Sunday: Washington, Gardens and Paluse

Sunday morning we woke up, got a yummy breakfast at the hotel and went to church.  I so wanted a family selfie outside the church in our church clothes, but for various reasons we didn't.  Church was wonderful, even if emotionally fraught.  Some of the kids thought it best if we sit in back in the folding chairs while other members of the family felt like we should sit on the benches.  Their side benches were bigger than ours and so I thought we could fit, but we couldn't.   But when it was all said and done it was a wonderful meeting.  There was a sister missionary leaving on her mission (Sister Mathis) and she gave a particularly wonderful talk.  She was relatable to the teenagers talking about sacrifices of going on a mission and about how she didn't feel God's love for her for most of her life.  She was darling and I was grateful for her message.  Afterwards I went up and thanked her.  The whole ward seemed wonderful and many of us were sad to not stay for second hour.  Megan and I left declaring "I could live in Spokane".  It was my favorite city we visited of the whole trip. 

After church we visited a free garden/park and walked around a bit.  

When we got out of the car the parking lot had these big cement blocks and Dane thought it was a perfect place for a spider-man pose.  

The first garden was a Japanese garden.  This place was legit!  It looked just like we were in Japan - or at least how I would imagine it.  And the best part was the many of our children ware in love with Japan and its culture (it is where a few of them really want to go on their mission).  We all enjoyed walking around and having little moments with the beauty.

Then we went to a English hedge garden.  It was a bit disappointing because none of it was in bloom.  Because of that this was our last garden as we learned that most of the other gardens weren't in bloom either.

We then drove through what is known as "the paluse".  Jason has always been enamored with this biome after he has seen it in a few movies.  It was very beautiful.  Rolling hills, as far as the eye can see in every shade of green and yellow that you can think of.  The sky seemed to go on forever and also change in hues of blue.  We drove to the highest point and looked around.  It was WINDY up there, so we didn't stay long, but it was Dane's favorite part (or so he says).

 Then we drove on into Seattle.  

Saturday Night: Spokane Washington

Satruday afternoon/evening we drove over border of Montana and into Washington into Spokane.  WE all really enjoyed the drive and found it to be very beautiful.

I guess this is when we got the huckleberry shakes.

Most of the kids slept and brock read, which is unfair that this is when the picture was taken because Brock slept probably 80-90% of all the the car rides - so many times everyone was awake except Brock.

For the first time (and only 3 other times after this time), Jason got tired and I drove for an hour or so.

We were hoping to get into Spokane early enough to check out their downtown river district.  With our fault tire and the caves we were unsure if we were going to make it.  As we pulled into downtown we figured we had about an hour before sunset so we decided to forgo dinner and head straight to the river.  It was a good call because the park, river, and waterfalls were magical at dusk and in the sunset.  It was a beautiful evening.  We walked around, played on some play grounds and enjoyed the river and falls.  It was lovely, and thanks to an abundance of car snacks nobody was TO hungry.

The people on the bridge are some of our kids.

There was this cool amphitheater with big wires and lights that were really cool, so I begged the family to take pictures.

I tried to be a cool photographer and get a cool angle laying on the ground.  They all just made fun of me and told me I was embarrassing.  worth it!  I love the shot.  too bad I am not in it.

We even saw a clock tower.  Noah and Megan hated it. :) 

 

on the way back to the car I convinced them to take one more.  

We headed back to the hotel.  It was like 8:00 (but we did cross a time zone) but we hadn't had dinner AND we hadn't swam in a hotel pool or hot tub yet - something most of the kids wanted to do.  I told Jason and the big kids to figure out dinner, I was solely focused on take Dane and Eve to the pool feeding them dinner (left over from what ever Jason figured out) and putting them to bed.  As we played at the pool eventually Madison, Megan, and Noah showed up. Noah and Megan just wanted to be in the hot tub, but Mads was all about the fun and got in the pool and was the fun/cool teen with Dane and Eve.  There were also like 6 9 year old boys there on a soccer tournament and the is Dane's favorite "crowd" so he played with them.  There were many tears when we had to leave, but that was kind of the theme for Dane every time we had to leave an activity.

While I was at the pool with the kids, Jason and Brock went back out to get everyone dinner.  After, I think, 3 closed restaurants they ended up at everyone's favorite (thanks to Brock), Panda Express.  I didn't get the whole story (Jason and I got in a bit of a tiff - vacations tend to do that) but something weird happened with the bill (again) and we ended up with more food that we ordered - that is always a tender mercy for a family of 8.

The hotel messed up our room so the teens were in a totally separate room than ours, so that was nice for them and the hotel felt bad so they drastically discounted our bill, so it was a blessing all around.

Saturday: Montana and Caves

Don't they look happy!  As you read from before we had driven 11 hours straight and got about 3 hours of sleep.  But breakfast was actually a delight so this is kind of a bad picture.  We had to leave by 7:00 am (or earlier) and we were told breakfast didn't start until 7:30 AND it was supposed to be a "lame" breakfast, just fruit and muffins.  So the plan was to run in at 7 and beg to just be able to grab a few things and eat it in the car.  But when I ran in I saw it was a whole, "yummy" breakfast with all sorts of things.  WIN!  I knew my kids would LOVE it.  If we had only known they opened breakfast early!  So we gave ourselves 10 minutes to run in and eat something.  

And we were off.  Sometimes Jason took random pictures of me.  

We were 45 minutes away from the caves and Jason felt a pop.  We got a flat tire.  Seriously?  Again, I don't want to go into too many details.  But I want to say that Jason's calmness in both of our "set backs" was amazing.  It is so hard to be the planner of the trip and watch it crumble in front of you.  But he handled it all.  He was strong and decisive.  Way better than I could have been.  He and Brock got to work on the tire.  Luckily we had a tire and all the tools. While they did that I started trying to contact the cave people to see if we could be late and still do our tour.  It was incredibly hard to get a hold of someone, and the people I did get a hold of basically said, "if you aren't there 30 minutes early they will give it away and you don't get a refund and you can't go later in the day".  

I finally got a hold of a person AT the cave and they were incredibly nice and accommodating and told us to come talk to her when we got there and she would get us in.  2 hours later, after stops at 3 tire shops and Walmart we were back on the road.  

The mountains and views were beautiful.   In fact we all loved driving through Montana, we found it to be very beautiful.   When we got there we had to wait an hour or so before the next tour started so we went to visitor center (Megan got her souvenir) and walked around.  Jason decided to take my phone and take some pictures.

We had to walk about a mile up the mountain to get to the cave.

Here we are at the top.

These are pictures from inside the cave.  The tour was a little over 2 hours and it was spectacular.  We all loved it.  We got to see total darkness, which is always fun and learn a lot about caves and history.  Our tour guide was really great and the kids enjoyed her dry/dad-joke type humor.

Dane was picked to be the guardian of the door and he was very honored and did his job wonderfully. Eve was very jealous.

Our van in the parking lot.

This became how we made and ate lunches most days.  I would pull the cooler out of the back and we would make sandwiches right there.  We thought we would make the min the morning before we left for our activity, but we never really had time for that, and then we would have also had to haul the coolers and food tubs into the hotels and back out again everyday.  So this ended up working great.

After the caves we drove to Spokane, Washington.  On the way we stopped and tried the "world's best huckleberry shake", it was good, but we all agreed we doubted it was the best.