Family Fun 2010 -- Part 4

On our last day we went horseback riding. We went in two group-- the guys first. The girls stayed back and helped with the pony rides for the kids. It was pretty fun, Liz and I led the kids on ponies on a little trail around a meadow. A nice change from the ones where they go in circles over and over that we have done before.

Post pony rideThen is was the girls turn!
Bye-bye mommies!I had never done anything like this before, but it was really fun. The horses were super gentle and mellow.

The kids watched a video while we were gone to pass the time.

Of course, we had to stop for icecream on the way back home!

And then we played games, packed up, did a little shopping, and tried to eat the rest of our leftovers that night. We really made good use of the three deck areas at the house-- they were great for lots of outdoor fun, and the kids did a little swimming in the hot tub there too!

And just for laughs...

We drove back on Saturday. Unfortunately, it was a rather eventful trip. A couple of miles outside of Winnemucca we heard a loud noise and soon thereafter the low pressure tire light went on. We pulled over, and sure enough, the tire was flat. Luckily Kevin is a super fast tire changer, even with us having to pull practically everything out of the back of the van to access the spare. 50 miles on a 50 mile and hour tire and a $100 special after-hours service fee later we were fixed and ready to get home. We hit Wendover needing gas, restrooms, and dinner, but the power was out for the whole town, and none of those things were available! I was getting a little worried, since that's a pretty long stretch of nothing between Wendover and Tooele, but the power came on 15 minutes later and we did our stuff and got on our way. Right into a huge windstorm blowing dirt off of those long stretches of nothing by the salt flats and whipping it up for low visibility. Good thing Kevin was driving! We saw a big wreck on the way back-- an overturned trailer, so the wind gusts were pretty strong I think. Lucky for us too, the kids did pretty well, excepting a few leaky diapers, even with the extra 3 hours tacked onto the drive!

Many thanks to Keyton and Liz for planning a wonderful vacation! I really appreciate the fact that we all make time and effort to spend concentrated time together as a family... and it doesn't hurt that it was in a beautiful place doing lots of fun things! Who else but the 15 of us could get so many laughs out of the line "There's a snake in my boots!" over and over all week long???