Visit to Vancouver

July 29-August 2

DH, M&M, Luke and Blondie stayed one more night at Bear Lake and then the next day headed off to visit DH's mom in Vancouver. They were able to have some fun visiting her as well as DH's grandma who lives in Portland. The younger kids were bummed that they couldn't go to visit them as well but this was the only time that we could make anything work out this summer with our crazy school schedule. They drove up on Wednesday and came back home late Sunday night. They were also there for M&M's 17th birthday. They went out to dinner with her and saw the movie Ant Man which they all enjoyed.

Aunt T's Wedding

Saturday, November 2

We drove up on Friday for Aunt T's wedding which took place on Saturday.  We had all the kids minus M&M who was on a marching band trip that same weekend.  We stayed at Great-Grandma N's house with DH's brother and his family as well.

It turned out to be a beautiful day for the wedding which took place in the backyard of DH's parents' house.  It was all beautifully decorated and we were glad that we were able to be there to take part in that.  There was a bit of a technology scramble right before the ceremony trying to get a brother and sister-in-law to watch the ceremony via facetime and amazingly we were able to get it to work.  They both had a view from the upper deck!

Afterwards we took some pictures in the backyard and then headed over to the Old Spaghetti Factory for a wedding luncheon.  The kids had a good time visiting with their cousins.

Waiting for the rest of the wedding party to arrive.

Mom and Dad N opening a gift from the new in-laws.

Cutting the wedding cake.

MJ's face after eating her spaghetti.  She really enjoyed it!

After the luncheon we headed back to the house for the reception/open house.  The kids watched some movies and played in the basement while the open house was going on.  Then on Sunday we went to church together and then enjoyed some more time together before everyone had to leave.  It was a short, but nice trip.  The saddest part was seeing DH's father.  He was really struggling with his cancer at this time and we did not realize how poorly he was doing until we saw him on this trip.  We were not able to spend much time with him because when there wasn't something wedding related going on, he was in his bedroom sleeping.  He was able to walk his daughter down the aisle for the wedding ceremony and that was a bittersweet thing to watch.  There were many tears shed during the course of that day.

(The pictures in this blog entry are just the ones from my camera.  I will hopefully have some more time in the future to go through the ones on DH's camera as well.)

The day after - eating cake and leftovers!

Playing with grandma's play houses!

An intense game of Sorry!

ICDAR 2013 - Washington D.C.

August 22-28

When we found out that ICDAR 2013 (International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition) was going to be in Washington D.C., I wanted to try and go out there with DH.  My parents kindly volunteered to watch the kids for us and then it was just a matter of trying to figure out when I could go and how the family could manage with both of us gone.  Unfortunately the timing was a little crazy with the kids except for MJ being in school - and Luke and M&M just barely starting.  We finally decided to have DH go out by himself for the conference and then I would join him on the last day of the conference and then we would stay for a few days afterwards.  So DH flew out to D.C. on August 22 and then I joined him on the 28th.  While the conference was going on, DH was mostly busy during the days and tried to go out at night to do a little sightseeing.  Unfortunately most things are closed by that time, but he got some beautiful pictures:

The Capitol at night

World War II Memorial

Lincoln Memorial

Washington Monument - which was under construction to repair damage from an earthquake a few years ago

Lincoln Memorial

National Cathedral

Inside the National Cathedral

Outside the National Cathedral again

DH knows that I love flowers so he took some shots of flowers outside the cathedral for me.

The lobby of the hotel where the conference was held (and where DH stayed)

Sculpture garden

The Smithsonian Castle

The Jefferson Memorial

DH was trying to capture the scale of the columns in the Jefferson Memorial

FDR Memorial

Martin Luther King Jr Memorial

World War 2 Memorial again

One of the conference rooms at the hotel.

Not sure what building this stained glass window is from - I will have to ask DH.

Leaving Mossyrock

Friday, July 26

We had to leave early Friday morning to start our drive for home.  It was a little bitter sweet.  We had a great time but it was time for us to go.  Unfortunately for everyone else we had to leave most of the cleaning to them with our long drive ahead of us.  We really needed to get home because by this point Blondie and Kitty had already missed their first two days of school and M&M and I needed to get back for YW camp the following Monday!

While we were driving on some windy roads to get to the main interstates, we came across a beautiful viewpoint of Mt. Rainier so DH and I got out to take some pictures:

Luke took this picture for us

And here is a family shot that DH's brother took for us while we were at Mossyrock that I forgot to post yesterday:

Cousins!!

Saturday, July 20

DH's brothers' families arrived on Saturday and the kids spent some time watching a movie together and eating outside on the deck!

MJ is 3!!

Friday, July 19

One problem with summer birthdays is that there is a good chance that we will be out of town for them...  This year we left for Washington right after Blondie's birthday which meant that we would be gone for MJ's birthday.  We just had a small family party for her at DH's parents' house.  She got some little My Little Pony figures which she absolutely loved (and still plays with them all the time) and she got a Pinkie Pie shirt which she also loved.  I'm not sure why we don't have any pictures of her opening her gifts, but apparently we don't...  Here are a few pictures of her with her cake and throughout the day.  (I can't believe my baby is 3!!)