Boating on Lake Tahoe

We rented a boat and a sit-down jet ski one of the days that we were in Lake Tahoe. It was a full day of water fun. The lake was pretty cold, so that ones that ended up in the water were pretty unfortunate. But the weather outside of the lake was perfect. We rented an innertube along with the boat and almost everyone took a turn on it.

Ashley and Katherine

Danny and Alyssa. Alyssa is terrified of deep water, so we were pretty impressed with her not only getting on the boat, but also taking a turn on the innertube and the jet ski.

Camden, Katherine, and Tyler. These three ended up in the water on this run. We decided not to try 3 at a time after that. They fell in before it even really started going.

Tyler and Camden

Laura and Camden

Robbie

Robbie, Tyler, and Ashley were definitely the bravest on the innertube. I think they all got up to 30+ mph and took some pretty big jumps during their rides.

We also had fun hanging out on the boat.

The front of the boat was the warmest spot since it was in the sun. Anyone that got wet went here to hang out for a bit afterwards.

Alyssa and Ashley both took turns driving the boat in addition to Danny and Brian. They had a lot of fun with it.

The jet ski was fun. We rented it for 4 hours. It was kind of a pain switching off for it though because the people we rented the boat from made us call them out to dock the boat for us anytime we wanted to get to the dock, so that required a lot of trips for them out to our boat while we had the jet ski. We ended up splitting into 5 groups of 2 and after the first group of 2 that took it out for an hour. The rest of us got off the boat in groups of 4 and split and hour and a half between the 2 groups of 2. It worked out and everyone had a chance to ride the jet ski that wanted to. We happened to go by Ashley and Danny on the jet ski while we were on the boat, so this is the only pic I got of the jet ski.

It was a fun day and everyone was worn out from the sun and being on the water all day. We all went to bed early that night.

Donner Memorial Park and Truckee

On the first full day of our trip, we went up to Donner Memorial Park. There was a visitors center there that we walked through and learned about the Donner Party and what they suffered.

After the museum we joined a walking tour with one of the Rangers. He took us to some of the cabin sites and the memorial in the area. There was an event that day and one of the booths was giving out snow cones, so we stopped to learn about the difference between shaved ice and bigger pieces of ice and why that made a difference for the Donner party. And then we got to enjoy a snow cone.

The littles were a little bored with the tour, but they had some nice rocks to play on.

I broke off from the tour towards the end because these kids were bored. There was a little trail that went through some greenery. The mosquitos were bad, though, so we didn't take our time walking through the area.

We waited by the memorial. They claimed that the snow was as tall as the stones on this pedestal, but the tour guide shot that theory down saying even in a record-breaking snowfall year, it hasn't even made it more than half that height. They should probably change the plaque.

Ashley found a bug on the trail and the little guy entertained her until the rest of the group caught up to us.

Then we took a picture and decided to try and drive over to Donner Lake. But when we got over there, there was no parking and we realized that we had to pay to enter the beach are. So we headed into Truckee instead.

They had this portable jail set up in the parking lot of Donner Memorial Park, but we visited the real think in Truckee.

The kids got locked in the cell.

After the jail, we went to eat at Jax on the Tracks. It was an hour wait though, so we walked around the shops a little before eating.

We found this cute little bookstore and stopped inside to look around.

The kids found a favorite book and sat down to read for a bit. It was a nice, air-conditioned place to wait so that was good for them.

Dinner at the diner was good and everyone was in a much better mood after eating.

We found a park in the city to play at for a while. We also took a football and frisbees. It had the cutest little train track around the playground. We found out that we missed the mini running train by a couple of hours (it is only open every other weekend for a few hours).

The kids had fun playing though. We headed back to the cabin when everyone got bored there.

Lake Tahoe

We took a trip to Lake Tahoe the 2nd week of June. We met up with Brian and Maryn's family there and enjoyed a week of cousins and nature. We rented a cabin on the west side of the lake near Tahoe City. It was a little bit up the mountainside and just out of reach of having the nice lake view. But there was plenty of forest and the house had plenty of room for us. 

The kids also enjoyed the hot tub.

We had a bit of down time the first couple of days, so we played lots of games both electronic and non-electronic. We also had fun visiting and eating good food.

Tyler was especially fond of this little perch on the windowsill. He often went there when he was sad about something. 

Speaking of Tyler, on the way there, we forgot to remind Tyler to look up as we entered the Sierra Nevada mountains, and he got quite car sick. We had about 30 seconds warning to find him something to throw up into before it was all over him and his seat. We had to pull off the road and do the best we could cleaning up the mess with a small packet of wet wipes. After arriving at the cabin, we did a more thorough job of cleaning the car out and then gave everything a good wash in the washing machine. Tyler was feeling under the weather for the rest of the evening and went to bed early. Fortunately, he woke up feeling better the next morning. We borrowed Dramamine from Maryn for all of the other possible motion sickness days (which was almost every day)

The New and Improved Farm Country

Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point is in the process of going through some remodeling. We went on a nice mild day to check it out. Only half of the changes are finished, but the stuff that was open was pretty cool. However, I realized that my boys have probably outgrown it. We did ride the little train and the boys went on the ponies.

There were also so fun picture ops.

We were 2 days early for the huge farm themed playground. We will have to go back to try it out after the summer. I don't think it is supposed to be fully completed until November. It is going to be nice when it is all done.

Tyler's 11th Birthday

Tyler celebrated his 11th birthday on June 1. He wanted to go to Impact Ninja Gym in Sandy. We let him invite a couple of friends rather than doing a big party for him. 

Instead of cake, he wanted rice crispy treats with a Minecraft theme. I found this idea on Pinterest and it turned out great. The kids loved the treats, as well.

They had a lot of fun at the Ninja Gym. They started off by racing on the ninja courses. Then they moved to tag and other games together. We got there at opening and we almost had the whole place to ourselves.
 

About halfway through the time we were there, Alyssa finally got brave enough to sneak in and try the aerial silks. She had to look up videos of things to try. She mastered one thing, but it hurt her legs a bit and the last time she tried it, she stayed up high too long trying to get my attention and she ended up with a nasty bruise on her upper thigh.

We went to Chuck o Rama for an early dinner and opened presents after we got home. I think Tyler had a fun day.

Lagoon Season Passes

For Christmas, we got Lagoon season passes for the whole family. Lagoon opened up on weekends at the end of March, but our Saturdays seemed to have something preventing us from going up until the beginning of May. But that day was busier than we had ever seen Lagoon. All of the lines had to be at least a 3 hour wait. So we didn't ride anything that day. Then the girls got to each go for school events and still had long lines. We finally made it back right after school got out. We decided to get there right when the park opened. We made a mad dash for the new ride, Primordial, as soon as we were in the park. We had about 50 people in front of us, so we were excited to finally get to ride the new ride without the 3 hour wait that has been the norm since the ride opened in September. When all of the other rides started opening, ours remained closed. It finally opened up about 25 minutes after opening. It was a pretty short wait to get onto the ride and we were off. Primordial is a roller coaster that also has some virtual aspects with 3D glasses and shooting. As we approached the first screen, all we could see was blackness. Same with the second, third, and every other screen except the last one. Ashley told us that the ride is much better than what we experienced but we walked down the exit expecting that to be it for that ride for the day. Danny stopped and told the ride supervisor about the screens and she said we could ride again without waiting in the line. So we stepped into the child swap area to wait for them to get us on the ride again. And then they shut down the ride to fix the screens. As we waited, Camden pointed out his knee to us.

He had fallen down getting onto the ride and cut his knee. we didn't know until after we were in the child swap. And we didn't have our backpack or any way to clean it up. And with our spot at the front of the line, we didn't want to go out of line to clean it up. After about 20 minutes, they started letting people on the ride again. and then the ride stopped and people got stuck on it. So they had to shut down again. At this point, Danny took Camden to a bathroom to clean up his knee and then we waited and waited and waited. Long story short, we got to ride again with working screens, but we still had to wait over 2 hours to do it.

This is us in the child swap area. At least there was air conditioning, a bench to sit on, we could walk around our little space, and we could see most of what was going on with the ride.

The rest of our day went a lot better. The lines were short and we got to ride all of our favorites a couple of times. We left Alyssa at home because she wasn't feeling well. She had gotten a vaccination the day before and it made her feel pretty sick with fever and weakness. We wished she could have come with us. We went back (me and the 4 kids) a few weeks later and the lines were again pretty short. We are looking forward to a lot more fun at lagoon this summer.