After the beach we took a couple of days to travel up from Long Beach to Leavenworth. The stop in Yakima wasn’t really anything to write home about - Yakima is quite different from the other places in Washington we visited - dry, dusty, more desert than anything. But it was a good stopping-off point. Becky shot pictures from the moving van like a wild woman. She did get a rather nice one of Mount Rainier:

Also, on our way up to Leavenworth, the girls had fun throwing rocks into this little mountain stream:

Once we made it to Leavenworth, we had a great time with family and friends at the wedding. We stayed at the Riverdance Lodge, which you really must check out via their website to appreciate. It’s a ridiculously posh vacation home which happens to be right next door to the house that Andrew & Heather were borrowing for the wedding. So, our family rented it to stay for a couple days. Fantastic choice.

I’ve got a whole set of photos on Flickr from the rehearsal and before and after the wedding, and it’s really hard to decide which ones to show here, so I’ll just give you one of them and you can go visit the set. In this particular pic, Andrew and Heather were kinda bored during the photo shoot and gave me this little pose:

Such fun. There’s one more I’d post, but somehow I didn’t get it uploaded to Flickr yet. I’ll make a separate post for that one picture - how often can you say you have a guy relieving himself against a tree in the background of a wedding picture?

The wedding was beautiful and went about as smoothly as any wedding I’ve ever been to. I played the piano, Ryan sang, Laura and Addie were beautiful flower girls. They also had a lot of fun dancing afterwards. What a fantastic time of celebration.

After arriving late on Monday and having vehicle difficulty, we took the new minivan out to the Washington coast to spend a couple of days at the beach. We encountered several of these signs along the way… not something we typically see back home in Iowa.

The three-hour drive to the appropriately-named Long Beach brought us from temperatures in the upper 70’s in the Seattle area to 60 degrees, fog, and 30 mph winds in Long Beach. Yowza! We were glad we had remembered to pack jackets. We stayed at the Lighthouse Oceanfront Resort as part of a little deal where I created them a new website. We had a two-bedroom condo that, when the fog was out, provided us a view of the Pacific from our deck. The girls had much fun on the beach even in the cold; Laura found a real live clam, which stayed real and live until it had set in our minivan for a day, at which point it became real and very ripe. To spend actual time in the water, though, we enjoyed the heated pool at the resort.

The second day we ventured out to check out one of the nearby lighthouses. We tried to figure out how to reach the lighthouse on Cape Disappointment, but couldn’t figure out which road to take. So instead we visited the North Head Lighthouse, and while we couldn’t tour it (no children under 7 allowed on the tour), we still had a nice little walk and got some nice pictures of the lighthouse and the coast. Apparently the North Head Lighthouse records some of the strongest winds along the Pacific coast. We didn’t quite blow away, but it was seriously breezy.

Having traveled to the coast, the one thing Becky really wanted to eat was seafood. We did a little research and tried out a couple of different places that appeared to be somewhat family-friendly and within our budget. My conclusion is that seafood places in tourist towns must plan to sell you overpriced seafood and then make up for it with terrible service. The first night we tried a place called Doogers, and while my food was decent, the server totally forgot to bring me the Diet Pepsi I ordered. Becky’s combination platter was completely missing one of its major elements, a fact which wasn’t brought to light until Becky decided to ask for help identifying each of the elements on the platter. They went ahead and cooked up a razor clam and brought it out to her at the end of the meal, but still, come on, folks. The second night we tried The Crab Pot, supposedly a local favorite since 1946. We thought that surely it would be an improvement over Doogers. No such luck. Higher prices, poorer food, and incredibly awful service.

Still, though, we found a local bakery that was fantastic, and overall very much enjoyed ourselves in Long Beach. It would have been fun to have another day to spend traipsing around, but our schedule called us to move on. Next up: Yakima, en route to Leavenworth.

Note: I’m putting all the pics from the trip in this set on Flickr. There are far more than what I’m going to post on the blog. Grandparents will want to visit the link to see all the pics.

A couple of pics of our minivan’s flat tire the other night. Less dramatic because the guys already had the van jacked up. The thing was totally flat.

With the expense of airline travel these days, we thought we might consider a method of cost-reduction for this trip.

Laura demonstrates the proper way to pack the bag:

She feels pretty safe since she’s just a bit to big to fit into that bag.

Seattle here we come!

It’s been a weird year for weather here in Iowa. We started with the snowiest winter on record. Once that melted, we had an unusually cool spring. Now we’re finishing up spring and headed toward summer, and the rain has been nearly unstoppable. Seems like every day is another thunderstorm, bringing an inch (or two) (or three) of rain.

Now the flooding has begun. Already three of the bridges crossing the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids have been closed because the river has reached (or nearly reached) the bottom of the bridge. Mandatory evacuations have been declared for low-lying areas of town. A flood totally took out the railroad bridge up in Cedar Falls. They’ve got a fully-loaded train sitting on our railroad bridge here in Cedar Rapids to try and keep it from being swept away, too. (This picture is of a different bridge in CR.)

A lot of the low-lying areas are well known for flooding, but this one (near Ellis Park on the SW side of CR) is still stunning:

And there’s rain on the way again this morning. And tonight. And tomorrow. It’s gonna get better before it gets worse. Now, friends, fortunately our house is far away from the river, and on high ground; we’re in no danger of flooding; however, we have friends and co-workers who are currently in the process of sandbagging, packing up, and evacuating. Let’s pray that this rain stops, very soon.

[The pictures above are from the KCRG-TV website's YouNews page. There are a lot more pictures there if you're interested.]

The little four-footed creatures have a way of finding a place in our lives and hearts without us hardly noticing it… until they are gone. Frankie was part of our household for nearly nine years, from his birth as a little kitten out at the farmhouse until his untimely passing after an accident at home last Friday. Becky picked out some of her favorite pictures and asked me to post them… so here you go.

It’s been a couple of weeks now but there was great excitement among the little girls in our house because we bought a nice set of bunk beds at a garage sale and set them up in Laura’s room. Laura is now the proud owner of a “big bed” - a real twin-sized bed with real sheets and pillow. We’ve set up the upper bunk as well (the pictures were taken before it got set up) and while we don’t have any immediate plans to move Addie in with Laura, I imagine it’ll happen eventually.

So it’s time for some before-and-after pictures, well, of a sort. Back in November 2005 when Laura was 16 months old and we knew that Addie was on the way, we set up a new crib for Laura and she wanted to help assemble it. This was the scene:

Fast-forward to May 2008 and Daddy now has two little helpers.

And the finished result:

Apparently this is something that goes by generations, too. I’ve done Kermit (among others) for a long time… (including on YouTube… twice) and now the girls are up to it, too.

Today I decided to wear my Beaker t-shirt. No sooner did I come home this morning (Becky’s not feeling well) than they both pointed at the shirt and asked, “Who’s that guy?” So here they are, doing their best Beaker impressions.

For reference, the t-shirt:

Laura:

Addie:

Some weeks ago Becky and I were enjoying a date night with a stop at our local Coldstone ice cream shop when we overheard some college students discussing a plan - a plan we liked so much we decided to turn it into a tradition of our own. It’s really quite simple: the first day in the spring and summer that the high temperature for the day surpasses the next 10-degree mark, we go for ice cream.

It just so happened that our date night weeks ago was on the first 70-degree day of the year. And it just so happened that yesterday was the first 80-degree day of the year. So after getting a bunch of outside work done, we packed the girls up in the van and headed for Coldstone. I figure we have at least two ten-degree trips still coming this season, and if, God forbid, we hit the third (110°F), we’ll at least be happy for the relief!

So here are a few pictures from the night. Oh, and our ice cream flavors:

Addie: Chocolate with sprinkles
Laura: Cotton Candy with white chocolate chips
Becky: Chocolate & Coffee with cookie dough
me: Cake Batter Chocolate with cookie dough