lake powell.

I remember reading a post last year of this bloggers favorite posts of the year. She had the link to each one of them underneath the summary and a teaser picture. How she had it set up was so cute and creative and I remember thinking "that's what my 'into 2015' post is going to look like". I was pumped. I even emailed her and told her I was going to steal it and she couldn't stop me. Now that it has come and gone... meh. I gave up on it. It was a cool idea buuuut maybe next year. It's a lot of work that I didn't realize I had to do.

So instead of THAT, I decided to do this post that should've gone up the summer of 2014 and would've made my #1 favorite post, if it had gone up.

It's called: LAKE POWELL: THE BADDEST OF ASSES PLACE & OUR ANNUAL FAMILY TRIP. PART 1.

So for those of you that don't know, my mom is obsessed with Powell. Starting when we were really young, we would take yearly trips there. We go to a different spot/marina every year, but it's always Powell. We all love it so much. Don't we guys.. Yes we do. (subliminal messaging helps) Obviously with brothers and sisters, sometimes in-laws, there can be drama. There always is. Someone is pissed about this or doesn't agree with that.. blah blah. But honestly, it's pure bliss for me. There is nothing in this whole wide world that I'd rather do or that I'd rather do it WITH, than to camp at Lake Powell with my dysfunctional, psychotic, weird ass family for an entire week. 

And yes, we camp. Every year we always seem to find the perfect beach to call home for those 7 days. That first day is always brutal. Entertaining, but brutal. We get to Powell at the ass crack of dawn after driving all night, maybe get a couple hours of sleep and then we unload the boats. Then we unload our all of our crap from the vehicles to the boats. And then we're off to find our beach. After hours schlepping our stuff onto this slice of heaven, setting up tents, gazebos, organizing our 'kitchen', and making sure all of our children are still alive, people are hot, grumpy, hungry, swearing under their breath haha.. But finally, our camp is ready to party. We never make plans, but rather just take it day by day, hour by hour. The only thing we plan is an 'adventure day' where we all take our boats out together & explore the history of Powell. We take the little canyons, go on hikes, find Indian ruins etc... We have lunch in a cove somewhere and swim until the kids pass out. Our only other planned deal is our 'theme night'! That will be covered in part 2...

Seriously, I can't say it enough. I love Lake Powell. My favorite memories I've ever had were made there. The sun, the red rocks, our campfire chats, wakeboarding like a badass (that's right), my family.. it's perfect. I look forward to it every year. This upcoming year will probably be a little different. Minds have changed about whether they want to spend our family vacation at Powell anymore, or as much. It's hard work, yea. It takes months of preparation, weeks to pack & plan meals, and some of my fam aren't really interested in that anymore! And that makes me sad. But luckily, our vaycay to Powell will happen every single year regardless of who wants to go, because the head honcho's will never not go. And neither will I. It's sooo much funner with everyone there as a group, as a family, stuck together for a week and forcing us all to be in each other's company whether we like it not... I know ya'll are reading this..  But I can find my bliss under the sun, on the red rocks watching my boy play in shallow water without them, too. I don't really want to, but I will. 

And let me tell you about the storms. Lake Powell storms are seriously legendary. They're also inevitable. We camp like champs (<< that rhymes) through these storms. We've been through some pretty rough storms during the night & then we wake up the next morning with the weather being like "oh heyyyy, sorry about that. here's the blazing hot sun with no clouds for the next 6 days".. smh. Sometimes they happen later in the week, sometimes they greet us the first night, like this year.

I have to tell you about our storm this year. So we all know how bipolar the weather can be, so we've all got ourselves tents that work well in storms. Okay, except me. Ty has never been able to come to Powell with us (i know, right! it's always been football getting in the way. all these years.. next year will be his first foe sho) so Drey & I don't need a 12 man tent like everyone else has haha. So I bring a pretty good size 4 man which is perfect for us. We always nail/sandbag/rock/all of the above our tents down so the wind throughout the week doesn't blow them away or snap our poles, because it will.

This year, nobody had really done anything drastic to their tents the first night. After all, it was our first night, we'll do it tomorrow, no reason to panic. Haha we're so stupid.

So as our camp was falling asleep that night, the wind was picking up. Nothing too bad, but enough to be annoying. So I got out and took off my rain fly. I fell asleep & woke up a little later to the wind blowing like a damn whore & rain on my face. FML. WHY. Dreydan was out cold, nothing was going to wake him up, which was good. I drug myself out of my tent, rain fly in tow, and started the impossible task of putting up the fly by myself in the rain & hard wind. It took me forever & by the time I was done I was soaked.

I crawled back in my tent & the wind was blowing so hard it was flipping the upper side of my tent up. So I freakin' sat in the corner of my tent, straddling the pole, legs spread eagle holding it down. My wet hair was dripping down my face, my arms gripping the poles, my heels dug into the ground so the bottom of tent would stay down.. seriously? Once the wind died down a little and I could crawl back into bed, I felt rain sneaking in from the top down on me because I had put my fly on twisted. Worst first night of Powell ever. And it really was haha.. But worth it.

 the babies! cousin love. we were missing an actual baby though.

 morning marina run. and konnor photo bomb like a boss.

 the sweetest.

 you can see half our scattered camp in the background.

you just have to look past little man's sweet face!

 drey & kase tubing dirty solo. drey knows what's up.

me, sista's & drey haha. he didn't like the rougher ride.

we pretend we're still dancers, but that leg of mine... tsk tsk.

 the gang eatin' din din.

 random.

 lake powell wasted.

 poor little fishy didn't stand a chance.

.....

 throw out the noodles & jump in.

lunchy on the go.

because piyo, yo. nightly routine.

 i wakeboard & can like, do inch jumps and stuff. nbd.

mmm heaven