Sizzling in Powell

Our family vacation this year was ten sizzling days at Lone Rock Lake Powell. Did I say sizzling? Oh yes, I do think 111 degrees would classify as sizzling. Heat rash, sunburns, and all. We pretty much lived in the water, which was OK with us. Brynn proved to be our #1 fish, and poor Cas and Tay had to battle all the heat and sun with fair red head skin. We had floats galore, and buckets and shovels and all the sand we could handle (especially when the hot wind would blow through). But the nights were gorgeous (we even got to watch the bats fly around in the sky which I found fascinating). We spread pads and blankets and sleeping bags out on the large matt in front of the trailer and the kids sprawled out in the cooling lake breeze and slept under the stars. West and I waded out to the boat and slept on the benches. Such sweet relief from the heat of the day. I only took, well, too many pictures as usual :). With the hot sun beating down it seemed only natural to haul camping chairs out into the water and just sit waste deep. It was perfect. Tayler falling asleep in the camp chairs after a long day of swimming:West and Cas with Lone Rock in the back ground:

Cas decided to brave the knee board... and did AWESOME. She tried to get herself out of the wake, but couldn't quite make it over the wake... maybe next time honey, just a little extra umph and you'll be there. So proud of her for trying it. And of course Jay showing her stuff out on the knee board, though she wasn't at all interested in leaving the wake LOL.

And Sean with his mad knee board skills: Cliff jumping (which I was "brave" and tried last year, but after trying it last year was all the more certain that I would not be joining in this year) where I was so impressed with the kids.

Last year the kids (and dads) built a huge sandcastle with a moat, this year they worked on the grand canyon which led all the way to the water's edge.

Mass tubing:

Little dare devils standing up while we were going:

Sam always a favorite with the kids, didn't let them show him up: And of course West and I had to join in the fun :) Booger didn't want to stay in the boat for the second round of cliff jumping... so here was our solution ha ha. She did pretty good for hanging out in the middle of the water on the knee board.

If the kids had some scary issues with jumping off of this cliff, West was good to go with them the first time. After that, they didn't have any problems at all and ALL six kids jumped and jumped and jumped (I was especially proud of Tay who is usually really timid (here remembering the TEARS over the snow white ride at Disneyland... seriously, the snow white ride???) but after jumping once with West was a maniac over doing it all on her own). Lindee wasn't sure about jumping... West just simple shoved her LOL. The rule was... ONLY dad can push. :)

West throwing Cali in.

Whew, that was a lot of jumping pics, but really, what do you do when you have half a dozen kids they all want their picture taken to prove they did it?

One night glow sticks got passed around to all of the kids. I found Tayler being an "alien", as she put it.

We took the kids to see the damn from the dry side. It was a little unnerving for me. Stupid heights. And we went into the visitor's center which was extremely boring. But we did see, outside the window, a group of people taking pictures of themselves in front of West's truck. We were laughing so hard, and tried to get a picture of them taking pictures but we caught them doing it right as they were finishing and weren't fast enough with our own camera.

I'm still not very good at wake boarding, but it's sure fun to practice :) Still me :)

And now West, who's amazing as usual. Our friend Nick who is athletically able in every way. He sucks. ;)

Lindee taught the kids about chicken fights:

One afternoon we thought we would take our friends Nick and Sara, and their kids, and our new friends Jen and Chris to our cliff jumping place. We pulled up and found... is he OK? We poked and nudged and he didn't stir. We did notice that along with his water and alcohol, he'd brought his stuffed monkey. Really?? The unusual thing about this is that we were no where near a camp ground or any day areas. How had this guy even gotten here? Passed out with his feet in the water? Did someone abandon him? It was a little spooky. West headed to the marina to grab a ranger. They were able to do what we could not ( though to be perfectly honest we didn't try THAT hard because really, did we want to?) and that was wake him. The rangers told us he could hike in to that point, which he had done, but it was a 45 min. walk. They sent him hiking back to the road where they were going to go and meet him. I was just glad to have him gone. It's a little awkward having a picnic lunch with some dude and his stuffed monkey passed out next to you.
And here we cue in more jumping pictures of our half a dozen kids. With some of friends too :)
Chris:

Sara:

Jen: Nick (show off ;)):

Cute Cali and Hannah chillin' together: Nick:

And FINALLY, after long agonizing, Jaxon made the plunge. He DID it. Good job Jax. Sara, Jen, and me:

Cali in complete exhaustion:

Cute Sara brought down foam visors and foam stickers for the kids to decorate their own hats, which was good since we were forcing our kids to wear both hats and sunglasses whenever they were out in the sun. We were seeing a lot of red cheeks, noses, and eyeballs around our camp. What can you expect from 111 degree weather? Fun in the sun. And fun in front of Sara's trailer. We also did glitter toes on the girls and even on the younger boys :). One of my true loves, beach volleyball. I absolutely loved the daily games... and most games only Sara and I were "man" enough to play with the boys. We ended up being the only girls out there. Highlights? Shane hitting me in the gut which bounced the ball back at him, and then immediately hitting it back at me, this time smacking me square in the face. Because, you know, pounding me once with the ball wasn't enough so he had to have another go at it :). Sara said it was paybacks because just the day before I plowed her in the face with the ball ha ha. All in good fun. This picture makes me look buff:Watch out, hot man coming through: I'm ready to go back. Any one else want to go? :)