Lake Powell 2011

All year we look forward to Lake Powell.  It's a family tradition that we'll keep up forever.  I plan on wheeling my parents onto the houseboat when they're grey and decrepit.  And my grandkids better do that for me too!  There's just nothing better than Lake Powell.

 Roy and I took over 1,000 pictures on the trip with our new camera.

Figured no one would have the patience to look through all of them {about half are of the guys wakeboarding behind the speed boat}.  But here are some of our  favorites:

These are our great friends, Skyler and Sydney Smedley.  Syd and I met while traveling abroad and have since been roommates, bridesmaids, confidants, and BFFs.  Love this girl.  And Sky is such a blast.  We love hanging out with them and were stoked to have the opportunity, since we now live so far away from each other.

Mom is the organizer of the trip.  She plans out who is in charge of meals, cleaning the bathrooms, doing the dishes.  She keeps us all well fed.

And Dad is the captain.

Good team right here.  They pull it off every summer.

This year we had a lot of extended Collett family with us.  Together {plus some friends} we filled up two houseboats. 

Lots of wakeboarding!

 

 

We only had one major injury from wakeboarding this year.

Luckily for Seth we had a doctor on board.  No trip to the ER necessary.

 So after seeing that... now more than ever I've given up the whole trying to catch some air.  I love watching Cory land back flips, Mason pull off 360s, etc. but that's where it ends for me.  I'll pop around and have some fun and then I'm done and back to watching.

 Until the boat breaks...

Luckily these guys are good at quick fixes.

 Flagging.  I think we broke two flags on this trip.

Zac's happy face.

 The Nielson's brought paddle boards.  They're so fun, I love them.  Miranda and I took them out every day.  They made for killer pictures, too.

 I've talked about this before, but Roy has crazy hair.  I mean cray-zhee!  It grows up and out, and if we let it get out of control, it makes Roy's head look twice the size it really is.

So I was looking forward to the Powell  tradition of giving all the guys mohawks. 

I think Roy should rock the hawk for a few more months!

Studs!

I loved the job!

 Oh, and I think I found Roy's first grey hair!!!!  {You can see the hair really well on my computer}

Here's Zac and Mason's finished hawks:

Those who didn't get mohawks got... something else...

 The only way this trip could have been any better is if Roy hadn't had strep throat the first few days.  I found myself stumbling around the pitch black kitchen in the middle of the night looking for Ibuprofen while my poor husband sweat out a fever in our little cabin.


Again, thank goodness for having a doctor on board.  Roy was good as new after three days. 
But when he wasn't feeling up to baking in the sun all day, he busted out the camera.  He's pretty good, too!  Between Alexa and us, we really started figuring out how to work this thing.

Everyone helped in the kitchen.

Everyone got together for dinner every night.  

Everyone lathered up with soap and jumped in the lake for their "baths".

 But not everyone loves fish.  Is that safe to assume?  Uncle Guy just loves fishing. 

Even when the lake consists entirely of small, brown slimy things.  Eck.

 There were a few afternoons where we had brief storms roll in.  It was perfect!  It cooled off the hot sand and rock, and gave us a chance to relax too.

That is, as long as the storm wasn't blowing the houseboat all over the place!  There was one storm that appeared out of nowhere, and in seconds the side of the boat was being slammed into the shore!

The guys scrambled outside...

While the girls watched...

Meanwhile, a rope got tied around one of the props.  Not good!

It was up to James to rescue us.  His job was to use this knife:

to cut the rope away from the prop.  I took this picture of his hands just in case it was the last one.  You never know with those propeller blades ;-)

 He survived.

The Powell Party always ends with a night of comedy.  It's another tradition: the Talentless Show.  This year there was an unintentional theme of game shows.  It was pretty hilarious.  We started out with the Newlyweds Game Show. 

The other game shows/skits were great.  I don't think anyone will be able to forget Alexa's depiction of a boy going through puberty.  Awesome!

The duct tape dress made by Miranda and Zinnia. 

We loved hanging out with the cousins, aunts and uncles, friends, and the whole Neilson family.  But more than anything it was cool to finally be able to chill with the Mom, Dad, Mason, Alexa, and Zac.  All of us together again for more than 24 hours!

 Looking forward to next summer.  Teehee!