Family Reunion

Two weekends ago we had our big extended family reunion. We traveled down there with my parents and grandparents. Unfortunately on the way down there, they were in an accident. The only damage was to their car, a couple of work zone cones, and a sign It was pretty scary though and could have been a ton worse.
We finally made it down to the ranch resort outside of Zion National Park. My parents and their descendants (except one brother and his family) stayed in one humongous cabin. It was our birthday/Christmas present this year to stay there on their dime. It was super nice and somehow John and I finagled our way into the suite for two of the nights. :) The best part of that was the king sized bed, luxury bathroom, and room sized closet to have Ellie sleep in. However, that didn't mean Ellie slept in. Here we are on the first morning watching the sunrise.
Ellie LOVED the new place to explore! There were a lot of big window that she could look out. It was really delightful.
There was a hot tub that we took advantage of a couple of times just to the left of this picture.
Gorgeous sunrise!!!
The first full day there we just played, swam, and ate way too much. They had a big '80s party that night. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures. (hint, hint, Patti :) ).
The next day we journeyed into Zion National Park. It was really hot: 107-111. We had a good time with our fun family though. Here is beautiful Jane.
Because it was so hot, we went to the place where you could play in the water. Needless to say it was a popular destination.
Here is the then newest member of the family. Sweet Lizzy was only a month old at this point.
Here is Jane chilling in the back pack.
Lucas and James. They had a great and very wet time. I was sure that kid was going to lose his hat down the river.
Ellie loved playing in the water.

Here's us.
Jane was eventually let down. She was way more adventurous than Ellie was and actually wanted to walk in the river.
Here is us on the walk back from the river. Those sandstone cliffs are stunning.
Ellie was pretty tired.
She had a fascination with my sunglasses.
Guess which picture was taken in January and which one in July. :)


Here are some sunset pictures back at the cabin.
My dad.
We stopped at Bryce Canyon on the way home. Ellie was not too happy about it. Still beautiful though.

All in all, it was an eventful but fantastic trip. We only wished it could have been longer.

Busy Independence Day Weekend

We had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. It all started out with a camping trip to Jordanelle Reservoir with Glenn and Andrea and their little son Brayden. We didn't have a reservation for a camping site so we ended up getting one that you had to carry all of your stuff to--about 3/4 of a mile, give or take. This is what Ellie did while we were hauling the stuff. We had a good evening. The bugs weren't too bad. We even saw a badger, which was a lot bigger than I had imagined. However the two kids had a hard time getting to sleep. Normally if Ellie cries for a bit, she'll eventually goes to sleep. This wasn't the case that night. She got upset enough that she ended up throwing up all over herself and John. Fortunately I had extra warm clothes for Ellie. This is the happy girl when she woke up in the morning. The very two large tents on one tent pad. This proximity was why the kids kept each other up in previous evening.Here are the kiddos playing. Brayden is almost exactly four months younger than Ellie. Later in the morning we went out on Jordanelle on Glenn and Andrea's boat. The kids got kind of sleepy during the boat ride. We got home in time to dump our camping stuff and pack some other clothes to take up to my parents' house. We stopped at Anna's other grandparents' house for a birthday party for her. The highlight of the part for Ellie was the kiddy pool that they had set up. The highlight for us was the yummy dinner, homemade ice cream, and fun company.

Then it was up to my parent's house. We spent the night there and went to church with them. My mom has a rose in her garden called, 'Ellie's Rose.' I thought it was appropriate to get a picture with it.
That night was another party for the Fourth of July. Anna had a fun cake to blow out the candles. Here is my cute family. I love Jane's expression in this one.And a couple more of them.
After dinner and more homemade ice cream there was fireworks. Ellie LOVED the sparklers. She was more stunned by the rest of the fireworks. The next day we played some more at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They had a very fun bucket that Ellie wore for about 1/2 an hour. Then it was off to Antelope Island for a fun picnic lunch.
I thought it was so cute when I looked over and saw Ellie following my grandpa back to the car. He is so cute with her.
We got a great tour of the ranch by my grandparents. They volunteered there for a few years.

What a wonderful weekend!

Lake Powell Adventures

The camera that we had for 3.5 years broke on this trip to Lake Powell, so I couldn't get the pictures off the card for a while. However, I couldn't help posting about this trip. When we left we were a little worried about the weather. It was showing that there would be high winds on Friday night. We learned a valuable lesson: don't go to Lake Powell if they are forecasting bad weather. It just isn't worth it.
It did start out fun. Here is Ellie with Grandma. Ellie really did like the boat and was a champion about wearing her life jacket.
We spent Friday (the supposed windy day) in canyons close to our camp. Here we are hanging out under a cool overhang in Lost Eden Canyon. (I might be wrong about the canyon.)Ellie's cousin Anna came with us. Cute little girls!Well, on Saturday we woke up and the wind was too strong to want to go anywhere on the boat. So we hiked up the canyon behind out camp and found this cool cave.
You can see the water in the distance.
An arch!
We stayed in camp for all of Saturday and were really blessed because our camp was in a low spot that meant that it was mostly sheltered from the wind.

On Sunday we woke up with nice weather and traveled about 13 miles up lake to Forgotten Canyon, ironically named because we will never forget it. It really was a beautiful canyon though. We ate lunch in this beautiful alcove area.

Uncle Marc took a turn holding Ellie while we explored the rest of the canyon.

We hiked up to some ruins called Defiance House. It was a pretty good walk up there. I wish we had taken a picture looking out into the canyon. We were surprisingly high up.


On the way out of the canyon the wind seriously started to pick up. We stopped by this floating port-a-potty and ended up staying and staying. We got there about 3 in the afternoon. At about 5 we thought the wind had died down enough to try to go out in the main channel and head back to camp. When we got out there, we found out that the wind had definitely not gone down enough. Wave after wave came over the front of the boat (hence the death of the camera), and we decided that there was no way we were going to make it back then. So we headed back to the port-a-potty. The wind was very strong. Spray would be lifted up from the lake and hit the people in the boat. Fortunately, we dried out okay though before it got dark.
Unfortunately it also got cold. We had twelve people on the pontoon boat. We had two sleeping bags and a couple of baby blankets. My dad pried open the custodial closet and John, Ellie, and I spent the night in there. There were ventilation openings at the base of the walls so the wind still got through, but we were a lot more sheltered than the people outside. However, we were still very cold. The only warm part of me was where I held Ellie: all night long. Needless to say I was way past cramped muscles. Sitting on the cement was less than comfortable, and I won't even talk about the smell. Ellie at least slept for most of the night. She woke up a lot and would cry (she lost her voice for a couple of days after we got home), but we would sing to her, and she would go back to sleep. Poor Anna did not sleep that well. Sometimes I noticed that Ellie would wake up when Anna would stop crying. Poor girl. It was perhaps the worst night's sleep of my entire life. (That includes labor!)
In the morning the people outside were freezing, and it was starting to rain. We went to shore and built a fire. We tried to feed Ellie breakfast which she threw up all over herself. That was the breaking point for me. So sad to see my little girl shaking because she was so cold and then to throw up all over herself. We ended up being let in a houseboat for a while to warm up. Then we went back to camp, packed up, and went home. It definitely was an adventure. For the record, we do want to go back to Lake Powell again. Just with some lessons learned: don't trust the weather forecast, and bring warm stuff on the boat (just in case).