Boat Week

We love our Boat Week every summer and this year was no different!  Papa and Grammie are nice enough to let us stay at the cabin for a week and also use their boat.  They even come up for a day or two and hang out with us.  This is our favorite time of the summer to be at the cabin, be on the lake and just be together doing whatever we want as a family.  

The weather this week was PERFECT! Hot and dry and just right to be in the water.  As usual we head out early in the morning so we can have a couple hours to ourselves.  There are usually just a couple other boats when we get there especially on the weekdays.  Beck got into the habit of saying "The lake is ours!" as soon as Deer Creek would come into view.  

I was so happy that each of the kids got in the water and kneeboarded, tubed, skied or whatever they felt like doing.  A couple of the kids (Keen and Beck) took some coaxing, but once they were in the water they were happy campers.  

 Even Baby Desh could not get enough of the water.  Every time we would stop the boat he'd whine to get in and swim.  So we did that a lot!  The older kids got really comfortable jumping from the boat the water and a couple of them even got brave enough to climb up the tower and jump from there.  That was definitely spurred on by their dad.  

 We took a lunch with us every day and had "break time" to eat and swim and cool off.  And of course we got some good skiing in there too.  

 Each of the kids progressed significantly by the time the week was over.  Rease and Rhen both switched from the helper rope to having the rope tied to the boat while they skied.  And Rease stopped using the learner skis that are tied together and got up a couple times on the "big" skis.  She is determined to be a big kid! 

 And when we weren't on the lake, we were just having fun.  Shakes in Heber City are a must!

 We loved our hammock time at the cabin.  Josh brought his two backpacking hammocks and strung them up between the trees.  And we had the big hammock set up as well.  We spent every evening reading and relaxing on the hammocks.  This ended up being my favorite thing to do every day!

 We celebrated Mr. Beck's 3rd birthday while we were there!  

 The kids caught bugs and butterflies.

 One day we took a drive over Guardsman's Pass and ended up at our other favorite place in Utah - Brighton Ski Resort.  The kids couldn't get over how different it looks without all the snow!

We stopped at the crater in Heber and the kids thought that was pretty awesome!

 Most of all, we just loved being together and having a week to ourselves to do what we wanted.  Josh and I kept laughing at the "rig" that we took up to the lake every day.  Our van did great getting that boat in and out of the water! 

And we all came home with a good tan - some better than others!