesson.

The local Felts Field had a neighbor day the other week and we got a chance to go a walk around a bunch of cool planes and watch a lot of takeoffs and landings.

James even got to sit in the Sheriff's helicopter.  He seemed a bit intimidated but Matthew was right at home.

James got a chance to sit in the pilots seat of the lifeflight plane and thought it was pretty cool.  I am guessing that the pre-flight check is a bit more thorough after a 3yr old has been in the cockpit turning every knob imaginable.

This is the real reason we go out for a  day in the sun.  All that walking a standing makes for a long nap in the late afternoon and that gives everyone a break.  When James is tired, he can fall asleep in about 3 minutes when he is put in the car.

Matthew is a close second for the speed sleeping, but is a winner for being able to sleep through anything.

It was Car d'Alene last weekend and we went out to see the cruise during the first night.  I like the cruise since you can hear the cars and you also get to see all of them while just standing there or sitting in a chair.  The boys are a lot of fun to take out and about and seem to be more and more fun to hang out with every day.  It helps that they are both so adorable and everyone tells me so when I am out in public.

Sewer hookup and James turns 3!!

Spring is finally here and Summer seems to be right at the door as well.  We are really enjoying getting out and about with the recent warming trend and nice weather.  I seems that every portion of the country you have to get used to the local weather personalities.  Here is Spokane they have been saying partly sunny with a 20% chance of rain for about two weeks now and we have not gotten anything.  Kind of depressing when you look at the 10 day outlook and there are clouds with some rain.  It almost always ends up being awesome weather.  If these same forecasters were over on the Seattle side of the mountains I think they may get shot because the weather we have been having is about as good as it gets over there and is plenty sunny for my taste.

It took a lot for me to get James into this helmet.  One year ago he did not even like to see me with the helmet on, but here he is on a rare day wearing in and laughing his head off.

With the spring and sun comes thee ever hated dandelions...and if you are me they move into your yard and bring their 30 million half step brothers to set up shop and call your grass their home.  James helps to pick them, or about 5 of them anyway.

We have yet to give Matthew a haircut and his curls are truly adorable.  Who would have thought a toothy smile could be so precious.

It is a great day when you can sit next to the sandbox and not have to actively play with your kid but can sit back and enjoy the imagination of a child.  He loaded his little matchbox truck with sand and drove it to the other side of the box and them dumped it and drove it back again.  I could only guess at what he was thinking and building.

This is a dangerous site for any parent.  A kid with a near empty bowl means he is still hungry, so what to do?  If you live in my house you take your child out of the high chair, shake them over the tray to ensure all the food stuck to their clothes and hair falls off back onto the tray, and put them pack in the highchair.  They now have seconds and usually plenty of food.

Hanging out on the front swing having a great time.

This year I got back from being out of town for a week just in time for Bloomsday.  We were in the stroller division which has a time limit for how fast they allow you to go.  You hear it right, if you go faster that 1hr and 40min over the 7 mile course you get disqualified.  Now that is a race I can agree with.  We took our time and had fun and ended up taking about 2hrs and 20minutes or something.

After the Race we went downtown and fed some ducks....well..we fed the ducks, and Matthew fed himself.  It must have been so hard sitting for the last 3 hours for poor little Matthew, he must have worked up an appetite.

Spring blossoms on the Asian pear tree.

 

Then came the day I was dreading.  I was scheduled to be out of town for a lot of time (which has since proven to not be the case), but I only had one week at home and a lot of stuff to do.  I have to connect to the dreaded Spokane sewer system because some money hungry politicians decided to build a huge sewer treatment plant and then after the fact found out they did not have enough people to pay for the bill.  Once they figured this out, they then decided to require rural people to first --pay for the sewer to get brought to there house (cha ching $7000), then--pay someone to connect them to the sewer system (cha ching usually about $3200 on the lowest end), and finally- pay a monthly sewer fee for the rest of eternity(cha ching $750/year).  Funny how they have to do relatively nothing except make decisions on how to make me spend my money.  My septic was working great and some desk jockey decided they needed more money and I needed to give it to them....awesome.

 

Being the cheapskate I was I had a couple of contractors out to bid on the connection from my house to the street.  Knowing what it would take to install the line and then looking at the bids I had the option to take it in the shorts, or do it myself.  I ended up deciding to do it myself and saved about $1700.00.  I ended up hiring a friend who just so happen to be in town and without gainful employment so it was nice to have a hand doing the work.

We only tapped the house twice and that was during backfilling.  We hit no irrigation lines and had the connection done it about 6hrs.

Backfilling the trench and grading the area to look up to my specs took about 8hrs or so.

James and Matthew each got a chance to run the big digger.  James' birthday is around the same time as a couple other friends so Brenda invited a bunch of people over last Wednesday and had a impromptu digger themed birthday party.  We were also supposed to be out of town for his birthday so we had to have a party sometime, and had a digger in the front yard, so why not.

Mudpie cake and digger...I was even jealous of James.

James, Noelle, and Liya had a great time.

Our friends Jim and Jan have been out of town for the last three weeks visiting the great parks and sites of southern Utah so when they got back we had them over.  They brought James some exciting presents...500 stickers among other things.  Apparently Jan also likes stickers.

Today is James's official birthday and he is now three.  We took the evening and headed out to Manito Park to have a picnic and see the Lilacs in bloom.  What kid does not want to do that on his birthday.

Matthew is such a cutie.

I try and remind James that life goes by so fast and he needs to stop and smell the flowers as he grows up.  Looking at this picture I need to remind myself of the same thing and that these two young boys are going to be growing into young men faster than I think they will.  James has been so fun to teach, learn from, and raise over the past 3 years that Brenda and I both count ourselves among the most blessed people in the world to be given the honor of raising them.  James, Mom and I both love you very much and pray that you grown to be a man who seeks God and is a witness for God in this world.  We know you are going to accomplish great things and cannot wait to see what He has in store for your precious life.