In Spokane...

So. Friday we woke up and headed the 25-30ish minutes to my sister's...which was the purpose of our road trip in the first place. As of August 15, it will have been ten years since my dad died (farming accident...he was 57 years old at the time). We all gathered together to celebrate his life and legacy. (Well, almost all of us. Zach and his family were missing.)

Friday was just a low-key hanging out day...

I have a lot more pictures...but these are Blaze and Asher playing...Cassy, Nathan and Joe watching/heckling Charlie hitting golf balls into the field...Nathan going down the makeshift slip n slide (not completely naked, as was Blaze's preferred method, lol)...and Micah photobombing my grandma (who turned 96 the week before and somehow managed to sleep in the house full of people).

Not pictured were the water fight (with Cassy's epic fall while trying to push me into the kiddie pool...ha!), kids jumping on the neighbor's trampoline, handing off the various toddlers and babies, and Bekah and her family arriving after dinner.

By the end of Friday, though, the haze/smoke had really rolled in and was making it unwise to be outside...especially for the little kids and Gram.

Saturday morning, we headed back to Cassy's for a quiet-ish morning and a day full of fabulous food--just as Dad would have wanted it. :) Joe, my favorite brother, lol, had made lumpia ahead of time and Micah helped him fry that up at lunch time. (It disappeared in a hurry!) Dinner was skewered bulgogi and chicken (and hot dogs and lots of other yummy things). And the night ended with baking kifle (Joe had prepared the dough the night before), which again disappeared pretty darn quick.

Beyond all the food, Cassy made us all do a relay/obstacle race...which included shooting hoops, shoveling and moving gravel (she was trying to get us to do some of her landscaping), running up and down a hill, going down the slip n slide and running through a gauntlet of spectators squirting water and pummeling people with balls. Afterwards, we all pretty much agreed that we should perhaps have listened to the air quality warnings and stayed inside, lol.

We also had a moment outside to release balloons and read a poem for Dad (one that Mom had read previously when we'd released balloons just after Dad's funeral). The poem went well...getting toddlers to release balloons didn't, lol. Let's just say that there was some trauma involved and not all of the balloons were released. :)

Again, I have a heap of pictures, but here is a sampling:

From the top left: Micah helping fry up lumpia (borrowing Cassy's apron, lol)...Charlie, Case, Nathan and Asher playing Pictionary (against Noah, Micah and me)...Asher helping Evan and Alice down to the basement...Cassy trying to get through the tunnel during the race and Charlie cheating by grabbing her shoe and throwing it into the field (couples went head to head--Nathan had a good lead thanks to Charlie's cheating but I made up ground)...Cade and Joe making kifle...most everyone outside for the balloon release...and Cade and I after finishing up most of the kifle.

Oh, and I remembered to get some group pictures:

Mom and Gram...

Me, Gram, Cassy, Bekah and Mom...I'm realizing now that we should have snagged the two granddaughters we had there to be in the picture also. :( Could have gotten four generations in the shot.

And, finally, a big group shot...

Not the best shot in the world...but it had us all in one place. ;) It's not easy with that many kids and just using my phone camera, lol. (And I'm sad that I missed pictures of just the kids and of me and Joe...but, again, it was next to impossible to get all the kids to cooperate at once, lol.)

Anyhow...after all the littles were in bed, we watched a video Dad had made years ago of the blood sausage making process...not good videography or subject matter at all, lol, but lovely to see and hear him.

And then we headed back to our AirBNB for the night...