houseboat

Dear Family,
We usually spend two different weeks a year at Lake Powell, sometimes three. It takes 5-6 hours to get there and we share a houseboat with 6 other families. This is the first time I have been without Caleb and we missed him. We wanted him to not feel bad so this letter is telling everyone the things that went wrong. Things always go wrong, we just laugh and still have fun.
Our air conditioner isn't working in our suburban so we left an hour earlier at 3:30AM to beat the heat. We thought we had some extra people coming and were going to have to put people in the back but someone decided to drive themselves and we had room to breath. We had one night of bad rain and wind. We saw it coming and decided to sleep inside the houseboat instead of on top so we hauled most of the sleeping pads inside and slept sardine style. Lauren, her husband Derrald, his brother Han and Lauren's pre-missionary (going to the Netherlands) friend Ashley decided to sleep on top in the storm and felt prepared. They attached a blue tarp to the 2 foot high wall around the houseboat and put a lawn chair in the middle. They started out fine but the rain came and went several times and each time it stopped they removed the tarp getting them wetter when they rolled it back on themselves. They ended the evening using the blue tarp as a blanket and just sleeping under the wet sheet. We heard the water come off the tarp several times when a huge bucket sized clumps of water came off the top occasionally. They finally decided it was time to awaken us at 6 AM so Lauren and Ashley came and climbed into our sardine bed with us. They were freezing, of course the girls were on the ends. They laughed and laughed about it and took VERY long naps that morning. We had a couple of nights of wind but we were able to sleep on top.

The ski boat broke down with a day and a half to go. We usually have "white trash" moments at Lake Powell and this was a classic. The boat was having problems and we slowly took the group of 15 across the lake to go on a hike. Two more were on the wave runner. Something snapped and we were no longer able to use the motor. Kay had to get on the wave runner and pull the boat made for 7 across the lake with 16 people on it. We looked like refugees. As we neared our camp we came by an island and a bunch of us decided we need to have a Cuban moment and jump off. Since the boat was being towed slowly, about 10 of us took floating noodles, jumped off and swam to the island pretending we were making a boarder run to get to America. We always seem to have fun.

The wave runner pulled the 5 man water weenie and water skiers. We played games. "scum" and "five crowns" card games were favorites along with a dice game that kept getting rowdy. I am sure people around us thought we were drinking (Mormons don't drink alcohol), we were very rowdy yelling and screaming and carrying on.

We had 4 copies of the popular book series Twilight. This was the 4Th book in a series that just came out. I couldn't stand them but others were avid readers. We missed Caleb but wanted him to know it wasn't the perfect trip. Love, Janae