We took over 1000 pictures on our trip out to Fort Peck, Montana, but here are a dozen of my favorites. The building in the field is the school where Don’s mom taught, the farm pictures are from the two farms that Don grew up on, and the military pictures are from a memorial for all the people from northwest Montana who served in the military.
Fort Peck, Montana. It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a summer vacation, but nonetheless, that’s where we were last weekend. Tyla’s family on her Dad’s side had planned a big family reunion. It was probably the biggest family gathering since her grandpa died in 1999.
Getting to Fort Peck is not small feat of traveling. Your options are:
After much debate, we decided to drive.
Don (Tyla’s Dad) made the trip a few times when his kids were younger. He would leave super early in the morning, drive until the car got wild, and then stop at a hotel with the pool to let the kids burn off energy. Then day 2 would just be whatever was left of the ~15 hour drive.
We planned to follow his advice so at 4:15 am on Thursday, the car was totally packed and I had just put my sleepy 4 year old son in the back seat. I hit the button to start the car and… nothing. Huh?! Thinking it was a dead battery, I put the car in neutral and pushed it out to the driveway so it would be easy to jump start it with the truck. After some finagling, I realized it wasn’t just a dead battery. It was some crazy electrical gremlin. Stuff was flickering on and off, the car wasn’t always recognizing our keyless key fob thingy, and if I did succeed in getting the car ignition turned on (just the fan, AC, lights, etc), I couldn’t get it turned off. At 4:15 in the morning, it was totally confusing.
After about 5 or 10 minutes I decided to give up and take the truck. But wait, the car is sitting in the driveway with the windows rolled down. I can’t leave it there. But at this point, I couldn’t even get it turned on enough to put it back into neutral! I searched around on the internet trying to find the override switch to put it into neutral, but failed. After much prayer and random guesses, I finally got it back into neutral. But… I wasn’t strong enough to push it up the hill into the garage! With Tyla’s help we were just barely able to get it back into the garage.
We transferred everything over to the truck (pulling stuff out through the back seat because we couldn’t get the electronic rear hatch open) and left the house 1.5 hours later than planned. What a start to a very long trip! I tried to stay calm though and just realize that there was some reason that God didn’t want us to take that car or wanted us to leave later or something. I didn’t know why He wanted it this way, but I knew that somehow it was for the best.
Elijah was obviously fully awake at this point, but he ended up getting some sleep around lunchtime. He was an incredible traveler! It exceeded our wildest expectations. Our only stops were for gas and super quick bathroom breaks. We made it out there and back in pretty much the same amount of travel time as Don, Logan and Megan who were in the other vehicle. I never would have guessed that going into this.
The truck ended up being nice to have on the trip. We had a lot more room inside and it was very easy to pack stuff in the back. I also appreciated the extra horsepower. Interstate speed limits in Montana top out at 80 and the two lane highways are 70. It was awesome being able to punch the accelerator at 70mph and easily jump up to 90 or so to pass someone on those two lane roads. I’m not sure the 1.4L EcoBoost Escape would have handled that as well. We got 19.3 mpg on the trip out and 18.7 on the way back. I’m assuming that we had a tail wind on the way out and a head wind on the way back. It’s a little lower than the published highway ratings due largely to the high speed limits and speed up/slow down style of 2 lane roads. We averaged over 65 mph including stops! I normally plan for a 50mph average when I’m traveling long distances with other people.
We made it to Great Falls, MT on the first night and stayed in a hotel with a nice pool and waterslide. It took about 10 hours to get to that point and then we only had 5 hours of driving left the next day.
Don’s twin brother (Dean) and his wife were very kind to let us stay in their beautiful home overlooking the Fort Peck Dam. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with them. Elijah’s favorite part was Dean’s ATV. There were a few miles of dirt roads behind his house and we took the ATV out every day for a ride. Tyla took some rides with me too.
The family reunion was on Saturday and we had over 80 people at the park. The total population of Fort Peck is 233 (as of 2010) so we made a noticeable bump on the population chart that day! Nearly all of the relatives were there. I was lost in a sea of names but found some great people to chart with. Tyla was positively giddy with all the people she got to reconnect with. And Elijah was in heaven with all the kids that were running around. He especially latched onto Dean’s granddaughters who were 8 and 10.
Aside from the family stuff, we also got to do a little exploring. On Saturday, Don took us out to show us the two farms that his family had owned and worked. We spent over an hour driving around dirt roads to check them out. Don’t tell Don you grew up in the middle of nowhere because he’ll just laugh at you. You’ve got nothing on him!
On Sunday he and Dean showed us the spillway for the dam and led us on a 4WD adventure up to the top of “TV Tower Hill”. It’s the highest hill in the area so it has a great view (and lots of communications antennas.)
The drive back started at sunrise on Monday morning. We made it back to Post Falls, ID the first night and then drove the 5 hours home on Tuesday. Our stop there was at the Red Lion hotel. They win the award for best free hotel breakfast ever! The buffet was delicious and we had an incredible view overlooking the Spokane River. At both hotel stops on the way out and the way back, we were able to have dinner with Logan, Megan and Don who stopped in the same town.
So we drove 1830 miles (plus the miles driving around while we were there) in 6 days with 2 days of visiting in the middle. It was a LOT but man that drive is so beautiful. I like the Seattle area but I would LOVE to live further away from the hustle and bustle. Those endless miles with no other cars around were very addicting.
A huge thank you goes out to Dean and Aileen for opening up their house to us and another one goes to Tyla for all the prep work she did to entertain Elijah on the trip. He was definitely done by the last day of travel, but all in all, he gets an A+. Our success now has me thinking about a family road trip to visit some of the national parks down in Utah…
P.S. This post is already crazy long so I’ll save the pictures for another day. It will take me a while to sort through them and edit them.
Elijah has gone to Little Gym for most of his life. Toward the end of each session, they have “Show Week.” I couldn’t make it to this one, but Tyla took a bunch of video and I edited it together. The older man who is a teacher is the founder of the whole corporation. It’s pretty neat to have him as one of Elijah’s teachers!
“How is Elijah doing?” is a common question that I’ve received after the death of Tyla’s mom. People wonder how we explain that she’s not here anymore or how we tiptoe around the topic of death. Hospice gave us a 20-30 sheets of paper about talking about death with a child. I tossed that in the trash and reached for the Bible instead.
Elijah understands that Nancy is dead and that we will never see her again on earth. But he also understands that Nancy believed that Jesus died for her sins, so when she died, God welcomed her into heaven. He knows that we’ll see her again when we die too.
Elijah has been a big comfort through all of this. When Pastor came over a day or two before Nancy died, we all had a devotion together. Elijah saw one of us crying pretty hard and he quietly got up, walked over, put his hand on their knee and said, “Don’t be sad. She’s going to heaven to be with Jesus!”
I think the hardest part of this for Elijah has been seeing people cry. He knows that heaven is a wonderful place and he knows that believers will go there so he doesn’t understand why we are crying. How true! He has been a model for us all to look up to.
Matthew 18:2-4 (NIV)
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
A year or two ago, we got Elijah the smallest helmet we could find. I put a GoPro mount on it because I thought it would be fun to see what he was looking at, but that didn’t work too well because his neck wasn’t strong enough to support the extra weight of the GoPro. A few days ago, we gave it another shot. As you can tell from the video, he was pretty excited about it. This video is 18 minutes long and we just ride around the block, but I figured I’d still post it because it makes me chuckle as I flip through parts of the video.
As many of you know from Facebook, Tyla’s mom passed away early Sunday morning and her funeral is today, but I know that many of you cannot attend so here is the obituary that will be in the bulletin.
Nancy Marie Brandt
May 25, 1956– July 2, 2017
In Memoriam
Born on May 25, 1956 in Lake City, Minnesota, Nancy Brandt was the youngest of two children of Jess and Marlys Dose. She was received into the Lord’s family through the washing of holy baptism at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota. Later, she confirmed her faith in the same church. She attended St. John’s Lutheran School and went on to Lincoln High school, graduating in 1974 to attend Dr. Martin Luther College. Nancy married Don Brandt on October 28, 1978 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota.
Nancy worked with special needs children at Lincoln Elementary as a teachers’ aide until she moved to Kirkland, Washington in 1991. She was a stay at home Mom until returning to work in 1997. Nancy worked as a preschool teacher at Calvary Lutheran Preschool and Kindergarten in Bellevue, Washington from 1997 to 2003. From 2003 to 2009 she cooked and served lunches in the public school system. In 2010, Nancy began working for Evergreen Speech and Hearing Clinic transporting records as a courier and organizing the archival of patient charts. In 2014, she was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Nancy stopped working in 2017 when her declining health prevented her from continuing.
Nancy Brandt is survived by her husband, Don, and their three children, Logan Brandt of Redmond, Washington; Tyla (Ben) Martens of Woodinville, Washington; and Megan Brandt of Kirkland, Washington; as well as her one grandchild, Elijah Martens. She is also mourned by her sister, Gloria Burmester. She was preceded in death by her father and father-in-law.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be directed to Calvary Lutheran Church toward the roof replacement project. The church address is 16231 NE 6th St, Bellevue, WA, 98008. Alternatively, gifts can be directed to Evergreen Hospice Care. evergreenhealthfoundation.com/support-hospice
Last weekend, we headed down to Cape Disappointment State Park in the very southwest corner of the state. Don, Nancy and Megan had a campsite for their trailer and Logan, Tyla, Elijah and I stayed a short walk away in a tent site.
This was only Elijah’s second camping trip in the tent and he did great! He went to bed around 9:30 every day (about 1.5 hours later than normal) and slept solidly all night until pretty far into the morning. It definitely gave me confidence to do some more trips with him.
The park itself was really nice. The beach was huge, sandy and perfectly positioned for beautiful sunsets. There are a lot of other parks nearby and we went across the bridge into Oregon to check out the 1906 shipwreck at Fort Stevens State Park.
The only major bummer of the trip was traffic. We left at 2pm on Friday for the 3.5 hour drive. It took us 5.5 hours (plus 30 minutes of stops) to get there. We only hit an extra 30 minutes of traffic on the way back but it all came in one big messy accident backup.
I was very impressed with the camera on our Galaxy S7’s. All of the pictures you see below were taken on our phones except for the shipwreck. It’s gotten to the point where I feel less and less of a need to lug the big dSLR around with us. It still has its uses, but I don’t feel nearly as bad as I used to if I forget to bring it along.
A huge thanks goes out to Don for doing all the heavy lifting when it came to meal times!
If you talk to Elijah, the first thing you’ll probably hear is that he is four now. For his birthday, Tyla came up with the idea of a Winnie the Pooh theme because that’s pretty much the only thing that Elijah watches or listens to these days. He had a Tigger shirt, a cake with all the characters on it and decorations around the house. Thanks to Tyla for putting that all together!
She also had the idea of having him hold a large 4 and posing for some pictures. Instead of buying one, I decided to cut it out on the laser. I did two of them with the top one also having his name cut out. I painted the top piece yellow, painted the bottom piece black, and then glued them together. The hardest part of the idea was getting a four year old to smile and look at the camera!
Heaven
Who knows what really goes on in the mind of a four year old, but he seems to be taking this all in stride. For the past couple months, I’ve been preparing Elijah for the death of his grandma. He knew she was sick and we talked about how some day she wouldn’t be around anymore. That was hard for him to understand, but what he did understand that she was going to join Jesus in heaven. There have been a number of times when he has walked over to a crying family member, stood there quietly and said, “It’s ok. She’s with Jesus now.” Oh the faith of a child!
We are all comforted knowing that Nancy is in heaven right now. There are still a lot of tears as we come to grips with the fact that we’re not going to see her again here on earth, but the separation is temporary because we’ll be reunited in heaven. Nancy knew that she was a sinner and deserved only God’s wrath and punishment. But when Jesus died on that cross 2000 years ago, he paid for her sins and she believed that. The Bible says that anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. It really is just that simple. Heaven is our free gift and requires zero effort on our part (thank goodness because I know I’d screw it up if any of it depended on me!) Reject that message and the result is much different.
If you’re in the area, you’re welcome to attend the funeral on Friday at 3pm at Calvary. Don’t expect to hear how Nancy was “a great person” or other common funeral quotes. Instead, you’ll hear something like what I wrote above: Nancy was a sinner like all of us, but when she died and stood before the judgement seat, God declared her not guilty, not because of anything she had done, but because Jesus had already paid the debt for her sins and she believed that.