Nothing like Marrying into an Italian Family

We found time to finally vacation together this last summer and headed to Virginia for the 2nd Annual Garcia Family Reunion. Nick's mother, Chris and her sister's all get together to celebrate their Grandma and Grandpa Garcia. This year they held the reunion in Williamsburg, VA the week of August 9-14th. It was so fun to see Nick's aunts and many of his cousins that I had not met before. We had such a great time. The weather was perfect! We went to Water Country USA, shopping at the outlets, eating tons of great food, and the family bowling tournament. It was great to be back in VA, and to spend time with so much family.

We stayed a few extra days, one of which was our anniversary. Chris was so kind and ordered a cake so the whole family could celebrate. It was terrific.

Here is almost the entire gang at the bowling alley. What a great time we all had. If I rem

ember correctly, I think I bowled a decent game...finally!

Domenic and his mom. It was so great to see Chris wearing Grandpa Garcia's bowling shirt!! The sisters all were wearing different bowling shirts from the earlier generations. Too cute!

Gotta love these Italian women! Dee, Chris, Lynda, and Gilda.

So glad we could make the trip out from Arizona. We had such a great time, and hope to be able to make it out next year.

Lake Powell Trip

What a fun time! We went to Lake Powell August 16-Aug 23rd with our good friends The Evans' (John, Jeanine, and Mark), our best friends The Badger's (TJ, Michelle, and Brandon), and our new friends The Cannon's (Ray, Kelly, and Courtney). We stayed on the houseboat "The Powell Pleasure" ( I think I laugh every time I say that name), and were so fortunate to have awesome weather, except for the storm during the docking the last day. So many pictures, so I sized them small (click on the picture to see them larger) and the captions should give all the details of the rest of the trip. We had a blast with everyone and hope to go again.

Here she is--The Powell Pleasure in all her glory: 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, living room, slide, BBQ, theater--what else would you need?

Nick giving the passing houseboats an eye sore! We all were hysterically laughing. (side note-Nick only wore the speedo for about 20 minutes the whole trip, but so many hilarious pics)
Nick out of a wakeboard run. Such great water.

One of the many nasty fish Nick caught. He was using NY strip steak as his bait, no wonder he caught so many!

I even gave fishing a try. Not too much luck.

When all else fails-there is always redneck fishing! Huge fish at Dangling Rope Marina, but fishing isn't allowed, so Nick decided he was just going to be a "man" and grab one with his hands. He had quite the audience while doing this.

Slot canyon that we swam through. Glad I had some strong men with me because there were some huge rocks that we had to climb over .

Nick and TJ as getting ready to swim the canyon

Us on the ski boat exploring the slot canyons

Rainbow bridge with TJ, Michelle, and Us

Nick with a catfish he caught one evening.

Always time for a little kiss

This tree was sticking up out of the water. Thought it made a great picture. At one point we had seven people climb up the tree for a group picture.

Gregory Butte behind us. Right next to where we docked the houseboat.

We never got tired of looking at such beautiful landscape. The sunset was amazing each night. We slept under the stars and the bats!!

Such a great trip. We played cards, learned a few new games, watched movies every night under the stars, slept on the top deck of the houseboat watching shooting stars, ate way too much food, ate M&M's for breakfast, saw a crazy storm and watched two ski boats sink!!! So wild. And way too many laughs with great friends=great vacation!

Powell Preview--Spoiler Alert!

Sorry, I just couldn't resist posting these ASAP. Such a great week with some gut-wrenching laughs! More to come...aboard the Powell Pleasure!!

Lake Meade Trip

Nick and I got back from Lake Meade today and it is fair to say that we were hobbling into our place. We are so sore! Being in the sun all day long and wake boarding, eating, laying on rafts, and playing games all night sure does use a lot of muscles!

We left on Thursday evening after work and drove up to Temple Bar Marina on Lake Meade. Michelle and TJ invited us to meet them there along with Michelle's parents John and Jeanine and her brother Mark. TJ had his two boys as well, and of course how could I forget that puppy came along too. It was about a 4 and 1/2 hour drive that actually went by pretty fast. We stayed in a "resort" (more to come on that later) right there next to the water, so it was so nice the next day to get on the lake in no time. We spent all day Friday on the lake. We found a great place on a little sandy beach to set up a canopy tent to get some relief from the sun, and we made that our home base for the day. We had such a great time out on the water. It was perfect wake boarding conditions and no one else seemed to be out on the water!!

Some of the highlights of the trip included: I got up on the wake board first try...and did pretty good on all of my runs. I must say I was excited, because I am usually no good at these kinds of things. Also, I got a new raft out of the trip--loved having it. We got to play a fun board game that we got for Christmas with everyone called Wits and Wagers at night. And of course--the ultimate highlight was seeing our friends.

A few no good occurrences were: Nick totally biffed it on one run and when he hit the water his bottom jaw hit his top jaw and chipped the whole corner off his right from tooth. His nickname the rest of the trip was snaggle! Good thing I work for a dentist! Another downer was the hotel (it is called a 'resort' but that would be the last adjective I would use to describe it with) had a sewer problem and all the toilets and showers started to back up--oh was that awful--at least it was on the last night. Did I mention that this "resort" had cynderblock walls!!! The last no good occurrence would have to be the Badger Boys sunburns. Only TJ and his boys got fried, and it didn't look comfortable--the rest of us smart people reapplied throughout the day. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Nick sliced open his foot between two toes on the side of the boat---he by far had the most battle wounds of anyone this trip.

We had such a great trip and are even more excited for Lake Powell Houseboat trip next month with everyone again. Here are a few pics although we didn't take too many, we were too busy playing in the water and having fun.

The rock formation that gave Temple Bar its name

Me up on the wake board

Nick and I--not the greatest picture, but the only one we took

Nick getting some air--probably the jump that took half of his tooth!

Trying to stay cool on our rafts

Michelle and I on the boat