EFY in Gainesville, GA

So this year we finally sent the boys, Stephen and Lars, to EFY (Especially For Youth). They went to Gainesville, GA with their Oveson cousins, Randall and Jacob. Randall and Jacob came in on the night of June 28th, fresh from some camp thing and the boys came in the same day from a camp thing of their own and after church on Sunday the 29th we (the boys, Madelyn and I) loaded into the Excursion and drove up to Suwanee, GA, where my sister Louise lives. The boys got with Tucker and played Rock Band in their family room at least half the night and the girls (Madelyn, Lexie and Em) giggled and had a great time elsewhere in the house. The girls did gripe a bit about not getting to play Rock Band that night, but they had the rest of the week to play so they were ignored. The next morning I apologized to Patrick for how loud we all were the night before, but told him the really loud ones were leaving that day. He looked at me, totally deadpan, and asked "Really? Where are you and Louise going?" Nice... Okay, we are pretty loud. Anyway, we all loaded up, took Stephen for a much needed haircut then drove them the 30 minutes more up to Gainesville and left them. The only thing I heard from them all week came in the form of late night texts saying how awesome EFY was. Meantime, we all had a blast in Suwanee and surrounding. We went to Stone Mountain and climbed to the top then came down for the laser show on the mountainside. We swam, shopped, ate, walked, laughed, talked and just had a great time all the way around. Thanks Louise and fam for the hospitality!
On July 3rd the Baca's took off for the beach and Randy flew up to spend the 4th with Madelyn and me. We went and stayed in Gainesville and saw an incredible fireworks display at Laurel Park over the Chattahoochee River. You could see boat lights all over the river, then the fireworks then a big thunderstorm above in the sky. Randy captured the idea best with Man, Country, then God above. It was awe-inspiring.

The next morning we picked the boys up from EFY where all claim to have had a great time. Although Jacob won the $20 that Randy had offered at the first of the week to the one of the boys that danced with the most girls during the week! Go Jacob, he is also the youngest of the group! They had a great time and are ready to sign up to go to the same place again next year!
We celebrated picking them up and Stephen's 17th birthday by taking them out to a breakfast place the Baca's all love and it was a real hit with us as well! Then we made the long drive home. Fun week! We spent the last few days the boys were with us sending them all off to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure and hope they will come stay with us again. We loved the whole week+ with them!

The Adventure Finally Comes to an End

The trip back was long, but once again we added another state to our list of states we have seen. Louisiana must be experienced, because it is too difficult to explain... It was very pretty and very unusual. We drove down through New Orleans, but it was dark so really couldn't get much of a feel for anything. our last night on the road we made it to Pensacola and spent the night at a hotel right on the beach. We got up and swam in the ocean and just enjoyed a relaxing morning before heading on home to Longwood. The trip was long and very memorable. We said more than once, we just wish we could have seen more people. But we truly could not have taken more time! What an incredible trip that was for us, thanks to all who were able to make time to spend with us. You are the reason we make that crazy drive in the first place!

The Adventure continues - Lake Powell

The last leg of the exodus was a trip to Lake Powell, this was also when Randy actually got to "be" on vacation, no work for that week. We had picked up our boat in Utah and pulled it to St. Johns so we could have it at Powell, it also freed up the back seat area and made traveling far more comfy for the kids. We spent a week on the lake and had a great time. We learned how to wake surf, spent time wakeboarding, waterskiing, reading, hiking, sunning, visiting, seadooing. Who can complain about any of that? We enjoyed seeing Jane and John and their family who camped just around a bend from us. We loved the slide on the back of their boat! Wow was that fun. One of the funniest moments was little Olivia, not quite 2 going down the slide off the top of the houseboat with her Daddy, Rob. We all cheered wildly for her and she went more than once, she was hilarious! She looked a little stunned going off the slide, but when she bobbed back up out of the water after splashdown, all the cheering really boosted her desire to go again. "Do you want to go again Olivia?" "Si!" She is the cutest, bilingual child ever! We even got to see Amy, Matt and Mattie when they brought Jess and her friend, Danielle, out to us. Danielle is a tall pretty blond and she was a huge hit with all the young men in the family. I think she may have been the official teenage male highlight of the trip! We met a family that created a huge slide off a sandy hill into the lake with water pumped up to it to make the ride more exciting, we dragged rafts and tubes over and loved that, I think Kate had more fun than anyone on the slide! When we got off the lake we went back to St. Johns and picked up our things that we didn't want to leave baking in the car at Stateline Marina and spent the night before heading back east with the boat in tow! Yay! (Oh yeah, and we squeezed in one more trip to El Camino)!

The Adventure continues - St. Johns

St. Johns was awesome and my parents were great hosts! Louise and her kids came in one day after us. The rest of my siblings all showed up over the week with many of their kids in tow, with the exception of Steven, but we had been fortunate enough to see them on the way out west, and of course, Eric and Char live there already. We were especially grateful to Richard, Merrilee and family for picking up Stephen en route so he could be with us again. We had so much fun with everyone and we really missed those that didn't make it. Holy Cow! The Ice Cream Social, rodeo, swimming, campfire circle, parade, family dance, boating and you can't forget El Camino! I do believe one of the real highlights of the St. Johns part of the trip was the day we had the pool rented with the Hansen family (Todd and family live in our area in Florida and they graciously invited us to bring our family along and join them for the time they had the pool rented, something they may have ended up regretting). We are so loud that I am sure we shook up the more sedate Hansen clan, they did say we were entertaining. We had belly flop competitions, handstand competitions, played games, were loud and rowdy and had the best time ever at the pool! Everyone, even the much older kids (I'm talking 20's and on up) said it was incredibly fun! We have some real daredevils and not just one character in the bunch (many, many characters...)! They held off the belly flop competition until Randy got there as he worked every day we were on the road except the weekends so he joined us for his lunch break. My face hurt from laughing, my family really makes me laugh. The last night with everyone we just had to play night games, it has become a family tradition (and one of my favorites, a childhood throwback). We played sardines for a while, and tried a few other games then settled into Capture the Flag. By the time we were on the last game, the younger kids were gone to bed, we were down to only 8 players, it was very late (well after midnight so you can understand how nuts this all is) and we ended up with one very unfortunate incident when Nicole went to free Yorke from jail with big Matt as the jailer. She came in low trying to be quiet and out of Matt's sight, but he was going low trying to get between Nicole and Yorke and the score ended up Matt's forearm - 1, Nicole's nose - broken. Janet and Amy looked out the kitchen window when they heard a scream and suddenly saw all of us clustered in one spot with the glow of cell phones lighting up the grass as we tried to get a look at Nicole's nose! Gratefully she has recovered (nose is beautiful as ever, I have seen it in person) and is back teaching school again, but the poor girl was in a bad way that night! Thank heaven we were carrying heavy duty pain relievers, for just in case, cause they may be the only reason she got sleep that night. It was such fun, in spite of the one incident, and we hated to say goodbye to everyone as they all headed home. We did get a couple more quiet days with just us and Dad and Mom which was really great. We took one afternoon and ran down to Tempe to see Grandma Stoker, who is 93, and we enjoyed our visit with her. Then we went to Mark and Alonna's where we enjoyed dinner with many of the family that are in the valley. It was so great to see all of them, especially Justin and Janet who just moved back to Arizona, we had not seen them since we moved away from Temecula and they have 2 more kids since then! Thanks to all who made the whole Arizona leg so much fun!

The Adventure continues - Moab

We were up early one week later to make the drive to Moab to visit Jessica, our Whitewater River Guide. We got there just as she was finishing her daily trip for Western (the company she works for) and we picked up a 12 foot raft and life jackets and ran back up the Colorado river and did an abbreviated version of the trip with her. She was a scream, she showed us some of her belly flops (the Alaskan Salmon and the flying squirrell), you really had to be there, they were hilarious! We asked if it hurt and she explained that her face was numb for about 5 minutes after, but it was really no big deal... Oooookaaaayyyy... We flipped the boat, then Madelyn and I got to Superman back into the boat. Something that everyone should experience at least once I am sure. It was great fun! We got back, showered and went to dinner downtown and then we all went to see The Dark Knight at the local theater. When we got there, before we went in, Jessica told me she heard some people in the theater were talking about her. I asked "Soooo???" She said "Mom, I'm kind of a big deal around here." I'm thinking "Ooohhh reeeeaaaaallllyyy?" Then we walked into the theater and everyone starts chanting "Jess, Jess, Jess, Jess!" No lie, I was cracking up. Several other guides were calling for her to sit by them, but she condescended to sit with her family for the movie. We got to meet lots of them after the movie and at church the following day. It was great fun and very entertaining all the way around. It was hard to say goodbye to her after church and head down the road, but we knew we would see her again just a couple of weeks later at Lake Powell, which made it much easier. What a life, now that has to be the best summer job ever for a college student (Randy will back me up on that)!

The Adventure continues - Salt Lake City

The Salt Lake portion of the trip we saw so many friends and family during our brief time there! We were sorry to have missed many who were out of town or we just ran out of time. One of the highlights was that on the one Sunday we were there it happened to be Brooke's mission president and his wife's report to their home ward in Murray and we were fortunate to attend and get to meet them. They expressed great love and appreciation for Brooke (guess which parent was brought to tears by all this...I bet Randy was at least verklempt!). They gave outstanding talks and we felt very grateful to know that Brooke was in the hands of such able leaders while they were there! We also met Daniela Madrid who was Brooke's trainer, just one month home from her mission. She was darling and loved talking about Brooke with us, but I think we enjoyed it even more. That was a huge treat! We had family dinners, ran around with friends, enjoyed great discussions! I don't know if the time could have been better there. Huge thanks to all who made it such a great week! We barely saw the boys, they had such a great time with friends and Madelyn was very busy with friends and cousins all week as well. We ended up leaving Stephen behind for another week with his buddies, likely to the chagrin of some of their parents, very little sleeping and lots of stupidity from all reports.

Our Epic Adventure to the Wild West begins

Our epic adventure to the west was a huge success! This was our first trip west after moving to Florida last December and man it was a doozy. We thought the drive from Chicago back to see family in Utah and Arizona was long, in fact it was long, but this one was really something. It really is a 3 day trip to get back west, and man is that 3rd day a long one (even if it ends up being the shortest driving day)!

We headed north first going through Georgia then through Tennessee and Kentucky (another state we can now say we have been in). What gorgeous country! All these drives we have made over the years we have come up with more areas that we would love to own vacation homes in. We added more to our list this year as we drove. We even visited mounds in Kentucky, after spending the night in Paducah, KY we saw signs for the Wycliffe Mounds and stopped and spent an educational hour or so, it was really interesting to see the ruins there. Then we drove on up to Washington, Missouri to see my brother Steven and his wife Kathy and some of there kids that were still there from a family reunion that they were just wrapping up. We just visited for a while, enjoying wonderful fresh cookies from the oven along with the fun company, before heading out again, at which point Randy said he thought we should just go straight on through to Salt Lake as we had 3 drivers and it was less than 24 hours away at that time. So we all agreed (are we nuts or what?). Now it needs to be noted that there was no 3rd seat available, it was folded up and covered with luggage, cooler, boating stuff, surfboard, towels, sleeping bags, you name it, so Stephen, Lars and Madelyn were all in the middle seat. We were packed tight, but they were incredible travelers, as always. Only a minimum of arguing, and it was usually over movie choices, although they all had video i-pods so it was over the tv screen in the car, not because they didn't have other options. Back to the trip. We got to Salt Lake about mid-day the next day and the kids all showered, called friends and were gone! No delaying the fun for them, meantime Randy and I died for about 4 hours in our hotel!!