Pushing the pause button on life

Emma is out of school for the summer.  Hallelujah.  We decided to celebrate by picking her up from the bus stop and heading off for a long weekend camping trip to one of my favorite places on earth.  Four days of exploring, 4-wheeling with the grandparents, mountain biking, lazy reading, trail running, tent napping, playing with cousins, rock skipping, frisbee throwing, creek jumping and s'more making was just what this family needed. The whole no work, no computer and no phone usage was the cherry on top.  I see the need for many more of these trips this summer.  Simply rejuvenating.

And thank you, Dave, for pulling out the iPhone to capture a few of the coveted moments.  Once again, for some reason or another, my camera didn't even make it out of the car.

Work Hard and Play Hard

Whew-ie! Summer is bussssy!! My dad's favorite motto (or one he says often) is work hard and play hard. That pretty much wraps up our life right now. Dave is still working like a madman and biking to work almost everyday. This past week I had 5 photo shoots, one of them a wedding. I originally had six but had one cancellation. Not sure if I'll ever book that many in one week again, it got crazy ;). That pretty much wraps up the work part, so, now on to the fun part....Escalante and lake Powell.


A good friend of ours, Nick, invited us along on a spur of the moment trip to Escalante. We left Friday night after Dave got off of work. What was supposed to be a 4 hour drive ended up being a 9 hour drive. Haha, ahhh somehow we got lost. Really lost. That and we had to keep pulling off the side of the road to sleep. It was an adventure. Luckily, when we finally pulled up at 6:00 a.m. Nick had already set up his HUMONGOUS tent so we all crawled in and caught a few Zzzz's. When it got too warm in the tent for sleeping we headed out to explore.

We drove about 60 miles on a 4 wheel drive road (where we almost died numerous times thanks to Dave's crazy driving ;)) until we found hole in the rock. Coolest place ever. It was a super narrow, steep and rocky canyon that led down to...LAKE POWELL!!! Some early pioneers actually traversed down it, 250 men, women and children and 80 wagons made the journey down it. Seriously, crazy!!! It was more like bouldering then hiking. Here's a couple of pics to show the terrain.

After we finally made it down we spent the rest of the day swimming, fishing and cliff diving in gorgeous lake Powell.

So stinkin' refreshing!

Nick with his catch of the day....a carp. Haha.

If you are wondering why my children are swimming fully clothed it's because they were much too hot and excited to swim to wait to put on their swimsuits. Little nuts. And the cliff diving/jumping? It took some work but the boys finally talked me into doing it. They sure were patient while I stood there on the cliff for 15+ minutes getting up the nerve ;). It was delightful.

The next day we did some hikin'! I can't remember what the hike was called but it led to a gorgeous waterfall and some little pools for swimming.

This pic kills me. Reminds me of an old western movie. Ah-ha, good times.

It was a short, but super fun trip. We crammed a lot in in the time we were there. Just ask Ali

hehe ;).