Spokane Trip

We ventured to Spokane this last weekend in order to attend my cousin Kalen's wedding. It was quite an ordeal getting all of our stuff together and traveling as a family, but it was well worth the effort to see friends and family at our destination. Our vehicle isn't big enough to house all our family AND our stuff, so we got a hitch for our SUV and pulled a trailer behind us. Though we chose the smallest trailer at U-Haul, it was still much too big for our purposes, but it did the job anyway. I would like to point out also that everything we brought was used at one point (except the 1 extra set of clothes I packed for the kids), so I didn't bring a lot of unnecessary items. The picture above is of Josiah playing two kazoos at the wedding reception. They had kazoos on the tables for everyone and when the bride and groom came into the reception area all the folks kazooed the Wedding March song for them. It was a cute idea. My brother Brent and Aunt Genny (Kalen's mom) were having a blast kazooing many different rendions of various show tunes and other favorites and were making everyone laugh. There is in fact somewhere a recording (the guy that was videotaping the reception) of Brent and Genny kazooing the Dueling Banjos theme....now more appropriately titled Dueling Kazoos.

We traveled up a day early and so on Friday morning before the wedding we met up with some friends of ours from Spokane. Unfortunately, I didn't get ANY pictures of our kids together with theirs (I so dropped the ball on that one!), but before they arrived I got some fun shots of our kiddos playing at the mall play area. This is a classic of Caleb scouting out the area.

And Daniel, my camera ham, riding the fishy! Josiah and Colton (our friend's son) had a blast together! Some funny highlights to follow of their encounter. When Colton first arrived and saw Josiah he ran up to him and said, "HI, I'm Colton, I can do AMAZING tricks!!" and then proceeded to stand on one foot or something like that (you know....boy stuff!) Colton and Josiah were sitting with each other at the table while we were all eating lunch and at one point Josiah got up to walk around. Colton kept wanting Josiah to come back and sit by him. It was soooo cute to watch them play!! Later, David took both the boys to the bathroom because both had to "pee REALLY bad." They went to one of those family restrooms at the mall and Josiah went first and apparently didn't hit the bowl or make a mess. Colton had his hands on his hips watching and then said very matter of factly, "You do that really good!" Josiah's response? "Yeah, I had to practice a lot!"

The boys didn't attend the wedding as we were pretty sure they would have caused quite a commotion and would have been distractors from the event. So David took them to get some ice cream and then they ate it over by the place where the reception was to be held. We were all being summoned for a family picture, but David didn't think they would be done with the ice cream in time, however, as it turned out they were! I had called Natalie (my cousin Daniel's wife) to get some of the family back over to the chapel area for the big family photo and as they were preparing to return my cousin Daniel asked David if the boys would like to hop in the back of his truck to get back to the chapel. (We were on a college campus and they were going to drive really slow, so it was a perfect opportunity to ride in the truck!) The boys were MORE than happy to ride in the truck as you see here! The funny thing was on the way home later that night, we were headed to our car and our Daniel headed for my cousin Daniel's truck thinking he was going to ride in it again! Ha! The kids crashed pretty hard this evening as we didn't get to the hotel until 9:30pm and their usual bedtime is around 7:30!

Sadly....I didn't take any pictures of the wedding on my camera....again, not sure how I missed that one, but Kalen was beautiful in her gown and it was fun to see her marry her Jameson to become Mrs. Kalen Ault!

Before we drove home on Saturday, we stopped at the care center to visit my Grandma Betty for a little bit. She can't talk to us anymore (due to her stroke), but it was clear to me that she recognized us and that she LOVED to see the little ones! Though we couldn't understand her words, her tone of voice said it all. I have some pictures also of the boys playing with the stools in the care center cafeteria. They were playing bumper stools with my brother Brent and my cousin Luke. The twins and Josiah were getting a big kick out of running into the "big boys" on the stools.

My Aunt Debby was there also and when we arrived was playing hymns on the piano and the group was singing to Grandma (one of her favorite things to do and listen to). Aunt Debby tried to get the little ones to sing to "ABC's" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Baa-Baa Black Sheep," but they were acting shy! When we got to the third song, Aunt Debby quipped, "I don't think I know this one!" For those of you unaware of the musical joke, all three songs have the same melody and chords. After Aunt Debby and her crew left however, Daniel got up on the bench and started banging on the piano in rhythm to the ABC song and was singing along with his own accompaniment. The other two joined in as you see here and it was QUITE a racket! Not exactly a harmonious trio at this point, but maybe someday!

As we were leaving the care center, my Mom was wheeling Grandma back to her room and she kept motioning toward us as we were leaving. I told my Mom that I thought she wanted to see us off! When she and Grandpa were living in their home and we would visit, they would always stand outside and wave goodbye to us as we drove off. I am pretty sure that is what she wanted to do this time too! It is clear that our sweet Grandma Betty's personality comes across even when she has a hard time communicating. We love you Grandma!!