Watery Bookends to the Day

The day began way too early at the first swim meet of the season.  I possibly took a lot of pictures of Mark in his little racing swimsuit, bandaged chest and serious expression.

Also a lot of snacks were consumed.

I guess swimming is hungry work.

It's hard to take good swim meet pictures. The kids are mostly underwater.

This is Emma though...try not to be too riveted by the action shot, you're embarrassing me.

After the meet, we went home, packed everything in the van and headed off on our grand adventure.

Some with more energy for the road than others:

It's a good thing he's young.  I wouldn't be able to move my neck for a week if I slept like that.

When we drove through Ritzville, WA, I called my SIL Jennifer.  She grew up around there and I wondered which pretty farm belonged to her family.  She told me it was 20 miles north.

Oh.

She did give me a hot tip to visit the Riverside State Park in Spokane though.

It was a beautiful place.  There were fragrant blooming petunias, delightful scenes of the river, bridges and geese and one really bad saxophone player. 

And then there was the fountain.

It was tempting to these water loving off spring of ours.

 So tempting.

Can we Dad?  Can we?

(He said yes.)

And Braeden's officially mad as a hatter.  A wet hatter.

Before taking the dripping children to the hotel, we stopped to play on the enormous red wagon slide.

I told Mark he was built for parks.

Day One of the Grand Adventure:

Not bad at all.