Barker trip to Flaming Gorge
Alex's Grandparents own a cabin 5 minutes from Flaming Gorge with a giant boat to take out onto the lake. The weather was great, cloudy mostly but warm. Check out captain Alex scoping the land for a campsite...nice hairdo
Nick and Danielle getting ready for the wave-runner.
Cute Cynthia and Evan
For the most part, we cruised around on the boat, drove through canyons, and tubed.
(cool picture of Paula and Evan)
Pre-tubing faces. Three of us squished onto a one-person tube. See below for the aftermath...
:0)
I am pretty sure Alex was having a good laugh while driving. I thought we were going to die!
And of course I lost my bathing suit. In retaliation, I mooned the boat!
Nick and Max. Click on the picture to enlarge it and check out their faces...priceless!
Gerard joined in for the fun on the second day.
Nick looking a little nervous
Alex likes to show off, especially when I am driving because I don't drive the boat very hard - don't want to crash it! So here are some pics of him showing off and looking bored...
still bored...
sexy pose
still bored...
So I thought I would turn it up a little and teach him a thing or two. He didn't last much longer!
Ha - crashed sucker!
Evan didn't love the water, it was a little chilly. But she did relatively well for a 16 month old.
Gerard, Cyn and Nick all climbed up a rock to jump off. While Cyn was waiting, Gerard and Nick jumped over her head. The next day, Gerard and Nick jumped off a 50-60 foot cliff. Fortunately they survived. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures.
Cyn just about to feel the pain...
Alex acting like the farmer he REALLY isn't. But he looked cute doing it anyway.
Some cute baby pics...
Alex likes to pretend that Evan is his kid. He always jokes "Just look at me, I mean don't I look like a dad?"
Cute puppy living in the yard next to us.
And Cynthia feeding the baby to the puppy.
Behind the house there is this huge empty garage. So Alex and Cyn and Nick set up a "tennis" court and we held a tournament. The net was made of a wheel-barrow and some motorized thing. First time I have held a raquet in a long time. Check out the action shots...
So I beat Alex and Cyn beat Nick, so the two girls played in the finals. It was pretty intense :)
I won a point to give me the lead and match-point, but...
Cyn won instead. She was EXCITED!
The brothers and their champagne.
I had a great time with the "in laws"
Ahh, Lake Powell. There is nothing quite like it - warm water, good food, boating and most importantly...no priorities. This year was quite unusual. We only had 6 adults and 2 kids on the boat. I remember the days when we would have 20 adults staying on the boat. But it was some good family bonding time.
The view from the back of the houseboat (above and below). We staying in a great location that had multiple rock ledges that were about 2 feet under the water.
Alex tried and tried to pull himself on the air mattress behind the boat. Everytime we started going faster, the boat would just pull him right off the front of the mattress. Didn't work all that well but a good idea none the less. Snow loved the tube as usual. We even got Lyla to ride on the tube behind the boat with Alex, Shawn and Snow.
The water was about 85 degrees so I didn't mind spending most of the time in it. Neither did Snow. I think she spent more time under the water than above it. Every second she had, she was swimming. She and Shawn and Alex would get heavy rocks and go out to the rock edge. They would dive in with the rocks head first and sink as low as they could, then quickly surface. Needless to say, Amy and I didn't participate in this. But Snow was amazing. She is a strong swimmer!
Dad would throw the rope from the back of the boat and have Snow chase after it. Then she would hold on under water while he pulled as fast as he could and brought her back to the boat.
Some really cool pictures below with our new camera. It is soooo sweet! I can stop time with the fast shutter speed!
Alex above and Shawn below (Shawn took a pretty good belly-flop after this one :)
"Tuch Down" Dad!
Me diving in - check out the great form!
Fish faces - they really are two peas in a pod. They spent hours with their goggles swimming around in the weeds following fish. I can't even think about it without getting the heebie-jeebies. Sick.
Fearless Snow. She just decided that jumping off the houseboat would be fun and once she started, she did it about 10 times in a row each day. The first pic is the first time she went then below that is a cool series of shots when I made her smile for the camera. If you click on them and enlarge them, you can see her face better...
This one looks like she is standing on the beach and is a giant!
Then after Snow jumped off, we thought it would be fun to take pics of everyone jumping off at the same time. I took about 50 but only included the best ones. They are so hilarious - and much better in large size.
Check out Amy's do-rag...
Alex being artsy and changing the focus
Oh, cute
For rude - Shawn pushed her in
Cute Lyla pics
We missed all of our friends and family but still had a good time. (Now I think we might even buy a ski boat - Alex is on a new kick :0)
