To the Lake!

Much like my mother, I had to make the most of my vacation time.  My family had planned for a multi-day trip to the lake to camp out on our houseboat May 29 through June 1.  We loaded up our boat, and headed off on the near 2 1/2 hour drive to Lake Powell.  Turns out that my dad and two of the brothers had to stay for work, so our boating party initially consisted of me, my mom, and three brothers Mitchell, Calvin, and Carson.

Our adventure definitely got off to an interesting start when we got a flat tire on our boat trailer about a half-hour away from the dock.  Luckily we had a great pit crew, and we managed to get the flat replaced with the spare.  Unfortunately we got into the dock a little later than planned, and it was nearing dark by the time we finally launched.  Our houseboat is moored off the shore on a buoy, and we managed to get docked with it without incident, and didn't think much of our late start (more on that later).

The next couple of days were spent out in our boat making frequent stops for tubing, water skiing, wake boarding, cliff jumping, climbing, and swimming.

Tubing is one of our favorite pastimes.  Unfortunately, so is crashing!  Hope this video clip works, it's pretty entertaining!

The water was unpleasantly cold that time of year.  It was bearable, but for a poor, sad, Maui girl it was a bit too nippy for me to spend too much time floating around (yes, I got mocked).  We also made frequent stops at the marina for Rockstars and ice-cream.

See.  I wasn't the only one who thought it was cold!

By Friday we were joined by my dad and my brother Blake.  Our boat is comparable to a floating RV, so our sleeping arrangements were a bit comical with the added people.  Especially when it started raining fairly hard in the middle of the night, and three of us attempted to sleep in an area really only meant for two.  I imagine my dad found that amusing when he found us still sleeping in the living room the next morning!

We left sometime Saturday afternoon.  Things were going well until we attempted to load our boat on the trailer and encountered a slight hiccup.

Yep.  Just, yeah.
We got the attention of a nearby ranger, and he called up the guys responsible for the boot.  After sitting in the hot Arizona parking lot for nearly thirty minutes, the brothers contemplated pulling the tire, putting on the spare, and driving off, not to mention doing some other unsavory things to the boot which the officer would have to handle in order to remove.  Haha.  Boys.  Well, turns out when our flat tire slowed us down four days prior, we were able to get into the park, but we were too late to get our boat inspected for mussels.  I'm all for preventing spread of the nasty buggers, but our boat had been inspected the last time we used it, and it hadn't been in any water since.  Things eventually got sorted out - which actually took several weeks, and multiple emails - but we finally got our vehicle liberated.

Mitchell had put in his mission papers a couple of weeks prior, and he was expecting to get his call sometime during the week.  The parents had even gone so far as to plan a call opening party that night which we were trying to drive home for.  We made it home on time, and Elder Brown's thick envelope was waiting unopened for him!

We had quite the crowd gathered to hear Mitch read his call to the Johannesburg, South Africa mission leaving September 19.  Sooo proud of him!!

No party is complete without a cake!