Summer at last!!!

Kami and Caden went to school last Monday, got home, and with that, summer vacation began for them.  The little girls were supposed to go to school for two more days before they were finished up, though. Meanwhile, Shawn was going to be leaving Tuesday to work for the week in LaGrande, OR. I knew the little girls wouldn't be doing anything important those last couple of days of school, so I talked to their teachers and got them out of school a couple of days early, we all jumped into the car -even Jack :(- and took off on a trip to visit my parents while Shawn worked close by. (Just before we left we went to put Jack into his carrier, only to find that he'd outgrown it. We hadn't any idea what else to do with him, and weren't about to leave him in the back where he could chew everything to pieces, so he sat at Kami and Caden's feet the whole way:

We ended up only getting to stay  for two nights because Shawn had to be back to do a funeral, but we had a wonderful time.  I brought my sewing machine and some patterns and material.  Kami had big plans to sew herself some skirts, and I wanted to sew her a dress, and we figured we could do it simultaneously with mom's and my machine going at the same time. Kami, mom and I ended up teaming up on the skirt, and mom and I sewed the dress and got it done just in the nick of time before it was time to head back.

Even though the trip was short and it rained the whole time, and even though Maddie was miserable and threw up all the way home and even though Jack's breath was unbearable at times, it just added to the memories and was, overall, very fun and relaxing. Kami and Caden went to one of Eli's choir concerts, and to a pie social for Abby's graduation, dad took all the kids on a drive up to the reservoir where they ran through pipes and had a wonderful time in the mountains, they got to play with Farber and Bradford cousins, and Uncle Adam came up and rough housed and teased them and played with them for a couple of hours.