Strawberry Jam

Steve and I made strawberry freezer jam the other night. It is soo yummy, I was a little nervous because I have never made jam before but it was surprisingly easy (We used the Sure-Jell reduced sugar Pectin... if anyone was wondering).

This post is mostly because I am procrastinating writing a paper. I am taking this independant study history class and it sucks and I suck at doing it... can ya tell?

Lake Powell

So I realize that all of my blog posts lately are inundated with pictures but I just can't help myself! So please understand that with lake powell we compiled everyone's pictures and had like 1040 pictures to choose from, I really consolodated! But here you have it.....

The first week of June we spent a week in lake powell with Steve's family, his Canadian cousins, and our brother-in-law, Jordan's family. There was like 22 of us on the boat. It was so much fun, we played on the boat, played a lot of cards, ate good food and enjoyed time with our family so much. I have decided that Lake Powell really is one of my favorite places to be.

This was our home for the week....

And this was our playground....

This water weenie ride actually turned quite bad, Michelle (third girl back), and I hit heads on one of our crashes and it actually burst her ear drum! It was the first day in Lake Powell... She took it like a champ though. She seriously didn't even cry. I always knew I had a hard head!

The boys came away with no injuries, if you can believe it.

I really tried to talk Steve out of cliff jumping, he didn't listen of course but it made a pretty cool picture, eh?


Here most of the boys and Racheal swam over to a cliff in our little cove (I know you can't tell it's a cliff but there is a drop-off into the water.) They climbed around for a while and then thought it would be really cool or really manly to push big rocks into the water to make big splashes.... it was highly entertaining to watch from a distance.

Steve is such a great wakeboarder, it's so fun to watch him do crazy stuff that I would never even think of trying. He loves every second of it though, it looks like quite a rush to be so high in the air!

Laura and I took a crazy tube ride together, we went through the biggest waves. We seriously could have been in the ocean.

Hangin' on....

But not quite hard enough!

This lizard was the ugliest lizard I have ever seen, it hung out right outside of our houseboat, but everytime someone went to look at it, it ran away. Finally we got a peek at it after a couple of days of chasing it.

Steve and his first time wakesurfing


I drove the houseboat for about five minutes, and retired after complaints of not being able to go in a straight line. I'm pretty sure I am not meant to drive boats!



Over the week I had to have played at least 10 or more games of rook. This is our last day and I finally won my very first game ever of Rook. What an exciting day!



We went on a really cool slick rock hike on Sunday, It was really pretty. Calvin (the dog) killed a lizard on this hike, it was pretty sad. Poor lizard...


Best Part of the Trip...
Last year at Lake Powell I spent the entire week trying to get up on the wakeboard. I finally got up for the first time on the very last day on the very last boat run of the whole trip. I basically spent the week doing this.... (the picture below)



But this year at Lake Powell, I was able to get up and I got a little adventurous and I jumped! I got some air going into the wake! It was really exciting, I have never really gotten air anywhere besides a trampoline. I have to say that wakeboarding is so much more fun when you can actually get up! Woohoo!

Brittany's Graduation and Yosemite National Park

The Wednesday before memorial day weekend Brittany (my littlest sister) graduated from high school! We were able to make it to her graduation. She had a solo and did sooo good! I am so proud of her. She literally amazes me, I could never get up and sing in front of so many people. I am bummed too because she is going to BYU in the fall and we have gotten to see her so much! Congratulations!

Yosemite

Over Memorial Day weekend Steve and I went to Yosemite with his family and their family friends the May's. These memorial day vacations are a long-standing tradition in his family. This last one was the 21st! We had a ton of fun in spite of the weather hanging between 40 and 50 degrees with intermitent rain the whole weekend. The only day that was sunny and nice were the day Steve and I got there (65 degrees), and the day we left (60 degrees)!

The whole rest of the weekend, the weather looked a little something like this...

We did a hike up to Vernal Falls which was only like 3 miles, but probably 3/4 of a mile is walking up 600 steep, wet granite stairs. We all felt it the next day. The nice thing was the falls were so beautiful it was worth it to climb all those stairs.
One day we went to see the Giant Sequioa trees. I had never seen them before but they were so unbelievably huge! None of these pictures really do them justice but if you ever get a chance go check them out, you might not believe your eyes!

This tree looked like the jaws of death, that's why we're scared. We could have been eaten :)

Steve's birthday was spent rafting the Tuolemne River. It was like 40 degrees and raining the whole day! One of our guides said that was the coldest he has ever ran that river. Needless to say, everyone tried as hard as they could to stay in the boat and not to fall in! I had done a little bit of rafting before and thought I sort of knew what to expect, ummm no. I had no idea! This river had all the way up to class 4 rapids, I had never been in such crazy water!