The Graduate and The Aftermath....

It's official! Miles is a high school graduate! This is something that everyone should celebrate - because it almost didn't happen. Miles enjoyed spending his time 4-wheeling in his jeep rather than in his classes.... but he has a mother that dotted his i's and crossed his t's and because of her he was able to throw his hat up in the air and breath a sigh of relief!When I graduated from High School I chose to take a trip with my family and one of my best friends family out to Lake Mead where my dad keeps a rather large boat. Apparently Miles liked what I did because he chose to do the same thing.

Unfortunately Scott was unable to come due to work and studies, so I chose to leave Clara behind with him and others so that I wouldn't have to juggle 2 kids with out him
*THANK YOU KRISTEN AND NEIGHBORS FOR ALL YOUR HELP!!!!!

The trip started out great.... the weather wasn't fabulous but still OK. As you look at the pictures you would never guess that Thursday night as we arrived back at the beach everything would change.....

Jackson loved to feed the ducks and the fish.
When I was little I used to always fall asleep as soon as the boats engines started up. This little guy does the same thing. He would fall asleep next to my dad up top, and then I would move him to the bow where he would sleep in a pool of sweat.

Some cliffs backed out beach and everyone loved jumping off. I got this awesome shot of Adam in the air.

AJ loved the sand...

I was so lucky to have Judd and Adam there to entertain Jack...

Judd and Jack made a sea turtle out of sand. Jack, Adam, and AJ built sand castles.

Judd buried Jackson in the sand.Jack wore these goggles like they were sunglasses. It was pretty cute.

I love to water ski. It was pretty depressing that I only got 1 run in... but at least I still have the whole summer to look forward to.

Jack loved playing on the beach.

We went on a "DAMN BOAT RIDE" to see Hoover Dam. The new bridge is insane!

Me and the little sis'.

I love looking out behind the boat and seeing this:

Thursday night we left the ski boat at the beach, and parked the big boat at the dock and went into Vegas and ate dinner at the MGM Grand Buffet. Endless amounts of food.

Then we walked the strip. Jack loved the M&M store.

Jack and The Mom.

Of course Jack didn't walk at all. A million thank you's to Judd and my dad for trading off caring him!!!!!

I love him in this little baseball cap. He is getting sooooo big!

We saw Batman and Robin.... they were total fakes but Jack had no idea and was in awe with Batman.... he is his favorite super hero right now. Did you know that you are supposed to tip the guys that dress up if you take a picture with them?

Jack loved the Bellagio fountains. The one we saw was to the Titanic Celine Dion song. It was awesome. In the middle of it, Jack looked up at me and said... "The water is dancing to the music!"It was getting late and we decided it was time to head back out to the lake. As we drove on the big boat back out to our beach we had no idea that we would come back to a disaster. Apparently a major storm had come through while we were gone... Candice and Adams tent was tossed up the beach (with their luggage inside), toys were blown all over the beach, and the ski boat was beached. Yes.... beached, slightly in the water but pretty much just on sand. The guys tried to rock it in the water and could not even move it back and forth.... we were in shock!

We decided to tie a rope to the front of the ski boat and attach it to the front of the big boat and pull the boat off the sand and back into the water. My dad was going just about full throttle on the big boat, we were swaying all over the place, crashing into rocks, freaking out that the rope was going to snap back and kill us... but thankfully it worked and we were able to pull the ski boat into the water.

We talked about it as we went to bed.... closed our eyes.... and had no idea that we were in for an even bigger storm in the morning.....

We woke up to huge waves. My dad, mom, and Judd jumped on the ski boat and took off in hopes to find a better place to take shelter from the storm. They came back about 15 minutes later and told us to pack everything up, apparently it was calmer just around the corner.

We brought in everything off the beach and started to undo the anchors. As my dad started up the big boat, only one engine worked. It automatically threw us into the rocks. He jumped the good engine to the bad engine and got both working again, only to find that the propellers were then in the sand and therefore we were stuck. To keep the boat from crashing into the rocks everyone was jumping off the rocks and using their bodies as buoys from the rocks.... ouch!

Miles then jumped on the ski boat and brought it around to tie a rope in hopes to pull us out the rope got stock in the propeller of the ski boat and therefore the boat was useless. Until we could get the ski boat back to the beach everyone jumped back on top of the big boat and were pushing both boats away from each other as the waves came crashing up and down.

Once we were able to get the ski boat to the beach, Judd and Miles put on life jackets and swam the front anchor of the big boat out into the lake, dropped it, and we reeled ourselves to it.... it worked. The big boat was free. Only to turn around and see that the little boat is..... yes.... once again beached on the sand from the force of the waves.

We again tied up and had to pull it out, this time was much easier than the first. But after it was pulled out we still had to worry about the rope that was tangled in the propeller. Adam swam underneath, with waves crashing the boat up and down and was able to pull the rope free.

FINALLY the boat comes out and we are good to go. We decide our trip has come to an end. We were done.

I have never had an experience like that on a boat. And I have been boating my entire life. So it was interesting, it was scary, and yet slightly exciting. It will be something that I will never forget.

*Other things that went wrong...

- The generator went out. No AC underneath while we slept. No outlets. No microwave. No stove.

- The toilet clogged and my dad was the one to fix it. It exploded into his face. YUCK!

- The alarm went off for carbon monoxide. So whenever the boat was on, there was a fire alarm like sound constantly wringing in our ears. HEADACHE!

- When we left for vegas, we got to the dock and realized we had left the keys to the car back at the beach.

- The electrical on Judd's car went out. No AC, no music, no lights.... we tried to jump start it... but the battery wouldn't hold power. We had to leave it on the side of the road, drive into Vegas and find the parts to fix it.

- The blow up mattress I brought for Candice and Adam didn't have the plug. They bought a new one in Vegas only to get it out and realize it is a twin size.

For those of you that read that whole post - that really was a quick synopsis. And for those of you that just looked at the pictures.... the trip sure looks like fun!