Lake Tahoe

John: We went to Lake Tahoe a couple of weeks ago. The excuse for the trip was that I had a paper to present at a conference held there. It was a great conference venue! So we packed up the whole family, picked up a sweet car from BYU, and drove the nine hours. The drive went surprisingly well. Everything was desert until you drive over the mountain to Lake Tahoe, and then everything is forest. The lake is beautiful!

The girls couldn't help themselves and ran into the water the first opportunity they had, even though they were still in their clothes.

Sandcastles happened.

Kylee and I built a monument to our love - see the "J + K?" The monument failed to withstand the waves and water, and we are trying not to read into that very much.

J + K FOREVER!!

The girls really loved being allowed to dig in the sand to their hearts content. Playing in the dirt is pretty cool when you are a kid... or an adult.

Burying each other in the sand was really fun. Letting Kylee bury me up to my neck was a big mistake though. It meant that I had to get in the water up to my neck to rinse the sand off, and the water is shockingly cold.

Ellie got sunburned really bad the first day. She should have been more conscientious about putting sunscreen on. :)

Lots of cool sights!

Miriam does a good job putting her own sunglasses on.

One cool thing about being on BYU's business is they paid for my food. So we went out to eat for dinner every night and basically got half off since I eat about the same as the three girls combined. The kids REALLY like eating out. Oh yeah, so do the parents. The pizza in this picture is a new favorite of ours. It has fresh basil and spinach, artichoke hearts, pepperoni, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes on it.

Our hotel room was pretty small. But we rigged up some partitions and the girls did great.

Speaking of rocks, Ellie started a rock collection. It is now her pride and joy. At age 11 she still remembers this rock collection (the only thing she remembers from this trip!)

What a fun trip! Perhaps the saddest part of coming home was giving up the BYU car, which is about 32.5 billion times nicer than our car.

What's better than throwing rocks into the water?

This picture was our last look of the lake on our drive home.

From Kylee's journal: The day that we drove out to Lake Tahoe went surprisingly well. The kids did pretty well. It was Miriam's birthday, but we didn't really do anything for it that day. We had a new toy for the kids after lunch and lots of books and toys thrown all over the car and it worked out okay. As we drove across Nevada we couldn't help but think that there is nothing there. A few agricultural areas and the salt flats were really white and flat (shocker :) ). We drove through Reno which we couldn't help but think will probably be a lot like Phoenix :(. But after that it seemed like we went straight up the mountain. I was so grateful that we were driving the BYU car because we had driven in the heat all day long and then drove up the huge mountain. I have no doubt that our car would have overheated well before we got there. We drove up to the tops of the mountains where there were ski resorts a plenty. As we crossed the summit we almost immediately spotted Lake Tahoe. What a stark contrast to all of the sand and rock we had been driving through the whole day. It was stunning. A massive, startling blue lake surrounded by evergreen tree covered mountains on all sides. It took a little while to drive down the mountain, but we got to the hotel that evening and was really surprised by how forested the town of Incline Village was. It was hard to see the buildings because of the huge evergreen trees. We checked into the hotel, ate some food, and tried to rig up dividers so the kids could go to sleep. We learned that they couldn't go to sleep with the kids being able to see each other, but with a blanket separating them and a blanket separating them and us, they were able to go to sleep eventually. Fortunately that first night was the hardest to get them to go to sleep.

The next morning the kids woke up crazy early. One issue that we had was that we weren't sure what time zone we were in being right on the California/Nevada border. Turns out that we were in Pacific. So we had to wait like an hour for the hotel breakfast to open. We made it eventually, although I am pretty sure Miriam thought we were trying to starve her. After that we dropped John off at the conference down the street and tried to go to the beach. I figured out eventually that all of the beaches in Incline Village are privately owned and we have to have something from the hotel saying that we are staying there, plus pay the entrance fee of $25 to get into the beach. So after driving around the town a bunch of times and going back to the hotel we made it to the beach. I didn't have the kids in their swimsuits yet, because I thought they would just play at the playground for an hour or so until John was done with the conference for the day. What a silly mistake. After looking at all of the geese all over the beach and playing at the very cool playground for a few minutes they charged into the very cold water. I gave up pretty quickly on keeping them dry and just let them play for a half hour or so until we had to go pick up John.

We went back to the hotel and put on swimsuits and went to a different beach in the same organization that had a regular swimming pool as well. We played at that beach which was nice, but the sand was a little rough. I totally failed as a mother that day though and forgot to sunscreen Ellie's back. So sad. We really had a nice time though and after playing for a while, stopped for a picnic lunch. John went and bought himself a burger (on BYU's dime, nice) and me and girls ate food that we had brought. During the lunch time, we had a scary experience where we lost Ellie for a few minutes. We thought she was playing up at the playground but she was actually down at the beach again. Yikes! After lunch we played at the sand some more and went over the to kiddie pool and the big person pool for a little while, which was surprising cold. After having a fun filled day playing in the sand and swimming we went back for showers/baths and going to get dinner. We went to a pizza place and made quite a spectacle of ourselves trying to get the kids to sit still until the food arrived. Fortunately after the long day of playing hard the kids slept much better. We stayed up watching a movie. Each night we watched a new movie, thanks to Redbox: Knight and Day, Warm Bodies, The Dark Knight Rises, The Host. It was really fun. It had been a long time since we had really watched a movie. We really enjoyed staying up and doing that.

On Day 3 we drove down the west side of the lake a few miles to Sand Harbor State Park. On our way there we stopped a view point and the adults had a really fun time climbing on the big rocks out in the water. The kids were super grumpy about it though. Then we went to the state park, where it was really fun, but was very crowded. We had a nice time though with better sand than the day before. Ellie started a rock collection and John and I made a monument to our love. :) It was really fun. (Although I sure wish we had invested in a beach umbrella before we left.) So much sun all day every day in this trip. John went to the conference again that afternoon and the kids and I went to a park. For dinner that night we went to an American place where Ellie commented on the food. "That cornbread was a delicious dessert." Miriam was pretty funny too saying, "Eat, eat." whenever she saw food come by our table on its way to a different table. So sad for her. We interviewed Ellie and asked her what we did that day. Her response, "We showered and got ready for the day." That's it?! :)

The next day (Day 4) we drove down the west side of the lake again, past Carson City, to Zephyr Cove. This place was recommended to us and the sand was the best. I also really liked the big rocks to climb on. What I didn't like was how it seemed like every other person on the beach seemed to have a dog with them.  One little boy followed me around on a tube and seemed to think climbing the rocks was a competition. It was pretty great. We had a really nice time though and it was fun to see the humongous lake from the southern end. We had to drive back early so John could present his research and then we went to California and to a rocky beach that was hard to find, but really fun. Perfect skipping stones! Ellie got a lot more rocks for her collection. It was actually kind of windy which was interesting to see the waves. The rocks were really pretty. That night we had our favorite dinner of going to a new pizza place and getting the Southern Comfort Pizza: spinach, fresh basil, tomatoes, artichokes, and pepperoni. Our new favorite kind of pizza. We also got ice cream to eat after the kids went to bed that night. We also picked a souvenir to take home. A little teddy bear with Lake Tahoe in it.

The next morning we packed up and headed home. The drive home went well. Miriam actually took a nap! Ellie and I each watched a movie. We made it home before dark. It was such a fun trip! I really liked doing it by ourselves and with the exception of the conference every day we really did whatever we wanted. And we got to use BYU's nice car, their gas, and stay in the hotel that they paid for. Sweet! I also loved seeing beautiful Lake Tahoe. It is so big and deep and gorgeous. Stunning! We learned that there are 60 or so inlets to Lake Tahoe and only one outlet. Also, none of the water leaving it makes it to the ocean. We also learned that if it were to be drained it would take 700 years or so to refill. Crazy!