Diamond Lake Washington

This was our play area last weekend at Diamond Lake in northeast Washington state. We had so much fun, thanks Uncle Casey & Aunt Molly! We also got lots of excercise climbing up and down all those stairs! It was fun to see my family and their kids. The great thing is, that as they grow up a bit, they get along a whole lot better!

Bryant and Tyler wrestling Grandpa.

I'm really not quite sure what or why Taylor is making this face... but it is funny!

The paddle boats were a huge hit!

Bathing beauties!

I just love this photo! Bryant was in pure heaven on this and all tube rides. He couldn't get enough and is laughing his head off!

I felt pretty safe riding with the little kiddos. I didn't want to get flipped, besides we were being pulled by a pontoon party boat!

My handsome husband!

The kids caught a ton of little tiny carp. Taylor had fun and even tried out Grandpa's fly rod, as we didn't bring any fishing gear.

The rocky beach was fun, they mostly threw rocks in the water.

Tay and Bry loved the kayaks!

A Natural

Last week when we were at the zoo in the African Village area, I heard this amazing bongo drumming so on beat and turned around to see who it was and... it was Bryant jumping along with his beat!

Thursday nights at 6:30pm = Softball

How can I resist that face?

So the guys meet up on Thursdays to play softball and while they do, this is what the kids do... get into mischief! A bag of pretzles in my hand keeps them all close by too!

Space Needle, Pacific Science Ctr. & Zoo

Our friends came into town for a couple of touring days. This is when we pretend to be tourists once a year and go site seeing with the kids. The Space Needle was pretty cool and pretty high up too!

The zoo was fun, we packed a lunch and walked forever! All the girls wanted to do was to take photos of animals and fought over the camera.

Some of us at the Pacific Science center, I must admit I prefer to go to OMSI in Portland, so much better! It is worth a trip down.

Oops! Here we are at the zoo again, out of order. All the kids wanted to climb onto this poor comodo dragon's back!

I always have to catch Tay off guard to get her in a photo, so here is she dazed!

Sydney wanting a photo of the monkeys behind her. I told her she had to be in the photo too or I wouldn't take it and then it focused on the monkey instead of her, darn! Great times with friends!

Hands Up!

While on our trip to Canada last week, we went for a ride on the Kamloops Heritage Railway. This was a real working Steam Engine, the last of her class. We ran into a passing rain cloud and got a bit wet, but not too bad. This was fun. At the end of our ride we backed up past the station and had to stop as something was on the track and they had to move it before we could go any further. Then the bandits came riding up shooting their guns!

One of them got on board and yelled Hands Up! Then continued closer to us at the front of the train.

Bryant was petrified! He immediately put his hands in the air and kept them there the whole time the train robbers were on the train.

He really is scared and not faking it at all. Todd said when he picked him up he was shaking! So funny! After we saw the gold, the train robber talked to us passengers about the real train robber he was pretending to be and a little about him. Then they rode off with the gold!

down time

One day of our trip, Todd and Taylor left us at the hotel and went and fished for the day. We took our time getting up and then headed to the pool. All the hotels compete by having a water slide as an attraction. It was so fun! Bryant went down with me our first time and I was surprised at how pitch black it was inside the tube! It makes sense as you can see above in the photo, it is a sealed tube! But still, it caught me off guard and Bryant was holding on tight as we slid through it, it was so much fun! After that first ride down he was on a roll and went all by himself for a long time. Sydney loved it too!

In the pool they had fun with a small ball that we played catch with and a surfskate board for water.

Sydney figured out she could do backwards somersaults and never stopped!

The best of our trip to come...

Canada Fishing Trip

While Todd and Taylor fished...
We went on a hike. Bry, Syd and I started our hike around the lake, we had been gone about twenty minutes and we were coming through a clearing and headed to some trees when Bryant started talking about bears! As we walked along getting closer to these trees, my mind raced as to what I would do should we come across one or more bears, maybe a mother and her cubs who were learing to hunt. I finally decided we could not out run them and there wasn't anything to climb and can't bears swim? I thought we could swim, but I'd be dragging both kids and trying to get to a boat faster than the bear could get to us and then would the fisherman actually realize what was happening and help us into the boat and have the motor running??? This is how my mind works on overdrive! So we decided to turn back and retrace our steps back to the truck. Hike over!

The kids also collected rocks...

And threw rocks...

And read and ate back at the truck! More about our trip coming soon...