Where's summer?

School starts in 1 1/2 weeks. Can't believe it. We have tried to pack as much as possible into this summer and I'm now tired. So are the kids, so it's been very successful! Last week we were on a houseboat in Voyageurs Nat'l Park. Very, very beautiful and more fun than any of us expected. Mom bid on a houseboat at a raffle and had the high (and only) bid. We were a little worried about the weather (Mary said that if it rained, we wouldn't need to see each other again until Thanksgiving), but the weather was fabulous and we swam Sat and Sun. Most of us jumped off the slide in the back which was the favorite part for my kids. I'll post some pictures next time.... There was also a tickle fight which was the favorite part for a couple of the other kids. Lots of laughs, lots of food, lots of sun. Hard not to have a good time!

I have yet to golf this summer, Joe wants to go up to the Wilderness for a round, and there is a hike on the way up to the cabin we still haven't done. There is also the tube ride down a river that I promised a nephew and that will have to wind up the summer. The State Fair is here and this is the first year that I'm not looking forward to the cheese curds. There is probably not a ton of health food out there, but we'll survive :)

It's been a year since the first surgery, and I'm still kickin'. The moral of the story is not to let ANYONE label you based on statistics.

Summers are grand!

Grand Canyon Nat'l Park

The trip out West was incredible, we managed to squeeze in everything I wanted to see! The Grand Canyon was, of course, awesome. The hike we chose was mostly in the shade, and I kept Kate on the inside of the trail while we went down (and up). We did not make it to the bottom and some day we're going to do that, but not this time.

The next day we went up to Page AZ, and took a smooth water raft trip down the Colorado toward the Grand Canyon. The raft went through Glen Canyon and was very pretty. Joe claims I got into a fight with the guides, but they wanted us to sit on the tubes of the raft and I was worried about the kids (ok Kate) falling into the 46 degree water. If it was a fight, I lost since we all ended up on the tubes. No one fell off and we all managed to survive getting into the water at one of the stops.

Glen Canyon

After the raft ride, we went to Monument Valley. Beautiful, but you can sure tell it's not a National Park. The NP's are run SOO well, with maps, hikes, roads, bathrooms etc.... so from there we went up to Moab to sleep so we could hike in Arches Nat'l Park the next day.

Arches Nat'l Park

From there we did another marathon drive over to the West Utah and stayed in Cedar City. From there we headed for Bryce Canyon and the next day was Zion Nat'l Park. Both were gorgeous, but I think I like Bryce a bit better since the formations (hoodoos) were more unusual.

The kids didn't fight (much) and we ended up in Las Vegas for the last two nights and stayed by the pool. We were at Mandalay Bay (my friend Keith works for MGM and got us a deal), but since we checked in late, we were upgraded to the Four Seasons. Since the Four Seasons didn't have queen beds, I wanted to go back to Mandalay, but they were booked up. Joe claims I'm the only one in the history of Vegas that wanted to get out of the Four Seasons. It worked out for the best, because we could use the Mandalay's pool but they couldn't use ours. So we would go over to the wave pool and lazy river at Mandalay, then come back for quiet time at our pool. The quiet pool also had all the perks, they brought around frozen melon balls, cleaned sunglasses, had ice cold pitchers of lemon water at the tables which they kept filling with ice, evian face spritzers (yes, they sprayed our faces with Evian water), cold face towels. It was sweet. And we were on the 36th floor so we had an incredible view. Awesome, awesome, awesome.