Lake Powell (in detail)

Over the July 4th weekend, we rented a houseboat on Lake Powell. Morgan & Jamie flew in from Chicago, Lindsay from Boston, and Boyd drove up from Tucson to bring them all to Page. We drove up along with Max & Kathleen and their kids for five days of fun on the water.

The houseboat had a fun slide that lets you out about 5 feet above the water. It took a lot of shots to catch people in mid-air, but here is one of Adam about to enter the water.

Adam all wrapped up after his dip in the lake.

Here are the "teenagers" - or that is the name Bryce and Adam use to refer to them collectively. But since we now have "real" teenagers - Amanda, Collin and Bryce - we referred to them as the "teenager wannabes".

The houseboat could be steered from up on the top deck, or down below. Watch out, Bryce is driving and Adam is his navigator.

Here is a shot of the kitchen/salon area. There was lots of eating on this trip.

One afternoon part of our group headed to a slot canyon for some water polo time. It's fun to use a narrow slot canyon as your water polo field.

We celebrated the 4th of July while we were there with hamburgers on the grill for dinner. Then we shot off the entire box of fireworks that has been collecting in our garage for the last 15 years. It was quite the show. We sat on the upper deck and watch our show and the neighbors show - all the while keeping an eye out for the ranger.

We spent some time on the back of the houseboat, and our motorboat enjoying the cool water in the afternoon heat. Here is Amanda soaking up some sunshine.

Dan - our captain.

Adam after another trip down the houseboat slide.

A fun shot before he entered the water.

Ashli getting ready to take off in the motorboat.

From left to right: Bryce, Collin, Boyd, Ashli, Jamie, Lindsay and Amanda - doing the "look, Mom, no hands" manuever.

On Sunday we took a ride to see Rainbow Bridge. Afterwards we cooled off with some cliff jumping. The kids started posing for the camera in midair. This is Bryce.

This is Ashli in the air.

Even Lindsay got in the act.

Adam jumped too, but off a smaller cliff.

A couple of evenings were very windy, but on this particular evening the weather was beautiful so we ate our dinner of Hawaiian Haystacks on the upper deck and watched the amazing colors of the sunset over the lake.

This was from our visit to Rainbow Bridge. Jamie, Morgan, Dan, Boyd & Lindsay.

Sometimes we retreated from the sun and played some games indoors. This particular game was writing down everything you had eaten that day (the message being that we had brought way too much junk food - everyone made mention of all the food, but even though there were healthy snacks available, plenty of twinkies and chips were consumed too.)

Our home on the lake.

Lindsay and Morgan putting on a show on the tubes.

Max and Amanda getting ready for a ride.

Lindsay and Amanda getting ready for another ride.

Bryce and Collin anticipating a wild ride.

When everyone got tired of the sun, we took a break inside and played a little MarioKart on the Wii.

Amanda helping load the boat for some "board" time.

The lake was beautiful, and even though it was a holiday weekend, there was plenty of room to play.

Adam wearing Michelle's hat to escape the hot sun.

Dan taking a crew out for one last run before we headed back to the marina to turn in our houseboat. We had a fabulous time visiting with family and playing on the lake. You may think this was a lot of pictures, but you are only seeing a fraction of the 150 pictures taken!