To Yakima we will go

Every since I realized that I truly would be living in Utah the rest of my life and not on the East coast as I'd planned, I've been trying (not so subtly) to recruit my siblings and their families to move here. Utah rocks! And it would be even better if we could get a big group of us close together. But since no one is currently buying into my plan, we have to see my fam when we can. And since my sister Kelli and her husband Dana live just 11 hours away in Yakima, Washington, we decided it was high time we went and saw them and their beautiful state.
We tried to spend as much time outside as possible wearing out our kids so they wouldn't tear apart their apartment. This wooden play area was PERFECT! Seriously old school great!
Tire swings.

Castle towers with slides and hidden staircases.

Tire swings for all 3 boys. How long has it been since you've seen one of these???

And we loved the little adult gazebo rest area complete with shade and benches.

Okay and the view wasn't too hard to look at either. Yep dad, that's a bike path in the picture there. I know you're drooling. And since we were in fertile growing areas we had to stop at a farm and pick blueberries. See how many berries are in my bucket? Yep, that would be a big, fat ZERO since someone -ahem- wouldn't stop eating them.

Taylor and Ethan hard at work. Seriously though, how beautiful is it there?

Dana was nice enough to teach Isaac how to find and pick the really good ones.

Which wasn't really hard since there's were millions of ripe berries. So I showed Miles and let him go to town picking and eating and picking and eating and only occasionally stealing from my bucket.

Okay, so even with his picking he still couldn't resist raiding my bucket. Can you blame him?

Isaac got in on the chowing action too.

Ethan ate a few but was much more interesting in competing to see who filled their bucket the most. He hasn't inherited any of that Kitchen competitiveness has he?

The whole group hard at work.

Of course when even the big boys stop picking at start eating and even start trying to catch berries in their mouths, you know you've had just about as much fun as you can handle for one evening.

We only spent 3 days with Kelli and Dana but it was SO NICE. Nice to see them, nice to be away from dishes, and cooking, and laundry, and checking the internet and all the normal daily things that consume our lives. Just nice to hang out and be with family. We broke the drive into 2 half-days each way which worked marvelously with the boys. Ethan and Isaac were entertained by an endless supply of movies and Miles, well, he found the snack back and helped himself to more sugar than I care to admit. Yep, he's double fisting the suckers. Oh well, he's happy and entertained and honestly didn't cry once the whole way up and back. Now that's a miracle- a mostly quiet (except for the sound of movies and suckers) 22 hours in the car with a 6, 3, and 1 year old.

Thanks for letting us visit! We can't wait to see you in 2 weeks!