Wednesday’s water park adventures left us a little tired, so we took it easy on Thursday. First things first – morning coffee at Doma! My mom and I don’t have tons of overlapping interests, but COFFEE. We get each other when it comes to coffee.
And then some playground time at the park across the street from my mom and dad’s house. Juliette caught her baby at the bottom of the slide and I spent several minutes swinging with my baby on my lap and I loved how slow it all felt. Nothin’ to do, nowhere to be – this time to linger with my kids felt extra-special.
By afternoon, though, I of course felt a little antsy, so we packed up our gear and drove over to Honeysuckle Beach in Hayden for some floating and paddling and lakeside lounging.
Isaac loved feeling the lake water lap at his feet.
I feel you, Bud – HOORAY for lake days!
Then he put a fistful of sand in his mouth. I swear, sometimes it feels like Isaac senses us starting to chill out, let our guard down, and then he decides, “HA! I’ll teach them not to watch me with eagle eyes!”
While Shane was on the shore swatting rocks out of Isaac’s hands before he could eat them, Juliette and I got out on the SUP.
Juliette is so good at multi-purposing our board – it’s part SUP, part kayak, part floaty.
I can’t wait to get Isaac out for a paddle, but for now, he’s plenty happy to cheer on his sister from the dock.
Lake smiles!
And an evening country walk to top it all off.
Friday was similarly pretty mellow. Crawling and coffee, swings and snuggles, a very fancy lunch…
We spent a couple of hours at Tullamore Park – the swings were a hit, but there was some splash pad skepticism.
Is he having fun? Who’s to say?
Juliette and I seized upon our last night in Idaho as a chance to get out for a hike at Tubbs Hill. We listened to the Sing 2 soundtrack on the drive to Coeur d’Alene and I looked in the rear view mirror at her belting out the words to Could Have Been Me in the backseat, eyes closed and face scrunched up in so much sweet drama and goodness, eight is great.
We found the path and then lost the path and just as I wondered how we ended up so deep in the woods, we saw a mama deer with her three baby fawns not so far away. We tip-toed toward them and they galloped away on their sweet skinny legs and then we found our way back to the trail. We chatted and laughed and oohed and ahhed at glistening Lake Coeur d’Alene and felt the goodness of it being just us two for an evening.
Juliette found a trail of seashells that someone had left along the path and reveled in collecting these little treasures and then hiding them in new places for the next hiker to find. Â
We played Kidz Bop on the drive home and hunted for the handful of license plate states we hadn’t yet crossed off our road trip list and damn, did I say eight is great?
We were gone for all of three hours, but still, she was over the moon to be back with her dad. They spent the rest of the evening updating their license plate checklist and coloring in a map of the states we hadn’t yet spotted. Again, slow life luxuries…
Isaac gave Bernie a few final pat-pats on Saturday morning, we took a few porch pics, and then we were homeward bound.
It was back to business on Monday, with work and daycare and summer camp, and while there’s always a piece of me that finds comfort in settling back into a routine, by noon I was missing my kids somethin’ fierce. It was a good week.