Otter Creek and Bryce Canyon

We just got back from a fun family reunion at Otter Creek. We spent most of Wednesday at Bryce Canyon.

To begin our trip, we drove to Fillmore (the halfway mark) and stayed the night at a disgusting motel (but is was super cheap and the sheets were clean....as opposed to everything else...ex. poop on the floor)...I won't give away the name 'cause that's bad for business. ha,ha. Anyway. We left Monday morning after a delicious breakfast-thanks to Aunt Wendy and Family.

It was about a 2 hour drive to Otter Creek where we stayed in a beautiful cabin with TWO JETTED TUBS!!! (that was my favorite part).

We all unpacked, ate lunch and went fishing. Kaycee, my little sister, caught the first fish, but being the expert fisherladies that we aren't, we pulled on the line too hard and the fish got away. Poor Kaycee was almost in tears thinking of that poor fish (that I swear she almost names...she's so sweet) with a hook stuck in it's mouth. It's okay though, cause Andrey caught three more and then my mom caught one (with Emma's small Princess fishing pole even)-and one of those fish had two hooks in it's mouth.

We played pool, phase ten, watched movies, went on nature walks where we saw lots of jack rabbits, what we thought were rattle snakes, deer, and other beautiful animals. We spent a lot of our freetime trying to catch more fish in the cute pond that was behind the cabin. I was lucky and caught a whole lot of sea-weed

Tuesday, after our family and the Greens made delicous crepes for breakfast, we made lunches and drove to Otter Creek where we got to try out the new boat we bought. We went on a tube where Andrey pulled us around going really fast, with our legs flying in the air and saw who could stay on the longest, and fished, sun-tanned, played in the sand (Emma's swimming diaper even brought home a sand-castle in itself), had lunch, rode the canoe around, and played on the inner-tubes. We had so much fun-minus the sunburns.

We were welcomed home with the jetted tubs where we left half the beach in it after our long bath. Ellie was terrified of the bubbles at first, but soon fell in love with the relaxing tub.

Wednesday we packed up lunches and headed over to Bryce Canyon-a first for many of us. Our travels were occupied with me reading aloud the Twilight series to Andrey who has been converted. My goal was for him to finish then before the fourth book comes out on the 2nd (the day before my birthday!!!! Happy Birthday to me!!!!), but we are only 3/4th of the way done with the second one. Maybe our new goal will be to finish then before the movie comes out...

We first stopped at the souvinier shops and bought icecream, apple beer, new t-shirts (we buy t-shirts every reunion), and other fun toys. Emma bought an "Emma Egg," or a beautiful rock/stone from Bryce Canyon. We had fun taking silly pictures (as seen above) with some family memebers for the memories. We then walked through the visitor's center and the museum at Bryce Canyon, and then split up into two groups-one that was going on the longer hike and the other that was sight seeing by driving to each spot. It was so beautiful to see all the different rock formations and to see all the different kind of people that were there-to hear all the different languages and accents. It was funny when a guy visiting the United States was video taping my parent's little dog instead of the National Park. We got a kick out of that.

After the heat got to us, we headed back where we bathed again in the jetted tub, ha,ha and hung out playing games and visiting.

Thursday a lot of family left, but the other half of us decided to go back to the resivour and go boating some more. We had a blast getting thrown around in the water, gulping a bit of the yummy green water (hopefully we don't have the runs for a week now...yuck). We relaxed, watching movies all night and got a good nights rest so we could clean up the cabin and endure a 4 hour drive back with the girls. We had a great time and made a lot of fun memories-getting a little closer to our family. Oh, how I miss that jetted tub!!!