The House That Built Me.

Stop #2...

Kennewick, WA

This is where Ray's family lived until he was 11.
We stayed with his Aunt and Uncle, Dean and Patrice,
and Ray took a walk down memory lane.

The whole time we were there Miranda Lambert's song "The House That Built Me" kept playing over and over in my head...

We literally went to his old house and knocked on the door.
The people who live there were so nice -- when Ray asked if he could come in the guy said, "absolutely, I always wished I could do that with my old house but I never dared."

It was a lot of fun hearing all the stories about him and his brothers back in the "good ol' days"

Ray hadn't been to back to Kennewick since they moved, which was almost 14 years ago.
It was crazy how much had changed, but even crazier how much had stayed the same.

Ray kept taking pictures on his phone and sending them to his brothers, but then we decided
it would be much easier to just put them all on the blog...

Recognize these???........

Ray's dad built this basketball court...

And this porch...

The neighbor's rocks they used to play on while they waited for the bus...

The swimming pool they basically lived at in the summer...

The little league baseball fields...

The high school football field...

The hospital where Ray's mom worked...

And the blue bridge...

Road Trip!

Ray and I love adventures, so we packed up and headed on a really big one...

a two week road trip down the west coast!

First stop.... Boise, ID.

We stopped in Boise and stayed with our fellow Idahoans, Tyler and Laura Hogge.

We took a little float down the Boise river which took about two and a half hours...
the water was a bit cold and the rapids were a bit scary, but the floatin' sure was fun!

Then we went to the Boise State football field to check out the smurf turf.

The people there seemed to think that we would be content looking at it through a fence,

but that wasn't good enough for us.

So we broke in... what a rush! (haha)

Later we went to the park for what we thought was going to be a free Backstreet Boys concert,

but apparently they had already performed so we got Bret Michaels instead.

Rock on!

The park was packed and I wouldn't be surprised if we all died of secondhand smoke now.

Seriously, we were outside and it was more smokey than a Las Vegas casino.

But nonetheless, it was still pretty sweet.

Delta.

It is a tradition in Ray's family to go to Delta for the 4th of July.

All the brothers and their families fly in for the week and it is a lot of fun!

The festivities always begin with the parade...

Ray doing what he does...

Everytime I turned around he was holding a different neice or nephew.

He is such a good uncle...

Then there is lots of swimming, hanging out, and eating a whole bunch of Gram's yummy cookies!

The next day we go to church with Ray's Grandma (aka Gram) and then we have a picnic in the park.

Ray's mom was all about getting family pictures this year.

Even Ray and I got some... like we don't already have 5 billion anyway (haha).

Another family picture in the park...

All of our cute neices and nephews...

And me and my crazy sister-in-laws...

You can tell we have a lot of fun!