Road Trip Day 4 + Day 5 Part 1

On Monday, July 9, we didn’t do a whole lot.  I think we all slept in, Jared went grocery shopping and we just relaxed at the house.  We had Art, Jenene + Sophia over for supper.  Jared bbq’d pork and we ate outside on the deck. 

The cute munchkins

The next day, the 5 of us did a day trip.  This was the road close to our house that we always took.

Here we are approaching the border into B.C.

We went to White Rock to have lunch with my friend, Kirstina, who I went to Capernwray Bible School in England with.  She lives close to White Rock.  I met her in Spring School 2003 and then when I went back for Winter School 2004/2005, she was teaching in England.  I stayed with her for a few days on my Christmas break and she came to visit me at Capernwray later in the spring.  So, we hadn’t seen each other in over 7 years and it was WONDERFUL to see her again!  We ate at this great restaurant.  I had fish + chips, which was very good.

She took us out for gelati after to Dolce Gelato.  It was possibly the best we’ve ever had!  I had black forest gelato.

Then we walked all the way down the pier together.  Kiera knows no strangers and immediately took her hand.

Between Kiera + Blake in the background, you can see the big white rock.

One of several attempts at a family photo, ha ha!

Apparently people thought it was warm enough to swim.  It was around +20 with a cool breeze.

White Rock is gorgeous and I really like it.  After that, we hopped over to Surrey to see where Art + Jenene met at Pacific Life Bible College. 

It’s a really small school….I think Jenene said something like 125 students.

Crossing the border back into Washington

They had SO many neat little coffee shops all over the place

Day trip to be continued…

Our Accomodations

When we were planning our trip to Washington, the idea of staying in a hotel for a week, all having to sleep in the same room and living out of our suitcases really didn’t appeal to me.  It would have been next to impossible for the kids to nap and we would have to eat all of our meals out, too.  God gave me the idea to look for other alternatives, like renting a house.  I came across vrbo.com (Vacation Rentals By Owner).  For a bit more money than a hotel, we rented a 1200 sq. ft. house with 3 bedrooms + plus an office, which Haley slept in, 3 bathrooms, a deck and it was GORGEOUS!  Each bedroom was big and had a walk-in closet.  Plus, it had a fully finished basement.  We ended up eating all of our breakfasts there except one, some of our lunches, and 3 of our suppers.  It was TOTALLY worth it!  Here’s the main floor living room

You can see the doorway to the bathroom and the master bedroom in the top right corner

Dining area

To the left of the kitchen was another entrance going to the garage and the front-loading washer + dryer were there

Deck off of the dining area

The entrance and the doorway on the left is where the office was.  It had French doors on it, but the closet in there was the exact size of a play pen (which the house came with), so we put Haley in there to sleep because she needs it to be very dark when she sleeps and it was perfect!

Main floor bathroom

Basement living room

Basement bedroom where Kiera slept (apparently I forgot to take a picture of the whole room)

Basement bedroom where Blake slept

Basement bathroom

Master bedroom

Walk-in closet…it was SO amazing to not have to jam all of our clothes into a tiny little closet like we have at home

LOVE this big ensuite…2 sinks + lots of counter space

The neighborhood has all new, big houses

Our rental house from the outside

The one thing I had to do was pin up towels over the basement bedroom windows, because they had white blinds, which kept the room very bright.  All of my kids are used to napping/sleeping in a very dark room, so that helped them to nap better and sleep longer in the mornings.

I would say that was pretty close to my dream house.  SO thankful we were able to stay there!

Road Trip Day 3

We drove through the night and hit the Washington border around 5 a.m. with the time change, which is when the kids woke up.  I couldn’t believe how bright it was outside at the time of day.  I had the privilege of watching the sunrise in the Idaho mountains right before this, which was breathtaking, but I was driving at that time, so I couldn’t take any pictures.

The kids were getting antsy after driving for 22 hours at this point (10 a.m. – 8 a.m.), so I gave them more presents to open and play with.

I love seeing the farms set against the mountains…definitely different from home.

At first I didn’t understand why Washington is called the Evergreen State, but then I figured it out.

29 hours of driving straight and we got there at 1 p.m. their time. Total driving time with stops: 34 hours!   We went for lunch altogether at Bayou on Bay and ate in the upstairs part of the restaurant.  It’s not a great picture because the lighting was bad, but it’s the only one I have.

The 5 of us took naps in the afternoon and then Art + Jenene had us over for supper, which was SO nice of them.  I REALLY didn’t want to have to go grocery shopping right after the long day(s) we had.  Their friends Wayne and Sosan were over, too, as they live right next door in the same building.

Thus concludes our first day in Washington.  We were very happy to be out of the van!  Oh, and the kids only watched 2 dvd’s the whole way there!  Haley cried for the last hour between Seattle and Bellingham, but other than that she did amazingly well.  I would say it was a miraculous drive there with all 3 kids!