Our Whirlwind Trip to Washington!

The drive to Washington is approximately 12-14 hours of driving. Our three dear children, under of the age of 4, just couldn't stand driving that long....so we spread out the hours in the car.

We left Thursday after school. We drove to Idaho Falls and visited their Wal-mart where we spent way too much time and way too much money on nothing of importance. (Unless you count goodies with empty calories important). The car was equipped with a TV and DVD Player; countless toys, coloring books, and a rope tied across the car with toys dangling down for Kimball to play with). Then we headed off to Dillon, Montana with the kids in their jammies and snoring. There we found a nice comfortable hotel where we could crash and have homemade waffles in the morning. Friday, after we filled up with gas ($2.29 a gallon) we started our pursuit to Missoula, Montana where we agreed to stop for lunch. 1/2 way there, I heard a THUNK, THUNK sound that turned out to be a blown back tire.

My knight in shinning armor, was able to fix it (after a few curse words) and we were off with a scary looking spare tire. We knew that we wouldn't be able to make it to Spokane with this tire, so we hunted down a Big O Tires (they accept RC Willey credit cards) to see if we could get a new tire. Turns out the in the entire town of Missoula...they didn't have a new tire that would match our other tires. The nice man at the tire shop found a used one that looked better than our spare and hooked us up for 30 bucks! Can't beat that. While Chris got the tire fixed...the kids and I found a fun park with swings.
My mom and dad caught up with us in Missoula (they had left that morning...about 12 hours after us!) and we had some lunch at a gas station.

On the road again, we finally got our groove on and were able to experience the beautiful landscapes. Coeur d'Alene, Idaho is probably one of the most beautiful areas I've ever seen.
We made it safe and sound and got to play with Aspen and Blaise. We were so excited to see our cousins. We went to dinner and went swimming at the hotel.Saturday was filled with graduation activities. Melissa had arranged a babysitter so we were childless, most of the day. That evening we went to the most posh restaurant. It is a floating building on the lake in Coeur d'Alene. It was pretty cool. Occasionally I got a little dizzy from the movement of the water...but it was so worth it! I had crab and steak and my plate alone was $39! I've posted a picture of the delicious dessert. It was jamoca almond fudge, oreo, toffee dessert...it was the definition of divine!

My generous dad paid the bill for the party... a hefty amount for 19 people! Afterwards we went to the movie, Angels and Demons. (Dinner and a movie without the children...how often does that happen?)

Sunday we went to Spokane's park and had dinner at Jeff and Melissa's house. The kids were in heaven playing with their cousins! Danny (Melissa's dad) had made a potato gun and we headed down to the river to shoot it off.

Monday we had an early lunch and then Jefferson took Kathryn to the mall for a little surprise! He paid for her to get her ears pierced. She looks adorable and is very happy about her sparkly ears. I actually helped the person pierce the ears. You need two people and they didn't have 2 people working...so since I was once employed by a company that will remain nameless and had a summer's worth of experience of pulling the trigger on the piercing gun, I assisted them in piercing her ears. She cried for about 2 minutes and then was distracted by her lollipop and her Uncle Jeff showing her all the earrings he'll buy her this summer.
We then were off....back home after just a couple of days but lots of great memories. The drive home was relatively uneventful. We stopped in Dillon, Montana again...at the same hotel. We went swimming and ate homemade waffles that weren't quite as good as the first time. I was able to get a couple of good reads under my belt...Fablehaven and From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Frankel E. Basewiler. We're sad that we really won't have a reason anymore for frequenting Spokane, it sure is a beautiful part of the world. We got home Tuesday, just in time to get back into the groove of life!