Our Adios to Arizona and Our Raod Trip to Spokane!

After Noelle's graduation from Wiggle Worm Preschool,

And Stanton's graduation from half day Kindergarten,

And one more living room light saber fight with Grandpa Curry,

And a lot of last good-bye parties and play times with friends...


We packed up our stuff and moved to Washington!
Lucky for us we were pulling this car behind the moving truck because it turned out we didn't have enough room in the truck for al of our boxes, so I had to just empty them out and dump the contents inside the car.
There were board games crammed on the dashboard, lingerie shoved in the back window and a wooden spoon and our birth certificates under the gas pedal. I utilized every inch of space!

After driving all day, our first stop was Disneyland. We didn't get there until 4pm, but it was free so we had a blast for a few hours before the park closed.

We stayed an extra night in Anaheim so we could go to Knott's Berry Farm, best time ever! We opened and closed that park down!

Our very first ride happened to be for 12 years and up, which is a polite way to say "no chunky mamas allowed", but I failed to read that sign, and the teenager running the ride was too embarrassed to tell me. So we waited and waited for the ride to start, until he finally said "it looks like we're over the weight limit so someone will have to get off."
I was hoping a couple of the ten year olds a few seats down would take one for the team and excuse themselves, but they didn't, so I got off.
Good thing I have really good self-esteem cause that should've been embarrassing. I blame Robert for not reading the sign for me. He's usually the one in our marriage who pays attention to detail.

Next Stanton and I accidentally went on a roller coaster that goes upside down (see, no attention to details) so every ride after that for a while we were expecting the worst, which didn't stop Robert and I from accidentally taking all of the kids on another terrifying ride, which Winston actually ended up loving while the rest of us were shaking in our boots.

Grandma Mary and Grandpa Dan came with us to the park for half of the day. They loved the train ride and the wild west show!

There were so many fun kid rides there and no lines. We went on everything like 5 times!


The next day we headed to Sacramento. We agreed that the car rides actually turned out to be our favorite parts because the kids did so many funny things, and we had lots of great conversations like, "what present do you buy for someone who is 100 years old and as tiny as a crumb?" And we settled some debates like whether or not there is such a thing as a blue raspberry, what shape the Florida Keyes are and whether or not Sacramento really was "The City of Trees" like the sign said, or if it was false advertisement. (In my opinion, there was just an average amount of trees, not worthy of  signage.)
We also caught Winston coloring on the seat with his toes, but it was hard to get mad at him cause he is so cute and we were kind of impressed.

We stopped at this really cool bridge in Sacramento.

We tried to climb it, but we gave up cause it was hard and also cause we got distracted by all of the giant poodles walking on the bridge. There were like 25 of them. It was quite a sight!

Then we went on a little nature walk and found one of those blowy things that was honestly the size of Winston's head.
We also found these little balls growing on trees that looked like rotten potatoes. Noelle picked one because she said it looked like an "ancient peanut" and she was shaking it and tossing it in the air. Then Robert saw a sign that said they were "galls" which apparently are what wasps lay their eggs in. She dropped her ancient peanut pretty quickly after hearing that.

Then we got to Portland (now there's a "City of Trees.") and went to Minomath Falls. It was incredible in every way! I've never seen so much green! It was so beautiful!

We played around in the visitor's center there. (We're a family that loves visitor's centers.)
Then we went to the Dam Museum and the fish hatchery.

Once we were done goofing around, we got a stamp in our National Park Passport and drove the last 6 hours of our trip...

And after five days, we finally made it to Spokane! It's really beautiful here!

We've been here 3 weeks now, and we've been to a different park every single day since we got here. It's strange wearing jackets in June, but we're loving it! Of course, we desperately miss Arizona! It's hard not to be homesick, but this is a really nice, friendly, pretty city to end up in, and we've already had some new adventures, like feeding tigers and swimming in Idaho...