For the second year in a row, we started our summer vacation with a bang at Lake Powell. We met our Wisconsin “family” there and reminisced the days when we had half as many kids between us. The days when we could share babysitting one day a week between all the families and have it be manageable! Life has changed for all of us and it’s fun to gather each year to share in one another’s journeys.
My kids love this week and talk about it leading up to and after for quite a while. What is better than waking up and going out for a ride, coming back to some paddle boarding and food, going back out for another ride before taking a little siesta in the afternoon followed up with more food and evening paddle boarding and a ride. Some days we went to the marina for a little treat. Other days we explored the lake and found cool places to cliff jump. We sat and talked. We laughed. We cried…from laughing. We put sunscreen on every kid in sight. We put on life jackets, we took off life jackets. We rubbed Aquafor on faces (from life jackets rubbing). We lost swimsuits and we found swimsuits. We searched for dry towels. We tried convincing kids to take a rest and sleep. We cooked food and cleaned up food over and over again. We tried new things. We had a great time.
I’m proud of my kids for getting out there and crashing in the water time after time. Most of the kids there are growing up on boats and are really good at water sports. The last time our kids were on a boat was our last time together at Lake Powell. It’s intimidating to get out there in front of everyone when you feel inadequate – but they got out there every day and improved so much. I’m so glad they didn’t quit.
I used to be able to do a backflip on the trampoline – but it was always a little scary to me. Steve and our friends daughter (12 years old) throw backflips like it’s no big deal, even on really high cliffs.
This is my favorite picture of Hallie partly because of her face but partly because of the back story. The first two days she got up on the surfboard you could tell she was uncomfortable and trying to figure out how it worked again. By day three she could get up consistently and at this point everyone was pressuring her to let go of the rope and surf the wave. This was good in theory but she realized after she let go of the rope she had no idea what to do! She hadn’t been coach on what to do and everyone was trying to yell from the back of the boat instructions for her to follow. I captured her accusatory look – “What am I supposed to do now?” As you can imagine, seconds after this shot she lost of the wave and slowly floated down. We all had a good laugh when she got back in the boat.
Wake surfing was made for people like me. I don’t like high impact water sports but I like to participate – this is the perfect combination.
Not quite a family picture – next year we might let Briggs join us!
All the kids – they grow up too fast.
