Raising Flowers and Skids

Las Vegas

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Leah

We finally made our way to Las Vegas.

We had booked a large timeshare condo place – and it was a palace! After being on a houseboat, it was a welcome difference.

How grateful I am for space!

And washing machines.

Not so grateful for European dryers… Well still am… But it takes about 3-4 hours to dry each load!!!!

I always try to get as much laundry done at the last place we are traveling to. It becomes part of my criteria for our hotel:)

So Vegas was all about laundry.

And shopping.

And insanely cheap restaurants.

Seriously, I’m not sure if people in the US recognize that restaurants and food is so much cheaper than in Canada!

Anyhow.

The kids were dying to outlet shop and have been saving up. We don’t have outlets either where we live. So our yearly outlet shop is where they get a ton of their stuff.

We also hung around the lazy river at the hotel which the kids loved.

Then we hit the strip.

We surprised the kids by booking a limo strip tour. They were super excited!

Our driver, (who we are convinced his real name is Vinnie and he’s a mobster) took us to all the evening shows and showed us Vegas at dusk and then as all the lights came on.

Amazing!

We saw the fountains at the Bellagio, the Volcano show at the Mirage, and Fremont Street. We walked around the casinos in the Mirage and the New York, New York, and explored outside the New York (Zach begged us to do that area). The Hershey store was cool too:)

Rob even showed the kids how to lose $10 in 5 secs. They weren’t impressed. (Although I’m glad they didn’t learn a lesson of winning after $10 and 5 secs too!!!)

All in all, the kids loved Vegas and I wish we had had more time to walk through all the hotels. The kids want to come back. Given our cousins live so close, it’s a possibility, but not necessarily reappearing on our family vacation bucket list!

Overall, it was the perfect ending to our adventures.

I can’t tell you anymore about our Vegas experience, because we all agreed, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas:)

Grand Canyon

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Leah

After saying our goodbyes in Lake Powell, we made the 3 hour drive to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

AMAZING.

(the tears in Josh’s eyes are the indication of how fearful of heights he is…)

We went for a short hike, then watched the amazing sunset.

We had dinner, eating in our little traditional log cabins (we had to have two to fit us all), and were all exhausted. In fact, I’m pretty sure Josh fell asleep while eating the pizza.

We woke up to catch the amazing sunrise (except for Josh, who was still zonked), and then later that morning, we went for a longer hike.

(Rob is not exaggerating when he is holding on for dear life either. He also has a big fear of heights!)

We headed out pretty early (of course we also hit the gift shop), saw a cool herd of bison, and then met up with our cousins in St George for a quick drink at Swig (where you can get all these cool mixes of drinks!)

It was so nice to “de brief” with them, share a few more laughs, and then some more tearful goodbyes:( So glad we got to spend so much time with them. I love that family so much!!!!

We visited Hoover Dam, before heading into Sin City (as my kids enjoyed calling it!)

We headed from remote and natural beauty…to chaos Vegas style….

Lessons from Lake Powell

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Leah

A few lessons I learned, in no particular order, having spent this time with family and friends:

1. 18 people + 1 toilet + 5 days = disgusting.

Lavender air freshener helps minimally. Etiquette lessons from Rob should have happened earlier and more frequently. But it makes for some funny conversations and you really get over your shyness pretty quick.

2. Although healthy food options can be available, when there is junk, kids will eat it. And a lot of it. Although, if you also put snacks out on the counter or healthy options right at the card table (e.g. cucumbers and blueberries), they will eat that too when completely sick and turned off of junk. Which happens. That tells you about the amount of junk that was consumed.

3. Judy’s list of what to bring, planning meals ahead of time and even cooking and freezing them ahead of time was genius. Made meal time so much easier. Thank you, my hero!

4. Staterooms ARE glorified coffins. Use them to store your luggage. And bring minimal luggage. I mean 1 swimsuit, 1 change of regular clothes. That’s pretty much what we all wore. OK, I noticed that the girls all had multiple suits, but the boys certainly don’t need more than one. My boys barely changed out of their suits. They slept in them most nights!

5. Secret Buddy idea – rocked. So fun. Thanks, my special buddy:)

6. My job working with head injury has made me a bit of a conservative, risk averse, cautious parent. But hey, that’s my reality. Sorry, kids:)

7. Bring more drinks than food. We drank soooooo much.

8. You need a ton of ice. TONS. And people don’t like me putting my homemade ice pack in the freezer (which I had to use when I pulled my hamstring waterskiing. Oh yes, next lesson, it is not easy to try to waterski for the first time at 42).

9. We talked a lot about parenting, and I’m glad that I am in the camp of pushing my kids to do stuff that they don’t always necessarily like. It seems that the 6 of us parents were all in agreement that we need to push our kids to do hard things, and that when kids are too “soft”, we as parents need to take the responsibility. It’s always reaffirming for me to hear these things, as my parenting is often microanalyzed and Rob and I get painted in a negative light, so it’s nice when you hear from people that you respect that they parent similarly to you and enforce similar values.

10. I love my kids being surrounded by other kids with similar values, and especially love that they were exposed to such awesome examples of respectful, fun, loving and “in love” couples. I love that they got to see how other families work – how we are the same, and how we are different. I love that each of my kids felt so loved by each of the adults there, as well as each of the kids.

11. I can’t believe I didn’t take any pictures of the whole gang of kids. What a miss! But I loved that they all spent time with each other. It seemed that there were always different people talking or playing games. There were no “exclusive relationships”, which often happens where, for example, the oldest will pair up with the oldest and stay together the whole time. Everyone mingled with everyone. It was so nice to see.

12. You can never overuse “big boy”, “chief” or “speedy”. Ok. I may change my mind on that one SOON.

13. All hymns and church songs sound better when sung in opera style (by Tanner.)

14. Stories about missions can really touch some hearts and spirits.

15. True family and close friend ties never sever. It’s been years, and we all just picked up from where we left off.

16. I think houseboating is glorified camping. And I’m not sure I am a camper. Days were great, but I admit, nights were harder. But, I would do it again (with some minor changes:))

17. Travel and vacations are the best thing in the world.

18. You really need two speed boats. One for water sports and one for exploring. We all agreed that we needed to explore the lake a bit more, but moving the houseboat was a big task, and there was not enough room on the speed boat… next time!

Lake Powell Campfires

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Leah

By evening, we were all pretty much zonked, but I think a campfire was lit every night

We roasted starburst the first night, and I know a couple of my kids have some starburst burns on their skin (proud badges of honour, of course).

I tried to make these ice cream cones filled with chocolate and marshmallows that I found on Pinterest. Everything looks so much better on Pinterest. Note to anyone trying them, they really don’t need long in the fire, AT ALL.

Melanie and Abby led us in some campfire singing on the last night. That was the night we all revealed our Secret Buddies, and the night where Opera Tanner graced us with some songs. Talented boy.

I think that was the night Zach and Josh graced us with some fighting over chairs too. Oh wait. I think they fought every night. And every day.

Jamie, Andreas and Judy all shared some mission stories, which my kids loved and wished they heard more of. Take home messages were received though: We do hard things and they make us stronger. Serve others and you will find yourself in that service and be greatly blessed. Forever relationships are built and what a blessing they are.

On the final night, the winds picked up, so we secured everything in preparation for a storm.

The storm didn’t hit as early as we expected, so we got set up for bed.

At 2:30 the rain came. And the wind. Luckily Uncle Jamie saved Squishy from flying off the boat!

There was a small (meaning covering about 1/3 of the deck) awning over the main deck, so when the rain came, we scrambled to get under.

We piled on top of each other, and we all managed to stay relatively dry under this tiny awning!

The rain lasted only about 30 minutes, but most of us were too tired to move back to our usual places.

It certainly was an adventure.

Lake Powell Beauty

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Leah

The one thing that was so evident, was how beautiful and unique Lake Powell is. We woke up to beautiful sunshine, and couldn’t get enough of the scenery surrounding us.

We watched storms in the distance, and caught a few rainbows too.

We were hit one night by a storm, and packed up all our stuff on the top deck and put it under the very small canopy.

Later that night (like woken up at 2:30 in the morning with screaming winds and rain), we gathered under that very small canopy when it started raining and slept in one giant pile. It wasn’t the most pleasant, but we knew it would be a good memory for us all to have:) This is what morning looked like (and it looks so much better than it actually was…)

Love this place.

Families on Lake Powell

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Leah

One thing we know for sure, is how much fun families can have together on a vacation.

While Jo and Andreas are not technically family, I certainly was with Jo’s family enough growing up to call each other family. And Andreas and I figured we’ve known each other about 34 years (and neither of us would have guessed we would be vacationing with our families together on Lake Powell 30 years later!!!) And getting to know their awesome kids, and having our kids bond, was amazing.

I absolutely adore my brother, sis-in-law:

Is this not the cutest photo bomb ever??

And of course, my nieces and nephews. My kids are begging me to figure out how we can spend more time with them in the next few years. Distance is a challenge:(

How many photos do you have to take before getting everyone looking straight?!?!? And get the right kids in from the right family…(why am I not surprised that Zach and Tanner were the ones to crash the party…)

The highlight of the trip, was certainly the relationships that were formed and strengthened. That’s what it is all about…

You can see we all dressed up for this family photo. We literally spent the week in these outfits. And I mean LITERALLY for some of us:)

These families made our vacation. So grateful for them all. xo

Lake Powell Adventures Cont’d

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Leah

The next few days were spent much of the same…

Most of us decided to join the boys upstairs on the deck under the stars to sleep. We dragged our bed mattresses up (there were already some up there for the 7 boys), staked out a spot, watched the stars twinkle at night, listened to the hilarious 11-16 year old boy talk (with everyone adopting 14 year old Tanner’s voice and preference of calling everyone Chief and Speedy). Let’s just say there was a lot of farting noises coming from the boys who dominated the center of the deck.

The only downfall was the horizon was light around 5, and the sun was up shortly after. Which meant our day started, every day, around 6-6:30 am (when we slept in).

The kids ate a healthy breakfast of sugar cereal, pop tarts, or pogos/corndogs (thanks, Jo) and were begging Uncle Fun Dip (as Andreas was tenderly referred to) to take them out on the water in the boat.

Needless to say, by 10 am, it felt like we should be calling it a day!

We rented a different water toy each day to keep everyone entertained. Tubing, water skiing and knee boarding were the rotations. Most kids tried everything. Jo and Andreas were pretty patient teaching everyone how to water ski. I even attempted, but my age showed when I pulled my hamstring on the one time I got close to making it up. The kids, on the other hand, popped up so quickly! They had a blast!

We had all agreed to participate in having Secret Buddies (Jo assigned everyone a name). While it was a pain to lug all the Secret Buddy gifts in our luggage, it sure was a hit! Creative people we have on board! The kids loved it, and I even suspect the adults enjoyed their little gifts too!

When not on the boat, everyone swam around, went on the slide, did some reading, played tons of cards and other games (not really sure what they were always playing, but someone was always playing).

We often just sat or lay around and chatted, catching up on stories over the years, comparing notes on parenting, and discussing our lives in general. The kids coloured each other’s hair and got to know Shaun, and his new friend Squishy (who almost got away from us in a storm, but was saved by Uncle Jamie)!

We also spent a fair bit of time complaining about the toilet etiquette (Rob gave everyone a toilet etiquette lesson, but I’m not sure that helped), the spiders, the mouse, and were amused by the amount of food that we had brought.

Every day someone would make a marina run to exchange the water toy, get some more ice and even make a trip to Walmart.

On most days, at least a few people went and explored the area by foot.

It was just so low key.

And just so good.

By night, things we had done in the morning felt like days ago. We often were all tucked in by 9:30 (after having some campfire time, of course).

Lake Powell Begins

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Leah

It was exciting getting up at 4am, heading to Walmart to buy some ice and breakfast things (even if you do buy the wrong things for those picky nieces and nephews of yours…lol. I admit, the chunks of protein in the “gogurts” were gross. Junk should never try to be healthy. Just stay junky.)

It was even more exciting trying to load all our stuff in the two trucks. Luckily Jamie and Judy had a cool back bag to put on their truck (not sure what it was called). We managed to get it all in and headed out to meet Jo and Andreas at the Wahweap marina, just outside of Page, Arizona.

It was about 30 minutes into our drive when I got a text from Judy saying she just realized we would be on Arizona time and not Utah time (they are an hour behind), so we could have slept in another hour…. ah well. Sleep is overrated.

We listened to our “Lake Powell CD”. I had asked everyone to send me their favourite song and I compiled a CD for everyone. It was fun listening to everyone’s choices (even though our boat didn’t have a sound system that worked:(, and we only were able to listen to an iPhone once. (Although the complete lack of electronics was amazing for everyone!!). Some people had more than one choice, so I also made an “overflow CD”.

The scenery was so different for us – the red rock and the desert! The heat was also different. Hot, but not humid (it’s the dry heat we always hear about. But it’s still hot).

After a quick stop for ice, we made it to the marina, hugged Jo and Andreas – and introduced all the kids. Let the adventures begin!!

It took at least an hour to get all the paperwork sorted, then some time for the “pilots” of the boat to get acquainted with the procedures. Rob was the designated houseboat driver, and Andreas was the speed boat driver. Jamie was on call guy.

Our houseboat, while not the most basic, was not the most luxurious either. But, it was good. We had 3 staterooms (1 for each family), only one bathroom (yikes….), but a nice little eating area, and a great deck up top (where the boys were all going to sleep). We loaded that thing up with the help of a great little porter system that helps you take all the stuff from your car to your boat. That was so needed as we had a TON of stuff!

Getting out of the marina was a bit of an adventure. The houseboat was a bit tricky to maneuver and we were in a tight spot. After looking a bit like novices, a very kind worker jumped on our boat and got us out of the slip (stopping for some gas for us) and led us to open waters where Rob took over.

Not going to lie. Those first few hours made me question if this was a good idea. The boat seemed hard to maneuver. The fridges seemed not very cold. The “staterooms” seemed like glorified coffins, and we couldn’t figure out where we should go.

On the other hand, Andreas had a bunch of the kids and they were all tubing, ahead of us, having the time of their lives.

After an unsuccessful attempt at finding our first location, I hopped in the speed boat with Andreas and some of the kids to go on ahead of the houseboat and scope out a nice beach for us to stay at for at least the night. We did just that, and while we waited for the houseboat to slowly make its way to us, we tubed with the kids (I tubed with crazy Ellen – the youngest in our bunch — tube hogger!!!)

Beaching the houseboat was a bit of an experience. We had found a neat little spot in a bay pretty close by (Warm Creek Bay) (we wanted to be relatively close to the marina by speed boat), but it was rocky and steep. It was not going to be easy to dig a 3 foot by 3 foot hole on either side of the boat required for the anchors. The boys quickly figured out they could use rocks to secure the anchors in place and after multiple attempts, Captain Rob beached the houseboat and we were set. He was awesome! His heart rate took a bit of time to come down though…:)

The spot we had was a bit rocky (only downfall), but was surrounded by gorgeous canyons and scenery, had a separate campfire area, was deep enough in the back of the boat for the kids (and adults) to go off the slide, and was in a bay so we figured would be protected from any bad weather and was the perfect location to do all the water sports. We figured we would stay for the night, if not two.

We stayed the whole time. It turned out to be the ideal spot. Of course, touring around would have been ideal too, but it takes so long to get the houseboat moved and secured, none of us seemed like we wanted to do any more work. Time to relax.

That first day, we simply unpacked, set up camp, got our bearings, got to know each other, hiked a bit (nice places to hike around us too), swam, walked along the boat, went off the slide, and the kids had a blast tubing. (Thanks to Andreas who spent most of his vacation pulling our kids around on tubes, water skis, or knee boards…)

We had a huge BBQ feast prepared by Jo and Andreas, went for a quick hike (to find the boys who had already left to explore) and then sat around the campfire for the evening.

Perfect day.

Nighttime came.

Not so perfect.

The boys were upstairs sleeping under the stars, the girls in the main cabin, and the adults in their “staterooms”.

The girls were freaked out by the gazillion spiders. This is how they slept:

But I admit, by about 2 am I couldn’t take our coffin like stateroom either, and a had a full on panic attack. I swear, I was so close to waking everyone up to get us back to the mainland.

Deep breathing works wonders and I found a nice little cushion, a dry towel, and our resident mouse and myself enjoyed the back porch for the remainder of the night….

On to day 2….

Vacation Time: St George, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas!

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Leah

A couple of years ago, my best friend from my teenage years, Joanne, asked me if we would be interested in doing a trip to Lake Powell with her family and perhaps a few others. She has two kids around the same age as mine, and I thought it would be a lot of fun to reconnect with Jo and get to know her kids (I already knew her husband as we also grew up together and I thought we would all get along just fine).

Given the limitations we have with picking our vacations times with Rob’s separation agreement, I knew it would be a couple of years before we could make some solid plans, but Jo was good with that. We decided to approach some other friends and family to see if they wanted to join in renting a houseboat on Lake Powell.

I immediately contacted my brother and sister in law. They were completely into the idea (well, my sis-in-law was…my bro was worried about the heat. And maybe the 12 kids in close quarters too:)) and we were thrilled as that meant lots of cousin time! (They have 5 kids as well between the ages of 8-20). Jo reached out to a few people and got some tentative responses, but when all was said and done, it was only our family, Jo and Andreas’ family (2 kids) and my bro and sis-in-law (Jamie and Judy) and their 5 kids that were committed.

Two years whizzed by. To be honest, given Rob’s heart attack just this past March (while spending March break with Jamie and Judy at their home in Utah), I’m not sure a houseboat vacation, on a lake in an area with limited contact with anything, was what we would have chosen…but being committed, and with full ok from Rob’s doctor (his stress test came back that he has made a 48% improvement, compared to their anticipated 5% improvement, an ECG which was completely free of “heart attack” signs, and the health of a 30 year old (that was his favourite result)) we flew down to Las Vegas after a tearful goodbye with Reggie, and then immediately drove to St George, Utah, where my bro and sis in law have a vacation condo.

We got them all out of bed with our late arrival, and then spent the next two days doing a whole lot of nothing.

Truth be told, on the first day the adults shopped up a storm for food for Lake Powell, did some cooking (Judy is an amazing planner and had planned all our meals and prepped a bunch of them too) and marvelled at how much our children ate.

The kids hung out, swam, played some games, debated, and compared notes on their Canadian vs. American lives.

I wish I could say I took a ton of pictures on that first day, but really, I took two. But this is all they pretty much did anyhow….(although we did have a lovely pizza picnic on the Saturday night as well).

The youngest of the bunch…could you just not eat her up???

All the furniture moved around to allow for all of us to sleep meant lots of space to wrestle, play games, and laugh and talk!

The next day we all headed to church, and then went and visited some of our churches historical sites.

St George temple.

All the cousins! Oldest is almost 20 and the youngest is 8.

Our family

Jamie, Judy, and their 5 kids

Inside the tabernacle; listening intently to the tour guide

She got them participating!

They loved being up on that podium!

All of us!

That night we packed up all our stuff in anticipation of a very early start. It was a bit stressful when we saw how much there was to pack. Luckily we rented suburban and they had their suburban too!

It was an awesome start to the vacation and the kids were excited to get on the way to Lake Powell!

Quote of the Week

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Leah

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing more I can add to this.

Beautiful.

Profound.

Difficult.

Powerful.

Life changing.