The Trip

Ahh, Pentiction! Well we went on our crazy trip during July and it's taken this long to blog about it. What a trip! We drove to B.C., Canada, then to Portland and were going to continue our craziness to Orange County but wised up! Again, what a trip! The first leg was driven during the night (upon the advice of the travel savvy April-who I still need to see!). Was that the smartest thing ever. After having a baby, staying up with little sleep isn't really an issue anymoe. Colby once said, "I now know why the marines use this as a torture device." That aside, Colby drove all but the last 2 hours of the trip (it took 15 hrs). We were both so jazzed about actually getting to the camp site with my family that we didn't end up taking a nap until the night! Our bodies were just wired. Penticton, B.C. is wonderful. The summers are just the perfect temperature. I'm a little biased but I've been going there since I was a baby. Nana and Grandad started the tradition some 50 odd years ago. Crazy! All we do is camp and play on the beach in Lake Okanagan, which is the only other lake to boast as having a resident pleiosaur (Loch Ness Monster).
We just play games and we learned a few more fun ones like Yuker and Pitch. Both mid-Western games taught by our token Illinoisan...-ite, -ian? And sometimes the games got a little out of control.
Grandad and Jackson had a lot of catching up to do and they also found out that they have a lot in common.
They both like to camp in style!And, yes. My grandad does have an ipod!
As tradition dictates, all 4 sisters have to try to stand up on the inner tube. It has gotten increasingly harder as we've all gotten older! My back was thrown out from the trip so I respectfully declined, but Colby jumped right in. I think this was his first time standing up on a tube with so many people. He started very optimistic:
Things just didn't work out as planned. Do you have the biggest and smallest stand up at the same time or do you have the middle people?
No matter what, it was fun! Also participating in the tube standing arena was my 70 something grandad. Now this is really incredible because it was perhaps his first time standing in a tube, he elects to do this at 70+ and he doesn't swim! Amazing!! Just ignore the naked baby in the front and check out Grandad! Maybe he was inspired by The Bucket List. We do have a picture of him all the way up, but I don't have a copy, yet!
The people taking the pictures were too distracted by the naked baby, but in the background is grandad right after he successfully made it up and down with nary a hair on his thinning head out of place!
When Richard and Gretchen were in the process of moving out to NY, Colby, Gretchen and I decided to undertake building the best snowman ever!! See below:
Nuff said! Not to be outdone by Winter, the Summer Muse inspired the following sand castle:
Because everyone in our family is 18 or older, Mom retired the sand tools long ago. We only had a large pot (we ate dinner on the beach a few times) and plastic cannisters for the snack food. Dumping all the snacks in one large bin, armed and ready, we set off! There was already a huge hole dug by kids the day before. When we decided to claim it for our own (there were no kids around) some elderlies kicked us out because the grandkids were coming back to finish it. Fine! We started our own. By the way, the grandkids were a pretty organized bunch. We'd been working for about 20 minutes when one of the kids shouts, "Okay. Break time. Everyone take a break." When we looked over, the "forekid" was making everyone take the mandatory swimming break. 5 minutes later it was back to work! Apparently though, the kids didn't think of everything because they should have formed a union. The forekid was soon the only one swimming whilst all his workers were shoveling. But don't worry. He wasn't sleeping on the job. He kept barking orders! We finished ours and it wasn't nearly as grand as theirs. Seriously. Those kids worked hard and continuously which is pretty amazing when you consider they were all 10 or under and their attention spans on manual labor have to be like nil- or at least not very much. Behold, the proud diggers!
Poor Colby also threw his back out making that huge mound with the pot! My love!
The next fun thing was nails! I know that we are camping but Mom brought her Christmas present (a tad early). It's nail art by a company named Konad-what an unfortunate name! You'll have to check out the website konad.com, but it's salon and professional designs that you can do at home. I must have done my nails 3 times! It's super easy and ...well I just can't say enough. It uses engraved metal plates and a rubber stamp to transfer the nail polish design to the nails. Anyway, here are the finished products:
I wanted a walk on the wild side:
Come to think of it...Andrew could have painted his nails to match his luggage on the SF trip! That would have earned some stares for certain:
Our trip continued to Portland where we went to Elephant's Deli (Colby's new fav) and Moonstruck Chocolate (I'm in love!). We followed Marel's instructions to a T and although the shakes are pricey they are so worth it! Amazing! Unfortunately we decided to drive the 9 hours during the day and amidst Friday rush hour traffic, 2 hours of it for only 20 miles, and a screaming baby- I don't know how we hung on to our sanity! It actually took us 15. Camping with a 3 month old isn't the problem. It's getting there and back! We are definitely driving during the night! We also don't have any snapshots because we lost our camera (my mom took it) and we were also so tired and slightly sick. We stayed at Marel's mom's place and as soon as we pulled in I needed to ask for a pan. I think the Edvalson's called it the Sick Pan. In my fam it's known as the Barf Bucket. Thankfully there was no need for its services, but it sure felt like it! Thank you Dana! You are my mom away from home! All in all, it was a good trip. We'll look back and laugh at the monster car trip...someday!
By the way, Colby has 2 interviews now (yeah- and a now we tutor!)