Gromma and Grompa Haines in Washington

My parents came and visited us this last week, and we are still in denial that they are gone! Jack keeps melting into tears on the floor and sobbing, "I miss Gromma! I miss Grompa!" (I hope he uses those pronunciations forever haha.) We had a wonderful time together. It feels heavier having them leave from Washington than it did having them leave from Wyoming, but we made the most of our time together, and our house feels even more like home now that they've been in it. 

Ok, I'll cover their trip here in pictures. These first pictures are from a short hike near our home. We actually did this on their last day, but Jack taking a picture of his grandma and grandpa is so cute I had to make it the cover photo for this post. 

Their first few days here were sunny. We worked hard and played hard. Jared got his sign-on bonus, so we were able to order the topsoil for our backyard! The ground here is pretttty rough. In Wyoming we could plant right on the native soil, but here six inches of topsoil is necessary before putting down sod. At least we won't need sprinklers here since it rains so often. 

Jared's dad came and joined us in the afternoon laying dirt all across our yard. It's still kind of bumpy, so we'll try to get it leveled out before our sod arrives this weekend. 

On our other sunny day we headed to Lake Roesiger. Jack calls it "dinosaur lake" because he likes to bring his toy dinosaurs and play with them on the beach. This is one of our favorite places we've discovered so far. If we ended up staying in Washington long term (probably unlikely--Utah is still the eventual goal), we'd love a cute lakefront house on a quiet lake like this one. 

We had a picnic near the water. It was a perfect sunny, early fall day in Washington. 

^^My pictures are out of order, but yesterday we were all able to watch Jack at his soccer practice. 

^^Jack snapping a picture on our way down to the Granite Falls waterfall. 

^^Grandpa picking Jack up from preschool. Cutest.

It was a great week! I didn't get any pictures from our scenic Sunday drive up the canyon to Big 4 mountain, or of our trip into Arlington to see Jared's new clinic and get some ice cream. Or of the many game nights and (failed) attempts to anchor our living room curtain rod to hold the weight of our verrrry heavy blackout curtains (lessons have been learned). Or our discovery of a delicious little Thai restaurant in Granite Falls. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of Grandma and Grandpa Haines sooner rather than later. Jack's hoping their house will break so they can buy a new house up by us haha. In the meantime, we'll just be over here making our guest bedroom cozier and cozier for future trips!