Late Summer Outing

To celebrate Kylen's completion of hunter's ed, we treated him out to dinner at Clinkerdagger.  It was such a nice evening that afterwards, we took a leisurely walk beside the river.  :)

We could still see traces of a wedding below that had just ended.

 

This is Kylen's meal, which he LOVED.  I have mixed feelings about this place.  The food is good but not good enough to justify the prices.  The outside seating and views were a bonus, but we had to deal with bees (which - to their credit - they warned us about).  It wasn't horrible, but it was annoying. One of my biggest complaints is that the food was sloppily plated.  You don't see it on Kylen's plate below (I cleaned it up a bit with my photo editor), but my plate was excessively sloppy with smears of food everywhere.  I don't remember having this problem at any other restaurant, except maybe a place like Denny's.  It's inexcusable at a pricey establishment.  And our server was quite cool, almost to the point of rudeness.

Time for our walk!  This area is right next to the restaurant.

On to the falls!

Greg captured a couple of really nice shots of the dam!

Father's Day 2017

Last year, shortly after we invited friends to join us for a visit to Mt. Spokane, we found out that the road to the top was closed for the season.  So when they suggested we go together on Father's Day, we thought it was a great idea!

I was a little nervous that it might be chilly since we'd never gone up so early in summer.  At the summit where there are no trees or rocks, there was a sharp strong cold wind, but the area where we always spend most of our time was perfectly comfortable.

I stayed behind and took pictures while the others hiked.  :)

Here they come!  The two oldest boys reached the top first.

Here come the others!

We had dinner at Hu Hot and ended the day with basketball.  It was one of our best Father's Days ever.  :)

Summer's Last Hurrah

I'm an amusement park enthusiast.  I would much rather spend a week at Disneyland than a week at the beach.  :)  I was crushed when Kylen admitted a year or two ago that he really doesn't care for amusement parks.  Or the fair.  At all.  Part of the fun is enjoying rides with others, especially my own son!  I tried to swallow my disappointment and accept that he's different from me that way.  But then he surprised me when he enjoyed the fair last year.  Which brings us to Tuesday.

It's been our goal to visit Silverwood one day each summer.  I don't think that happened last year . . . or the year before.  We were strolling past the discounted tickets at Costco recently, and I thought, "We should go!"  My boys were willing.  We procrastinated until the last full week they were open (this week!), Greg took off work to avoid the crowds, and we made the 45 minute trip over.  We arrived shortly after they opened and stayed until they closed.  A FULL day.  And Kylen LOVED it!  He said it was the best time he could ever remember there.  Yahoo!!

Some of his dread came from roller coasters.  He was pressured a lot as a child to ride them.  I won't say I wasn't in on it, but I didn't push him as hard as some.  And there were attractions at Disneyland he was scared of that we talked him into.  He thinks all that pressuring turned him off to rides, and I've felt pretty bad about it.  Yesterday, once again he was dreading the roller coasters.  We told him he didn't need to ride them, but he wanted to.  And he wanted to get them over with first.  Well, he rode one, and rode again.  Then he went on another, and another.  He rode one several more times - in a row!  Then, he wanted to see what it was like to ride after dark and stepped off proclaiming it was the best ride experience of his life!  And he's really looking forward to going next year!  Well, how about that?!  We might turn this boy into an amusement park enthusiast after all!

We ended with me going on the SpinCycle for the first time.  My boys didn't want to try it, but Kylen said he might go next year.  It was much less intense than I expected, easier to ride than a roller coaster.