LA Apartment

Well, I arrived in LA on Monday morning with Erin. We have no troubles for the most part. On the last mountain pass before entering Los Angeles, my car started to overheat so we pulled over at the next rest area. Unforunately that was the end of our car troubles, the next day it overheated again and wouldn't start. We had it checked out and learned we need a new head gasket which isn't an easy task for the mechanic, so it would cost $1000. My car will now be parked in the driveway for some time until we get the money to fix it.

We now have our apartment all set up. Pretty much everything is put away and in it's place. We live a few miles from Dave's school and Josh gave us Marc's old mountain bike, so he will be using that to get to school. We also got a bunch of Josh' furniture that he had in storage, so we were able to furnish our apartment with that.

Free dresser on the side of the road.
I would like to paint the bathroom...as well as pretty much everything else.
The living room. James Dean was able to fit in my car. I was very happy.
We bought the washer off of craigslist. I have a love/hate relationship with that website.

The Warolins

During the last week of August all my brothers and myself, plus our significant others or girlfriend, were home. The main thing I remember when everyone was home was...eating. We ate so much. We were always eating.

We went to a Mariners vs Twins game in Seattle. We did the usual stop to Ivars for some wonderful fish and chips. Unfortunately for Dave, the Twins lost. But it was a fun time.

We played Settlers of Catan and added on the Cities and Knights version. We went to Boulevard Park and ate. We went sailing, except it wasn't true sailing since we were on a catamaran. Who knows if I even spelled that right. We went to Lake Padden. We ate some more.

It was the first time in a long time and probably the last time for a while that all us kids and spouses and grandkids will be home all at the same time. It was fun seeing everyone again.

The Kraayenbrinks

In mid August, Dave and I flew out to South Dakota to visit his side of the family. The flight out there was an interesting one. We arrived in Seattle to fly to Denver. It was announced that the flight was overbooked and they needed people to offer to be bumped. We were in no huge rush, so Dave went up to the counter and came back with two free round trip tickets to anywhere in the 48 contiguous states. We were also supposed to fly first class for our flights, but decided to fly standby and was able to get there sooner.

We had a great time. Dave showed off his awesome cooking talents, much to the pleasure of his mom, who I'm sure enjoyed the short break. We checked out his mom's huge garden which provided many of the needed vegetables for our meals. I was amazed at how big it was and how much food it kept producing.

One day we went boat, I think on the Platte River. The kids came with and we went tubing. Dave had a fun time trying to tip people over or jump on their tube. I preferred to watch. Dave also went knee boarding and showed off his 360 skills. We also went fishing in the same area the next night. Eli caught the first fish and then I caught the next two. Those were the only ones for the night.

After a few days we drove down to the Dakota Dunes to visit Nathan and Briana. We played a ton of games of Settlers of Catan with Nathan. We also played Guitar Hero. I was so much better than the guys. And then we did a lot of floating down the river on one of their friends boats. It was a nice relaxing time.

We also drove back up to Yankton for the Kraayenbrink Camp Out. Dave stayed and talked with family while I went geocaching with his dad. For those of you who don't know what geocaching is, it's kind of like a treasure hunt. In short, people have placed all these different boxes or cylinders or whatever and you have to try and find them with your gps system. You may think it sounds kind of silly, but I loved it. I had a blast searching for them. We found 3.

We stayed for about a week in the Midwest. And I don't know how it happened, but for some dumb reason, I completely forgot to take any pictures. On our flight home we offered to be bumped again, but our flight wasn't quite full enough. But they put us in first class because we were nice enough to offer. It was awesome!