The day after ma and pa Myers visited, Bing and I drove to Cosmopolis and dropped the boys off with Auntie Sis and the girls. We lucked out and Adara was home from Bellingham for her 21st birthday so we got to see them all! Upon leaving for Portland, we realized that our hotel was not reserved for Friday night, just Saturday so, we went out to a very nice dinner at a little know place called Jimella's outside of Long Beach. Then we found a secluded beach access and walked along the surf only running into three riders on horseback. Then, we headed back to mom and dad's and took off for our conference the next morning.
The conference was phenomenal, as usual. I describe it as church camp for adults. The weekend was full of people sharing their testimony of success in the World Wide/Amway system and all of them giving the glory to God. What other "job" offers training and leadership seminars that revolve around Christ and helping others. The goal of this business is to teach people how to be leaders of men and how to be even more successful than those that go before us and mentor us. None of my old bosses ever came to me and said, "Lane, I want to show you how I made millions of dollars and then teach you how to pass me in our business and be even more successful than I am, oh and, I love you and I believe you have what it takes!" It was so encouraging and fun to be around thousands of like-minded business owners who don't think you are weird for pursuing something other than a job that will never offer freedom of time and money.
We headed back to the harbor to gather our brood and love on the Randich family some more. One of Bing's friends from Kindergarten took Bing and Maddox out fishing in his boat. It was a first for Maddox and he even got to reel in a small trout! I didn't go along and so, there are no pictures of this fun trip.
Bing and I left the boys with mom and dad, again, and celebrated our third anniversary in Lincoln City. We sat by a fire on the beach, until the wind made it impossibly unpleasant, and then we had an amazing "dinner" of appetizers and dessert. We made a habit on this trip of ordering all of the desserts on the menu or ordering 2-3 appetizers at a time until we exhausted the list. Beachcombing was the name of the game on this trip and, while we had fun, we didn't come up with much :)
To tie a bow on the trip, we spent a night in Spokane and played the next day with Auntie Piper. There was a killer Corvette show at Riverfront Park
We played at the amusement park, and tried to cool off in the fountain
Maddox wanted to ride in the planes and was the only kid in line, last minute, two other kids showed up and novice Maddox, not knowing what to do, climbed into the back of "Random Kid's" plane. He sure enjoyed it though!
He made dad ride the boat with him, and he wanted to "hode hands, hode my hand", the whole time. He makes my heart melt.
Lovin some Piper time!
Next, we attempted a camping trip to Woodbine Falls, a favorite spot from my childhood. It was a tedious process of packing everything into the "burb" and then actually finding a spot that wasn't reserved. We found a goody, unloaded our stuff and rolled out the BIG, HUGE, EXPENSIVE, ENORMOUS, canvas tent, only to find it was moldy and rotting. Apparently we put it away damp last October and it proceeded to fester in our garage.
