Scott and Amber organized an amazing Varvel family reunion trip to Lake Powell. It was something our family would have never experienced without their help, and we are extremely grateful for them. We spent seven full days in paradise!
Here are some of the cousins on top of the houseboat. We were on our way to West Canyon, to find the perfect spot to spend the week.Brooklyn, Bela, Sydnie, Chloe, and Bailey
This is the Starry Night, our home for the week.
This is a view from up the hill. I truly believe we may have had the most beautiful little cove in all of Lake Powell.
The three oldest cousins, excited to get in the water.Clayton, Noah, and Sawyer
Sydnie and Bailey excited to get in too!
The three oldest girl cousins, posing in front of a picture perfect backdrop.Brooklyn, Sydnie, and Bailey
Grammy and Papa
The kids had so much fun on the boat. They all went down the slide a gazillion times, and they LOVED jumping off the top and side of the boat. Okay, maybe not just the kids....most of the adults took their fair share of slide rides and jumps too!Noah, Sawyer, and Clayton
Sydnie, Brooklyn, and Bailey jumping off the boat.
Our family LOVES to hike. We went on some really great hiking adventures. The first one we went on was to the saddle. I was lucky enough to go on this hike twice. Bailey didn't go the first time, so I took her the next day.Sawyer, Tricia, and Mark.
Here is all ten cousins! This trip is the first time they have all been together. We were all together years ago, when Grammy and Papa moved to Idaho, but there were a few that weren't even born yet.Clayton, Noah, Sawyer, Bailey, Nathan, Sydnie, Bela, Chloe, Cali, Brooklyn
We had to do some climbing and scrambling on most of the hikes. That made for some fun adventures for all of us. Some of the places made me nervous to have little kids on, but they all did great.
Here I am climbing between rocks to get up a canyon.
This was the coolest hike! Mark is standing in the middle of the canyon we were coming up.
Here is the whole group on a hike.
Sydnie, Brooklyn, Bailey, Bela, Chloe, Cali, Nathan, Clayton and Noah.
Amber made a giant movie screen, so we had a movie night on the top of the boat. It was AWESOME! We watched Tangled.
Sawyer kicking back during movie night.
I got up early one morning to take a picture of the kid's sleeping arrangements. They all lined up on the top of the boat to sleep. I thought it was so cute!
We had a talent show on one of the nights. Our theme for the trip was Knee Deep in the Water Somewhere by the Zac Brown Band. Sawyer learned how to play it on the guitar, and all the kids sang it. It was so cute! We had some great talents...Nathan sang, Amber told a hilarious poem, Clayton told Chuck Norris jokes, Amber and Brooklyn sang, Sydnie and Bela danced, Scott told an awesome story, and my family did a ridiculous and humiliating Spanish song from way back in our high school days. We dressed in serapes and sombreros and sang De Colores.
On one of the days, we went to a really cool place called Dangling Rope. It's a store, ice cream shop, and gas station that floats on the lake. We all got ice cream, and the kids got souvenirs.
There were massive amounts of fish in the water at Dangling Rope. If anyone threw food in the water, it was a disgusting frenzy. I've never seen that many fish piled on top of each other before!
Here's our crew at Dangling Rope (minus Grammy and Papa, who were back at camp holding down the fort).
This is our whole Starry Night crew: Grammy, Papa, Scott, Amber Clayton, Brooklyn, Nathan, Chloe, Kim, Noah, Sydnie, Cali, Bella, Mark, Tricia, Sawyer and Bailey.
We had four kayaks there, so we tried to take a little kayaking adventure each day. Here is Mark with Gregory Butte behind him.
Here I am on the way back from Fish Bath Rock. Our group named it that because it was a huge rock wall that shaded the water. Kim found it while she was kayaking. We went there to take baths and swim. The fish were swimming so close, that a couple people reached down and touched them.
Adventures in Scott's boat were some of our favorite times. Mark and Sawyer LOVED wake surfing, and Bailey LOVED wake boarding. I just loved hanging out in the boat.
Sawyer did really good wake surfing.
Bailey and Sydnie in the tube.
Sawyer and Noah in the tube. They had two pretty funny wipe outs.
When Bailey first tried wake boarding, she got excited because she could stay up for 8 seconds. By the end, she could stay up for over 3 minutes, and she finally learned how to go over the wake on her last run. She LOVED it!
Scott would take us out exploring or sight seeing in the boat. He would find a good spot, and everyone would jump in and swim. Here are the four boys in a cool spot we found.Clayton, Sawyer, Nathan, Noah
Here are all six girls. They kept saying to take their picture, because the were "Knee Deep in the Water Somewhere."
On the last night there, Bailey and Sydnie stayed up all night so they could watch a sunrise at Lake Powell. Here she is on the edge of the boat just as the sun is peaking over the mountains.It was so awesome that our whole family got to be together, and even more awesome that we got to do it in one of the most beautiful places on earth!
