Our Jam Packed Weekend

This has been the busiest weekend we have had in a while. Jared and his family came up for the Outdoor Expo and for training he has in Salt Lake and they were going to be done pretty early on Friday and it was a holiday and well it was HOT so we decided to take the boat out. Jeff and I took the boat up about noon to get a spot and then just hung out and swam until everyone else got there around 2:30. It was fun to get out with the family and play and well, it was HOT. It was fun though and not as crouded as we thought it would be. We were out until almost 9 and when we got home Ross and I were tired and just got a movie to watch and crash. Then, bright and early on Saturday, 9am, Ross, Jeff and I met at my parent's house to go repelling. We went up Battle Creek to the waterfall up there, we were supposed to do a double wrap off the waterfalls there. We got out a little later than planned and then as Jared was dividing up gear and handing out wetsuits (the water coming off the falls is very icy) we saw a couple groups start up the trails but figured they were all just hiking, until we got up to the falls and saw this guy setting out his gear right where we wanted to go. We were going to wait until they were done but the guy with the ropes didn't seem to know what he was doing and took forever. Then it took 20 min for some of them to back off the edge. The guy did offer to let us use his ropes, however, after watching him we really didn't trust his rope job and finally just set up our own off some bolts that took us right over the trail. It was still fun but not what we planned, at least we didn't have to put the wet suits on.

After repelling we had to rush home to shower before going up to Salt Lake to meet my aunt and uncle. My uncle works for Utah Power and they have a picknic spot up Big Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake and they had planned a family activity up there for the day. It was a lot of fun to just hang out, visit and play some games. It was also quite a bit cooler than in the valley so that was definately a plus. We had dinner then set up the badmitton net and all the little kids played and in the midst of that my uncle and brother were trying to play a game, which was interesting because Nathan and Celeste actually kept them on their toes, they were able to return quite a few.

Sunday was a little more relaxing, except for having to get up early again on my day off. My brother blessed my new niece in church Sunday and their ward starts at 9, but after that it was more relaxed than the rest of the weekend. After the luncheon we went home and got a nap, so nice, but as the day went on we became more and more bored but was invited to my parent's house to do/watch fireworks with the little kids. It was definately a family packed weekend, but its not very often that my brother and his family comes into town and we can actually get out and do stuff together.

Finally!!!

So Ross, me, Jeff and Melanie have had a secret for a couple weeks now and it was sooooooo hard not to tell anyone and finally we can. WE BOUGHT A BOAT!!!! It actually happened pretty fast. On June 19th Ross called on his way home from work and said, we should get a boat. That day we were meeting Jeff in Salt Lake to hike and Ross told him about it and by the next Wed we had found a boat we liked, Jeff had called on it and he was willing to lower the price on the boat. However, the boat was in St George and we didn't want to drive down if we weren't serious about it. It happened so fast and I was a little nervous but Jeff and I drove down to St George on the 27th and took the boat to Gunlock Resevoir for a test drive and long story short, we came home with a boat. On the way home it still hadn't hit yet, even though every so often we would declare "We got a boat". We kept looking back at the boat thinking its really ours. The only problem was that it had a broken joint in the outdrive that had to be fixed before we could take it out. On the way home from St George we let my dad in on the secret so he could talk to his neighbor, who is a mechanic, and see if he could help us out. When he got into the motor he found much more damage than we had thought but with an extra trip to Bountiful he was able to get it fixed and on the 6th of July we were finally able to take it out for the first time. We had decided we better play with it a little before we invite others so we can be comfortable with it, since none of us had driven a boat or tried to get one on or off a trailor. Monday when I took over the wheel it was pretty choppy and a little nerve wracking but we got better at it and then the water smoothed out and it was a blast. Its not a very large boat, it seats 8 people and we can't put more than a certain weight limit on it but its a powerful boat, it can get Jeff up on ski's which to ski you need a lot of power. We spent a while out on the lake and the next day I was so sore, but couldn't tell anyone why I was sore. We did take the boat out again on the 8th to play and had invited my family on the 9th to meet us up at Deer Creek to surprise everyone with the boat. It didn't work quite as planned, the surprise part, but it was still a lot of fun. We played for quite a while and everyone that wanted to was able to take a ride and we played until the sun went down.