Yakima + Yakima + Yakima

…and back to Yakima again.

We had the opportunity to go to Yakima again last weekend. That is officially our third trip over there since Christmas and will probably be out last trip there for a while.

Note to family living in Yakima: For our convenience, we request that you please move closer to our home. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

With little Kayli Button having been born just a few weeks ago, this trip was of course to attend her baby blessing (similar-in-age-and-signigicance-but-not-in-ordinance to a Christening for any non-Mormon who might happen upon this blog).

The dog gave us that "not again!" look as we filled his bowl at home nice and full and headed out the door for the weekend. This time we didn’t leave until Saturday morning and detoured down to Lacey first so Valerie could visit her grandmother who is very ill in the hospital there before we left town.

The drive over was uneventful which is a good thing when crossing the pass through the mountains this time of the year.

Having learned the lesson from our prior less-than-enjoyable drive over, all kids were set up with their own headphones and device to connect to them to hopefully keep them from eachothers throats. While Zach just slept, Sarah had the iPod working, Joshua of course had his Nintendo DS, Benjamin was running his portable DVD player watching Peter Pan. Valerie (not a child) had her laptop and I had the road in front of me.

We all enjoyed a lovely trip with nobody speaking a word to anyone else. Nirvana.

Since nobody had yet killed anyone, by the time we got to Ellensburg, we decided to take the scenic route to Yakima from there by going through the Yakima River Canyon and stopping of course for a cache or two along the route. It is always a beautiful drive through the canyon there and there is different scenery to look at througout the year.

There had been recent floods on the river in the canyon that had pushed huge frozen block of ice up out of the river and onto the edges of the road which were really cool to look at. It was so neat that we repeated the route on the way home to take a couple of pictures.

We were at the Button home that evening to celebrate a family birthday as well. Little Annika Urvina was turning 1-year-old. We remembered her being born on Superbowl Sunday a year ago. It will always be easy to remember when her birthday is coming.

After we had some cake to celebrate, we all headed to Miner’s a Yakima must-visit food joint for dinner. Yummy but expensive for burgers.


That evening, our family stayed at a hotel in Union Gap. Much to the delight of our kids, there was an indoor pool. Woo Hoo!!! The little pool there made the weekend seem like a mini-vacation. I stayed with the three older kids in the pool until the manager finally had to close the pool down for the evening at 10PM.

The next morning we had to get up to be at the church by 9AM but I woke Sarah and Josh a bit earlier still to sneak down ot the pool for a quick morning swim at about 6:00 before we had to get ready. I love swimming in the morning. It has been a bit of a tradition with the kids and me. We always get up very early in a hotel and swim in the pool before anyone else gets up.

Besides it is fun making people eat their continental breakfasts while watching you do belly-flops.
The blessing at church was very nice too although with the Button family in the circle with me I felt a little like a portly Muggsy Bogues on a team of Manute Bols...


...yes, as a matter of fact I am related by marriage. Why do you ask?

Still though Kayli was a sweetie and we were glad to be there for her.

We of course did line up for some obligitory pictures after the meeting.

After church it was off to Dave’s parent’s home where we had a very nice lunch/dinner before we wandered our way back home again of course finding a few more geocaches along the way. This time the kids were exhausted and slept most of the way which was fine by me.