Washington was not on our list this summer; it just didn’t work with our schedule.

But then some things shifted and we had a short three-day window. We let the kids decide – was it worth the 6 hour drive each way from my parents’ house in Idaho? We would have just two full days at their house. It had been a few years since Hallie had visited their home and their son was leaving this summer to serve a mission so her vote was a definite yes. What’s another 12 hours in the car?! It was a very last-minute decision, but we made it happen even when we knew the forecast called for rain the whole time we were going to be there.

Did that stop us from picking all the fruit? No, it did not. But it did mean we had to get a little creative to keep this many kids entertained when the weather was raining on our parade.

When our kids think back to their summers in Washington, they will remember picking raspberries and eating them by the handful. And then making raspberry milkshakes.

They will remember making scary barn videos and playing hide-and-seek in the Christmas tree farm next door.

They will remember playing games together and making up dances and creating videos and making freeze-dried candy. We try to see each other every year – we’ve missed a few years – but they will remember spending their summers together.

And I will remember what it meant to watch these kids grow up living states away from each other and reconnecting every summer. I remember when Stacey came out to visit me in Milwaukee with just one small baby on her hip and I had Hallie and we were visiting the children’s museum together. And then the kids multiplied and we were quickly outnumbered in the best way possible. Totally worth the 12-hour drive added to our road trip. I’m so grateful Hallie was insistent we make Washington a priority.

As per tradition in our Washington trip, we stopped to pick blueberries as we started our drive home. (Not sure why this became the tradition, but every year we drive by the same patch to pick!)

We also visited the Adidas employee store in Portland which is their favorite shopping trip of the year and we always stock up on shoes.

One of Hallie’s good friends was serving in Portland and we happened to be driving through on his P-day. On a whim, she reached out to him to see how far out of the way he was and he was just minutes from where we were. As a parent of a missionary, it made my mom heart happy when I knew people I knew and loved were able to see my daughter while she was serving. I figured this missionary’s mom would also appreciate it if we had eyes on him so we made a quick pit stop at the restaurant he was eating at with his district to say a quick hello as we drove through.

I did not anticipate just how emotional his mom would be when I facetimed her and turned the phone to show her missionary son standing beside us. Pure joy. He only had about a month left of service at this point but it was still such a fun and joyous reunion.

After driving through Portland on our way back to Idaho, we made just one more stop to pick cherries on a beautiful countryside. We asked for a sweet variety and we were pointed to the Attika portion of the farm and they were the perfect sweetness and ripeness. My new favorite variety.

Making the drive home with buckets of raspberries, blueberries and cherries isn’t a bad way to travel!

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I just posted about Hunter getting his wisdom teeth out and exactly two weeks later we were back in the same office for an unexpected visit at 10:30pm on a Friday night.

Bennett had a large group over to hang out and swim. Steve and I were inside talking with his sister who was visiting from out of town and another sister and her family. All the sudden, I hear wailing coming from outside and then I see one of Bennett’s friends holding his mouth as blood was dripping from his hands as he approached the patio doors. We weren’t quite sure what had happened, or what the damage was but we all jumped into action to help him out.

As we waited for his parents to arrive, we tried comforting him the best we could but he was in serious pain. He was wailing. Its a sound I won’t forget and I don’t want to hear again.

We learned he had been doing flips on the trampoline when he over-rotated and hit his face on the bar of the trampoline. Which is where we started looking when we learned one of his teeth was missing. His parents were searching. Friends were searching. When we couldn’t find it, we wondered if maybe it wasn’t missing and instead forced up into mouth.

Steve and I could see his parents were in shock and wondering what their next move was. We told them Steve’s cousin Paul was an oral surgeon and we would be happy to give him a call to get some direction. After a quick facetime, Paul offered to meet them at his office to perform surgery, an offer they couldn’t refuse when they saw their son in so much pain.

They quickly left and we were left with 23 teenagers standing around looking at each other wondering what they just witnessed. Not surprisingly, the group wasn’t interested in swimming or jumping on the trampoline any more and they all returned home sooner than they normally would have.

By 10:30, Steve, his sister, Bennett and I were sitting on the couch talking. I saw a call from Paul come through and I was excited to already receive an update. The update was Bennett’s friend was sedated and they were starting surgery. But he wasn’t calling to give an update, he was asking us to go out one more time and look for the tooth that was in fact missing from the x-rays. He knew we had already looked but the window was closing to get the tooth back in his mouth and he was asking us to give 5 more minutes to finding the tooth – after that the tooth probably wouldn’t take. All four of us went back outside witih flashlights in hand. We searched for less than a minute when Steve said, “Go get the blacklights.” An answer to the prayer he had just offered up in his search.

I grabbed the blacklight we use for scorpion hunting and then climbed into the attic to grab a blacklight bar from the “Glow Party” box. With blacklights in hand we scoured the area. Steve had climbed under the trampoline. We were searching the artificial grass. The pavers. The real grass. The trash can containing all the paper towels we went through trying to stop the blood. Within 5 minutes, Steve yelled from under the trampoline, “I FOUND IT!” The blacklight was a true answer to prayers and the tooth was illuminated sitting in the rocks.

None of us were looking for a tooth so large, root entact, but there it was in his hand, the front tooth. With the tooth in a cup of milk, we made the 20 minute drive to the surgery site. Bennett felt nauseous the minute we stepped in the office and he kept his distance. I was okay to stand by the door and talk to the dad where no blood was visible and Steve was fascinated watching the whole surgery. There was a lot of damage to that mouth of his – sadly just two weeks after he got his braces off.

We were there for almost 2 hours, until the last stitch was tied and he woke up. He was entertaining as he woke up which was a welcome change from the pain we saw him in just a few hours earlier. Unfortunately, this surgery solved the immediate need but he will still have a lot of dental work and recovery ahead of him. But he was in good spirits considering the circumstances.

It was a wild night, but we saw so many tender mercies.

I am so grateful we found that tooth – truly a miracle after we had given up looking for it. I’m grateful Paul was in town and answered his phone late on a Friday night. (He had just returned from being out of town for ten days). And I’m grateful he had two assistants answer his text when he sent out the plea for help to join him in the office which made it possible for him to perform the surgery.

It was humbling to be in the midst of real-life angels.

And I’m hoping we don’t have that much excitement on a Friday night for a long time.

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We interrupt our summer vacation fun with a dose of reality: Wisdom teeth!

Hunter knew this was the year he needed to get his wisdom teeth evaluated prior to serving a mission next summer. Steve’s cousin is an oral surgeon so we made an appointment before school started to get some x-rays. Hunter was anticipating a spring break surgery.

His exam showed he already had a tooth that was breaking the surface and it wasn’t growing in straight, so his spring break plans got moved up a little. Or a lot! They had an opening three days later, he would have to miss the second day of school, and we took the appointment. It gave him far less time to be nervous!

He wanted to make sure he didn’t send any unnecessary text messages, so he left his phone in the car. I was hoping for some entertainment when I picked him up but he gave me nothing. He acted totally normal – just as predictable as he was not on anesthesia.

When we were driving home, he didn’t want to talk so he was writing in his notes app and showing me. “Did they keep my teeth?” 🙂

After we got home and got him settled, he divulged a little secret. He decided he was going to pretend he was more loopy than he was on our drive home and request that we stop by Trader Joes to buy flowers for his girlfriend and some for me. But then he felt bad about lying so he didn’t bring it up. That’s how concious he was!

He had several visitors bring him fun treats throughout the day and one friend came over to play games. I came home later that evening to find the “babysitter” sleeping while the patient was up and playing games. I’m not sure Hunter took a nap that day!

Although this wasn’t in Hunter’s first semester plans, I think he’s happy to have it behind him.

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Lake Powell is full of so many fun and memorable moments and then we sprinkle in a few tense/stressful moments to even it out. This year, the weather was a little windy which had us checking the weather every few hours. We had to be strategic to capitalize on decent water for surfing (the smoother the better).

This was our 10th year coming to Lake Powell and although the kids have grown, the activities they enjoy have mostly stayed the same.

Cliff Jumping: Every year the lake sits at a different level which means we’re always finding new cliffs to jump off. A “good cliff” is defined by ease of climbing out of the water, multiple levels to jump from so everyone jumps at a comfortable height for them and a cliff that is either straight or cuts in for ease of jumping away from the cliff. Bennett loves a good jump so he was willing to be our test jumper. He was excited to show us an area he found while on the jetski and he climbed up to make his jump and we could see it would be a pretty tough climb for the younger ones. So we kept exploring and found an area that better met our needs.

The “Island”: It’s amazing how much fun a bunch of kids can have on a floating island (the same material as a blow-up paddle board). It was anchored just off our houseboat and it gave the kids an area to wrestle and use all their energy. The teenagers wrestled for their daily workout and it left them all exhausted.

Jetskis: This is probably the favorite teenage activity. It gives them the freedom to explore the lake and canyons at their leisure. An added benefit is that they use them to give tube rides. This is a huge relief on boat drivers because there isn’t a minute of the day that a kid isn’t asking to go on the tube. And we did more than a couple rounds of jetski frisbee which is harder than it looks on the thrower and the receiver.

Wakesurfing: This is by far the activity we spend the most time on. We don’t ski. We don’t wakeboard. We don’t foil. We surf. And everyone in the family enjoys it. And there’s something so fun about celebrating people who are getting up for the first time and try over and over again and finally figure it out. Its always more fun to surf when the water is pretty and the background is stunning.

Between all the intense activities – there’s also some downtime. Peaceful boat rides. Exploring the shore. Making up water games. Friendship bracelets. Board games. Evening devotionals. USA soccer game. And all the moments in between. It’s a vacation that never gets old. It just grows with you and we’ve witnessed that as a family.

I’m always amazed by the beauty that surrounds us at Lake Powell. There is something so uniquely beautiful about the red rock, blue water, and varying rock landscape, and I’m constantly trying to capture what my eye sees. But no matter how many pictures I take, they never quite do justice to the beauty that exists in person.

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Lake Powell looked a little different for us this year.

We’ve been going with the same friends during the same week of June for 9 years. It’s amazing that our group of 8 families has managed to make it work for so long, but it didn’t work for us this year. We had a lot going on and we prioritized returning to Hallie’s mission, which happened to be during the week we typically go to Powell. We thought we may be able to fit in a Powell trip at the end of the month with other friends but that didn’t end up working out.

But the closer it got to Hallie getting home, the more we realized how important that Powell trip is for our family. (Hallie was funny when she was deciding the availability for her mission; with an 18-month mission, she determined she would rather miss two Christmases and only miss one Lake Powell. We looked at rearranging our New York trip later in the month and making a last-minute entrance with our group, but the pieces didn’t fall in our favor.

With just a few weeks’ notice, we found a last-minute houseboat rental just a few days after our return from New York. Powell is our favorite vacation, but it’s a lot of work and requires many hands. We tried finding a group that had the flexibility to join us, but it came as no surprise that everyone’s summer plans were booked and set in stone. That is, all but one family – our best friends. They were returning from another trip and they had the smallest sliver of time and they agreed to join us and we were so grateful they did!

Lake Powell with your best friends is always a good time!

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