Family Fun in Fallon

As many of you know, we recently returned from our Summer Vacation "get-away" to be with family in NV and CA. Our adventures began with a fun weekend in J-rod's hometown where we got to see TONS of family!

When we first got into town, we got to visit at Mom and Dad's house with a special guest: author, BYU professor, and youth motivational speaker Brad Wilcox. Brad is a long time friend of the family, and one of Zippy's professor's at BYU. He was in town to speak at Youth Conference (a fireside for parents and leaders, and then a number of workshops for the youth) and was staying at Mom and Dad's house.

With Brad and all of Mom and Dad's kids and grand kids in town, they certainly had a full house so we got to spend our first night at Great Gma S's house--what a rare treat! It was so nice to have some one-on-one time to visit with Gma; she is slowly recovering from surgery--just taking it one day at a time. The boys LOVED falling asleep to her fiber-optic multi-colored lamp! Wish I had thought to get a picture of the lamp and all of us with Gma...but we got in so late it didn't even occur to me!

Saturday morning we joined the family, and all the youth attending Youth Conference, at the Stake Center for a yummy pancake breakfast. After breakfast J-rod, the boys, Mom, Aunt C, Uncle N, and Zippy stayed to listen to one of Brad's workshops on having a LOVE for studying and learning from the scriptures. What a powerful speaker Brad is, and what a great sense of humor he has! We were all uplifted by his enthusiasm and motivated to continue with our family challenge to finish the Book of Mormon by the beginning of August. Thanks Brad for some fun times!

After lunch Saturday afternoon we joined up with family who had gone boating on the lake near town. The little kids not only had fun playing on the beach, but a couple of them even tried to wake-board with the big kids! We all had a good time visiting with each other, and it was especially good to see Uncle D and cousins K and K! Check out some of the highlights from the lake below:

Uncle D works hard to help a very BRAVE Li'l L to get up on the wake-board with him, but unfortunately it didn't quite work out.

Uncle D takes a solo ride.

Cousin K gets some good hang-time!

After watching Cousin K, M decided that "that was SO cool!" he had to give it a try himself. Uncle D was so impressed with M's willingness to try, that he helped M get set-up on the outboard.

Once Uncle D had M all rigged, Cousin K and J-rod helped out by holding on tightly to the rope while the boat pulled M along. M LOVED it and can't wait to try it again!

Another first time wake-boarder gives it a try! Even though he took a few hard falls, he kept getting right back up to try it again. Way to go J-rod!