living on the lake

lake powell is a big tradition in curtis' family but we thought it was out of the question this year. out of the blue and last second, his aunt and uncle invited us to stay on the house boat with them for 4 days...how do you say no to that!? curtis was working days that week so we headed to page tuesday after he got work. we met up with everyone else and spent the night on the boat at the dock. the next morning we got up, had orientation, then off we went! after some searching we found the most perfect beach to anchor...it was in a little cove to protect us from wind and the shade hit us at about 1 p.m. preventing us from getting too hot in the afternoon. at night, the 4 couples got rooms and all the kiddies slept under the stars on the upper deck. it ended up raining most of the nights we were there so most of the kiddies ended up on the floor of the living room.

this is mason and james driving the house boat. the beach! mason loved it!

curtis' younger brother, casey, recently bought this sea doo and everyone had a blast on it. mason went for a ride with his grandpa and probably would have enjoyed it more if he didn't have to wear a life jacket while doing so. he HATED his life jacket!!

tubing! so scary but oh so fun!

one day we had to go into the marina to get some gas for the sea doo and on our way we found this little place to do some cliff jumping. all the boys climbed up and me and kylee stayed behind to man the boat.

our last full day at the lake a group of us went to rainbow bridge. it was beautiful! there was a ranger there who was really nice and she showed us a dinosaur print left in the sandstone nearby.

on the way home from rainbow bridge we went into this super narrow canyon to see how far we could go. it was a tight squeeze but we got pretty dang far up there! after that we stopped at dangling rope marina for gas and ice cream! on the way back to the house boat we got stuck in a storm which was a little scary! everyone was huddle on the floor with towels wrapped around them trying to stay warm. no worries though! we all made it back in one piece!

walking on water ;)

the two youngest boys!

the little girls made these mud balls and lined them up on the edge of the house boat....i thought it was cute :)

we are going to miss our army boy! we were so glad he just happened to be on leave when we went to the lake! i don't think curtis would have had much fun without him.

thank goodness there was a fence all the way around the boat!

our perfect beach!

cody up on the top level...we even had a hot tub up there!

the boys had fun jumping off the back of the boat and going down the slide.

with 24 people on the boat, things got a little chaotic at times but we had an absolute blast!! we are so grateful that we were able to go and to curtis' family for inviting us. we hope to go again many times in the future!