Chapter 5: Cliff Jumping

We left our cove on Thursday so we could be closer to where we had to turn the boat in the next day and we found another cove that we liked. It had a large cliff area and the boys being....well boys, wanted to jump off of it. Brandon climbed up first on the other side of the cliff with a long rope with a rock tied to it to measure how high the cliff was. About 40 feet. I sat there and debated whether to go and jump off or not and decided to be tough and do it!!!

We all sat at the top debating who would go first and getting up the courage to jump. Brandon tried to scoot down to the little ledge in front of him,
but he slipped so it was a fall not really a jump, but it scared the rest of us on top. We could watch them jump, but couldn't see when they hit the water to see if they were ok, so it was pretty scary.
Jason went next and swore when he jumped it was the funniest thing ever.
I asked Seth to let me go next so I didn't have to be the last one in case I chickened out. It was one of the scariest thing I've ever done. I stood up there and couldn't make my feet go. I was frozen there. Seth had to give me a pep talk to make me go. Telling me that I was cool and "this is how our family rolls" type thing. I finally jumped and SCREAMED at the top of my lungs. As you can see from the picture I landed in a seated position. IT HURT SO BAD. I was glad I had my life jacket on because the force of me hitting the water shocked me, so I don't know if I could have swam to the top. I was in SO much pain after I jumped. My behind was bruised among other types of pains. It took me a little bit, but I laughed and cried at the same time. I could barely swim back.
The Seth jumped last.
This is all of us with the cliff in the background. (I was crying in the picture if you can't tell) There was just so much adrenaline running through me and the shock of it all I couldn't help but cry. I was so proud that I could hang with the boys. We joked about peer pressure and the saying "If everyone jumped off a cliff would you do it too?" my answer; as long as it's my family, YES!!!

Chapter 4: Peterson Olympics

I wasn't going to finish blogging about Lake Powell because I thought no one was reading because no one was leaving comments, but see that I have a couple interested parties, I will continue. On one of our days down in Powell, to break up the boredom we hosted the Lake Powell Peterson Olympics. I'll walk you through it.

We went off the slide on the houseboat.
Swam to our personal cliff.
Climb up then jump off the cliff.
Get on the Waverunner. (not an easy thing to do when your out of breath from swimming as fast as you can) then go around the island that you can see in the background.
Then speed back as fast as you can and try not to hit the rocks when you try to stop.
Then this is me swimming back...I thought I was going to die. I wheezed for the rest of the day. Here are the times for everyone.

Brandon: 3 min 05 sec

Seth: 2 min 50 sec

Jason: 2 min 48 sec

Me: 3 min 26 sec

It was so fun to see how close Jason and Seth were, and I wasn't that far behind the boys.

Chapter 3: Big Bertha

We moved out of Moki and went up Iceburg Canyon. Mom's favorite thing to do is while we are in the main channel is to stop the boat and jump off into the water, which you aren't "suppose" to do, but we did it anyway. The water was amazing!! SO warm!

It was fun to be in the water except that there are TONS of fish, and mom told us that once a fish bit onto a tie on her swimsuit, and that they like to bit toes. That's not something I felt comfortable with, so....
This is how I swam in the water. That or just keep kicking. Fish are gross!

We went up Iceburg canyon and Martin found our next spot.

It was AMAZING!!!! Once we had our boat parked, no one could see us if they were passing through the canyon, which meant that we had complete privacy, with a place to ride the wave runners without bugging other people. Which was a problem with our first place. It was so much fun being down there, but we had to make up our own things to do. Mom and Doug had bought an inflatable tube thing, called "Big Bertha." We tied it up so that the wave runner could pull it and we all took turns riding in it.
This is me in "Big Bertha," with Jason driving
Sara and Gayla
Seth, and my fav pictures...
My mom!! She was a little nervous when she first went out. Look at that face!!
She enjoyed herself though. I love this picture of my mom. Everyone laughed so hard on their rides. It was a little bouncy though.

This was us playing cards, which we did a lot while we were down there. Next up, Peterson Olympics!!

Chapter 2: Moki Canyon

We went out of Bullfrog Marina. My mom and dad used to go to Powell every year for probably 15 years, and Bullfrog was their favorite. In all those 15 years they never took us kids, so we were all pretty excited to go and actually see what it was like

"Captain Doug"

(Mom's husband)

Seth and Jason showing off on the waverunners. Brandon on his friend's Jet Ski. (Sidenote: I learned to ride it later in the week. It was so hard because you have to start out in the water, start the engine, trail behind it while it starts going, then pull yourself up on your knees, and then stand up. It's really difficult. I'm pretty proud of myself that I could do it, but I got a HUGE bruise on my inner arm from it.) We sent the three boys to scout us out a good spot to park the boat for the night, while the rest of us waited in the main channel with the houseboat. They searched for a good two hours up Moki Canyon. (If I ever was to get a cat I would SO name it Moki! I love that name...anyway) They found us a great spot.
This is a picture of our beach that we had, and the island that Jason and Sara brought. If we swam accross the channel there was shade at about 4:oo in the afternoon, so that's where we would hang out. There was a place where someone had tied a rope to a cliff thing so you could climb up and jump off. So the boys obviously had to jump.
Here is Martin jumping off.
This is a picture of Jason jumping that has a good perspective of the cliff. I was probably a 15 feet high. I had been in the water all day and didn't feel like getting in just to jump.
Gayla tried to climb up the big cliff, but only made it to this one. (I love my sister!) You can see the bottom of the rope in the background.
There were little fish off the side of the boat towards the shore line and there was nothing better to do. So we decided to try to catch them. We used tortilla chips as bait, and a mesh back to catch them. It was funny because Gayla was focusing on catching just the little fish, (maybe three inches long) and this HUGE carp swam towards her and scared her SO bad. It was hilarious! After it got dark we were pointing Seth's heavy duty flashlight into the water looking at all the fish, and we saw this and had to catch it.
We named him Guido, and gave him a bucket to live in. I sat there watching him, and fly landed on the counter, I caught it, shook it in my hand so it would get really dizzy, and threw it into the bucket, just to see what would happen.
and he ate it!! It was the coolest thing ever. So Jason started catching more flies, and feeding them to Guido. We also fed him a spider. It was awesome! T.B.C...

Chapter 1: Hanksville

So I've decided the easiest way to get through blogging about Lake Powell for my sake and everyone reading is to split it all up. So we packed everything into the cars Friday morning. Gayla, Brandon, Seth we're in Brandon's truck. Jason, Sara, Martin and I were in Jason's car. We left after we packed and we had no plans where we were staying that night. We couldn't pick up the boat until Saturday morning. Our only plan was we were going to Hanksville, Utah and sleeping out under the stars. It was a little scary for me. I like to have everything planned. Mom had to wait for Doug to get off work, and then they drove to Torrey, Utah and stayed in a hotel.

On our way we drove through Capitol Reef National Park, and saw these petroglyphs. I thought they were interesting. We got to Hanksville and looked around for a place to stay. There were a few hotels and things, but nobody wanted to pay for a room. We thought about sleeping in a church parking lot, and even joked about sleeping in an abandoned barn.
We finally found a small campground that was only $3 a person instead of $10 for a hotel. Other than the threat of rain. It was really nice. In the morning we watched the sunrise, chased jackrabbits, and...
CAUGHT FROGS!!!! Well, I found them, Gayla and Seth caught them. I wasn't going to touch them. We had to show Mom, so we put them in a Propel bottle. We caught 5 frogs, and ended up taking the to Lake Powell with us, we were going out of Bullfrog Bay. It felt right to take them there. They were fun. Anyway that's enough for now. To be continued...

Preview

I'm back from Lake Powell. We had a blast!!!! I just got pictures today, so it'll take me a couple days to get them sorted through and posted. (There are over 1 gig of pictures) Here is a preview picture. It's my favorite one of us from Lake Powell. It's a surprisingly good picture considering we were on vacation, and it was the only day I actually attempted to do my hair.
Anyway, more to come.

Lake Powell, Here We Come!!!!!

YAY!!!! IT'S TIME!!! WHEN WE WAKE UP IN THE MORNING WE'RE GOING TO LAKE POWELL. 10 HOURS!! If you can't tell I'm pretty excited.

I spent a few hours with Kellie Steinbeigle today. She moved after our sophomore year in high school. It was so great catching up on everything. We drove around for like 2 hours just reminiscing about high school and friends we both knew, and how our lives are now. It is just so crazy how much things can change. I can't get over it. She is so much fun and I'm glad that I got to see her today.

See ya in a week!!

Good Day, Bad Day

I've had an awsome day up until now. I'll tell about the bad part first and then about my good day to make me feel better and leave on a positive note. I was just looking on myspace and Emilee's page and her friends. I've known that she has "moved on" for a while now, but it's just hitting me really bad right now seeing how much fun she has with her other friends. That just used to be us, and we don't have that anymore and it makes me cry. I don't know whose fault it is if anyones. Best friends should stay best friends regardless of the situation. We're both so busy and wrapped up in our own lives, I think we have lost out on something great. I don't know if you read this Em, but I'm sorry if there is something I have done to make things the way they are. I love you and miss you so much.

Alright now the positive stuff. I took off work today to watch Gayla's kids because she has a calling in the YW and had to go up to girls camp today. So I took the kids out to the Layton house and we played with the puppies for a little bit, then Kayla, Harli, Sam and I walked to Hostess and bought bread and treats. It totally reminded me of the good old days when my friends and I would do that all the time. We walked home and had lunch it was so fun. Then at the last minute Mom invited us to go up to the lake, so we packed everything up and went. The kids didn't have swimsuits, so they swam in their regular clothes. I took Kayla out on the Wave runner and we spent probably a good half hour crusing around. We followed birds, went over the wakes of other boats, it was so great to bond with her like that. I wish I would have taken my camera to show how much they have grown, and how much fun we had today, but it's already packed for Lake Powell (1 day 12 hours!!!) Anyway, that was my day I'm so glad I got to spend it with the kids.