Coeur d'Alene

For our final full day with Bob & Barbie
we headed to Coeur d'Alene, one our favorite
little towns. It is only about 20 miles from
Liberty Lake so we always make sure to visit.
We have two favorite restaurants that are there,
the first being The White House which is known
for awesome garlicky Greek food and the second
being Bardenay, they serve a little of everything
and I have personally never had a bad meal there.
It overlooks this little pond with fountains and a playground.

My best friend Billy had mentioned that we HAD to
go to this park in Coeur d'Alene next time we found
ourselves there. It is the Coeur d' Alene City Park
and we LOVED IT!!

It is situated right on Lake Coeur d'Alene,
absolutely beautiful!

Lots of trees,

and places to sit and watch airplanes take off
right out of the water.

It has the very coolest playground structure I have
ever seen, it is like a wooden maze with fun things
to experience where ever you turn.

Ava ran inside and instantly disappeared into the
maze of fun. You could catch glimpses of her
here and there but the kid could care less about
us, she was in heaven!

She even found a little twin to be her best friend
while we were there. They were almost exactly
the same age, loved the same things and even
appeared to of called each other to discuss
what outfit to wear that day.

Hangin' out

Ta-da!

Going for a ride

We had to talk her into leaving that part of the park
so we could go put our feet in the water.

She wasn't thrilled with this plan.

But Grandpa convinced her...

Still pretty skeptical...

I tried to drag her in...

So did Daddy.

He had a little more luck.

Next we went and had a nice lunch at Bardenay
and then headed back to Liberty Lake.

On our way home we stopped by Cabela's
I had heard the family joking about this place
being some sort of strange destination people go
to, like they might even get a hotel near one just
to go to it! That sounded so crazy to me that
I needed to see what this store was all about.
I knew they had some taxidermy animals in there
that I figured Ava would enjoy.

They had this mountain in the middle of the store
covered in every animal you can imagine.
It was pretty cool.

Ava loved it, she also liked all the real
fish that were swimming around.

All in all the store was cool for these features
but aside from that it just seemed like an REI on
steroids. I am glad we went though,
John's dad says "And now you have lived"
as we left. : )

We already determined more new places
we want to check out next time. We peaked
inside The Kroc Center which looked really cool
& we would also like to try out Triple Play,
more water park fun. I think next time Ava might
actually be old enough to enjoy it, but then again
there with be a much littler one to entertain too : )

We had a wonderful trip with John's parents.
We played lots of games and visited lots of cool
new places. We always enjoy our time with them.
Can't wait to see them again soon!

Thanks for everything Mom & Dad!