Celebrating Dad

One year ago today was the memorial service for my dad. It was a celebration of his life, a time to focus on happy memories. We had a really nice service at my parents' church, followed by reception with a popcorn machine (one of Dad's favorite foods) and a cake inspired by his years coordinating the summertime hot dog lunch giveaway at Hope Lutheran. Family and friends traveled to Idaho from California and Washington, along with the many local friends who attended. Dad would have loved it. 

Celebrating Dad (affiliate link)

Instead of a guest book, I put Dad's photo on cardstock and asked guests to sign that. These two pages are now together in the album.   

I miss you, Dad. Thanks for a lifetime of memories. 

Honoring George

In my post about the weekend trip to Spokane Steve and I took last fall, I mentioned that I'd seen my aunt, uncle, and cousins twice already that year, both times for memorial services in Idaho. My dad's service was in July; in March, we gathered to remember George, my brother-in-law Brian's dad. 

I'm not sure when I met George for the first time; I certainly knew him by the time my sister married Brian in 1996. I usually saw him a few times a year at family gatherings and I always enjoyed chatting with him. I remember George as kind and friendly, quiet, but with a quick sense of humor. 

Honoring George (affiliate link)

While George was not technically related to me, he felt like family. I'm glad I was able to be there for his memorial service. 

CHS Band

Steve and I had such a good time traveling to Spokane to watch Aiden perform at the Pacific Northwest Marching Band Championships. 

 

CHS Band (affiliate link)

This was the second layout I made for Game Three of the BYSS World Series. This time, I was inspired by the title of this page by Angie Feldman. I like the way she used the high school's initials on a tag above the rest of the title. I created a CHS banner on PicMonkey, cut it out with microtip scissors, then added it above BAND. 

In addition to the point for the inspiration, I earned points for using a specialty paper (the background is embossed and glittery), journaling, and an outdoor element (the football field sticker). That's a total of four more points for the Banshees. 

Pacific Northwest Marching Band Championships

After not getting together with my cousins since 2019 and my aunt and uncle since 2022, we saw each other this year in March and July. Unfortunately, both times were for memorial services. While it was wonderful to spend time together, it was a bummer that it was for such a sad reason. Steve and I decided we'd make a weekend trip to visit them in the fall. We planned our trip around seeing my cousin Tim's son, Aiden, compete in the Pacific Northwest Marching Band Championship on October 11 in Mead, Washington.  

It had been about 3 decades since either Steve or I had seen a marching band competition and boy, have things changed! But before I get into that, I want to start with October 10, the day we flew into Spokane. It was a beautiful day, with blue skies. The weather was perfect as we enjoyed a walk around the lake where my aunt and uncle live. 

We had dinner at Das Stein Haus. Yum. 

Uncle Don, cousin Tim, Tim's wife Ginger, Steve, me, and Aunt Vickie. 

On Saturday morning, we headed to Mead for the competition. There were 15 schools participating and each school performed the same routine twice. We missed the first few performances driving, looking for parking, and getting settled in our seats, but that was fine since we saw them later. During the preliminaries, the smallest and lowest ranked bands (1A) performed first, working their way up to the largest, highest rank (for this competition, 4A). Then after a break, they performed again in reverse order based on their scores in preliminaries. 

From the first performance we watched (Highland High School performing "Hunger Games"), it was immediately obvious that high school marching band field shows are different than in my day. I hadn't seen large screens and banners on the field like that before, nor musicians in a pit. The pop culture theme surprised (and delighted) me. It was so much fun to watch the show!

West Salem's "Web of Dreams" was stunning. Look at all those cages! And the gigantic 7's. By the way, 

Ginger had gotten us perfect seats: high and directly on the 50-yard line.

"The Wildflower" by Central High School was absolutely gorgeous. I loved the color scheme, the interesting patterns, and the giant flowers that opened. 

Mead High School's "And Still... I Rise" was breathtaking. I loved the staircase props and how they moved and interacted with them. 

It was a fun surprise when they revealed that the stairs spelled out the name of their show. 

Next up was Aiden's school, Cheney High, performing "The Engulfed Cathedral." They also used staircases, but theirs were shaped differently and they interacted with them in different ways. That stage in the front right was for an electric cello solo. The performance was incredible. 

That's Aiden at the top of the purple staircase. 

We were mesmerized watching AC Davis High School set up that loooooong raised platform for their performance, "Seize Your Moment." 

Watching it transform during the performance was neat... 

... and it was a total surprise when the final piece opened up to make a star. 

The performance from Mt. Spokane called "Love, Ellie" was really neat. 

It was such a fun surprise when a single red balloon floated out of Carl's house and the band formed into a giant red balloon. I didn't catch those on camera, unfortunately. 

Lewiston High School performed "How Wonderful Life Is" - a tribute to Elton John. 

Ridgeline dazzled with "The Drop that Contained the Sea."

At the end of preliminaries, Ridgeline was in 1st. Aiden's school (Cheney) was 4th.

During the break, Ginger gave us a tour of the 'backstage' area. 

Most impressive: the Cheney band boosters raised enough money to buy their own semi, which is outfitted to carry instruments, costumes, and props. 

  

Each show they've done is on the wall inside the semi. The graduating seniors sign the panels. 

The boosters also have their own food truck to feed the students. A team was busy preparing huge amounts of yakisoba when we came by. It smelled delicious.  

This is where the band eats. Buckets and boards provide lots of seating.  

There's also a trailer for hauling gear. The students ride in three buses. 

After our tour, we used the rest of our break to find food... and shelter. You probably noticed the grey skies in all of my photos. We had had light rain - mostly sprinkling - on and off until this point, but then the rain became more steady. 

During the final round, we saw all of the bands compete, including the ones we had missed earlier. There were some fun themes: the Northern Lights, farming, coal mining, and the California Gold Rush. I didn't take a lot of photos due to the rain, but here is a sampling:  

There's Cheney again. They ended up placing 5th out of 15. If you're interested in seeing the scoring, including the 8 categories in which they're judged, you can see that here. 

On Sunday, we all gathered to celebrate Uncle Don's 75th birthday. 

Dessert was one of the famous apple pies that the Cheney band students make each year as a fundraiser. It was SO good. I'm disappointed they have to be picked up locally, but if you happen to live near Cheney and haven't had one, you should definitely order one. Or ten (they freeze well). 

Card games are a must when we get together. By the way, that's my godson Teagan standing to my left. He's a future member of the Cheney High Marching Band. 

All too soon, it was time for Steve and me to fly home. We had a wonderful weekend with family. And, despite the rain, we loved watching the marching band competition. We now have plans to watch one locally. If you have the opportunity to go to one, definitely do!

Family Fun in Idaho

In a way, scrapping photos from a trip is like taking that trip all over again, right? That's what I keep telling myself. This is the second page from our July 2019 family reunion in Idaho.  

Family Fun! (affiliate link)

We were supposed to meet up in Montana this summer, but that was canceled. I'm so glad that we have technology that keeps us connected, even if we can't get together in person. Emails, phone calls, and Zoom get-togethers make such a difference. 

MCI-DEN-BOI

I've been struggling with how to scrap last summer's family reunion in Boise. I had enough photos for two pages, but they would be back-to-back rather than side-to-side once I put them in the album. So I wanted to treat the event as two 1-pagers instead of one 2-pager. 

I decided to cut down all of the activity photos to squares and set them aside for the second page. The first page would include our group photo. When I started digging through my travel product, I came across the "You Are Here" journaling card that happened to have Kansas City printed on it. We'd flown from Kansas City to Boise (via Denver) to attend the reunion, so I came up with the idea to fussy cut a Boise photo and use an arrow to connect the two cities.  

Kansas City to Boise (affiliate link)

I included just a single line of journaling to explain that we'd gone directly from our Missouri/Kansas trip to the reunion in Idaho in order to maximize our vacation days. The second page, with all the reunion activity photos, has lots of journaling. I'll share that page tomorrow. 

Family-Friendly Things to Do in Boise, Idaho (Part 7)

This is the seventh and final post about our family's adventures in July 2019. If you haven't already, I recommend reading the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth posts about this trip. 

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After our week exploring Missouri and Kansas, we flew to Boise, Idaho for a family reunion. My parents and my sister's family live there now. My aunt, uncle, and cousins and their families drove over from Spokane for a long weekend.

The first morning we were there, my mom joined Steve, Trevor, and me to do the Boise Urban Adventure Quest. It started at the State Capitol.

The Quest took us by Freak Alley, JUMP, the Anne Frank Memorial, the Boise Art Museum, and the Basque Block.

  

  

We also passed by the library. Or, more accurately, the Library! The next time I'm in town, I'm going to visit the four branches to find the one with exclamation point shelves.

As always, we had great fun doing the Quest. It wasn't our best showing (2 mistakes) and our time was terrible (we stopped to tour JUMP, took photos at a bunch of places, and looked around a bit at other sites), but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And it introduced us to places we didn't know existed that we'll explore further during future visits.

We finished the Quest a half block from Boise Fry Company, so that's where we had lunch. We've eaten there during both of our previous Boise trips, and it never disappoints. We did find it funny that we went all the way to Idaho and they had Heretic on tap... it's only a few miles from our house and hosts Steve's homebrew club meetings.

And check this out! Idaho potatoes, of course... but I spy California sweet potatoes. And the 'Ruddy Spuddy' boxes are labeled California Potatoes. Funny!

We spent the rest of the day hanging out with our extended family (19 people) at my sister's house. We played a bunch of games, indoors and out. That's my nephew, Timothy, with cousin Aiden on his back and cousin Lillian as his cornhole partner. 

Here are cousins Trevor, Ethan, and Aiden playing a non-standard version of cornhole while Lillian and Allison watch. 

My godson Teagan and my niece Allison both helped me work on a Diamond Art project (affiliate link here and throughout the post). Both kids are 6 and did a great job. 

Meanwhile, Timothy, Lillian, Trevor and Grandma played Harry Potter Labyrinth. We LOVE Labyrinth. It's one of our favorite games. 

We ate a lot, too.

On Saturday, we did a float trip on the Boise River. 

It's mostly relaxing, with bursts of excitement here and there. In addition to the excitement of the rapids, there was unexpected 'excitement' when my brother-in-law helped save a young girl who was not wearing a life jacket. He was injured in the process, but all ended well. Please, parents: insist your children wear life jackets, even if they're strong swimmers. And wear your own!

We stopped for lunch along the river.

In the afternoon, we returned to Kari's house for more food and family fun. And a group photo.

This Disney-themed Eye Found It game is great fun for all ages. 

Nertz is a family favorite, too. 

All too soon, it was time for us to head home. We had a fantastic time exploring Missouri and Kansas, plus returning to Idaho. This trip brings us up to 32 states... only 18 more to go! Follow the link to see our updated map, plus recommendations for all 32 states we've visited. Any guesses where we're headed next?!