Family Fun 2010 -- Part 1

My family goes on a trip every other year or so, and this year our destination was Lake Tahoe! We had a terrific time exploring a new beautiful place and had lots of adventures, besides lots of yummy food, games, and cousin play time.

We were pretty curious how the kids would do with a 9 hour car trip, and decided to minimize whining by leaving in the late afternoon and driving until midnight. The kids actually did really well, the girls were pretty much sucked into the new dvds from the library, and we only had to stop to feed Luke once since he's used to not eating often at night. The only big problem on the way there was the grownups... Kevin and I managed to throw away our credit card in a fast food garbage can and not realize it until 20 minutes down the road. We decided it was better to cancel it than lose time digging through hamburger wrappers. Oh well, it was an easy fix. We stayed entertained by listening to a slightly cheesey LDS WWII Delta, UT spy audiobook.

We spent the night in Reno and met up with the rest of the family for a quick hotel pool swim and a visit to the Reno outlet mall. They have a sporting goods store there that is as big as a regular mall! We rode the Ferris Wheel (inside the sporing goods store-- it's that big!) and had a nice time bumming around until we could leave to check in to the house.
Our house for the week.... it was great! Lots of bedrooms for everyone, centrally located, and huge decks for lots of pleasant outside time. We ate outside most of the time and the kids especially enjoyed watching the birds hop around looking for crumbs.

Sunday morning we went to church in a really lovely ward. I'm sure it's a little tricky to live in a ward that get SO many visitors summer and winter, but they were very welcoming. It was especially interesting because the ward has both Spanish and English speakers, so everything was translated... both directions.

Sunday afternoon we took a little walk to a beach to see Lake Tahoe up close for the first time. It was a nice walk down, which ended up being a long walk up, kiddo-wise. The kids actually did really great, except for Cora. She must have used up all her energy playing on the beach-- she was so excited, we had a hard time keeping her out of the water! It was a pretty little beach to cool off by, and Cora got much more beach time on non-Sunday days later in the week.
Because we all pay into our family fun fund, we all take turns planning the vacations, and then on vacation, we take turns with meals. I really like it because everyone has a vested interest and equal opportunity to choose activities and contribute to our family vacations. One of my favorite traditions that we do it to take turns doing a family devotional at night. It was nice to end our days with a spiritual thought and connect in a spiritual way as a family--even the kids. We had a week of great devotionals involving scripture stories, ping pong balls, foolish polly pockets building their houses on sand, family history, warm fuzzies, and the power of bleach.

Post-devotional family picture... all 15 of us!