Rose Regatta - Dragonboat festival

This highly-anticipated annual event raises funds for St. Rose Dominican's R.E.D. Rose program, which provides free clinical breast exams, mammograms, ultrasounds, surgical consultations and biopsies.  This year I joined with the team from my hospital (San Martin) for this race out at Lake Las Vegas.  We were the Southwest Samurais.  There is a healthy competition between the three hospitals for the fastest dragon boat.  It was a really fun day.  We had 2 heats.  We didn't stand a chance with the first one because the infamous "Team Panda" was there.  They win every year.  We treated it as a practice run.  Our second race was the heat between the three campuses.  We paddled hard and fast but ended up taking second place.  We had to do the race a second time for media purposes.  We had to put a weather man on our boat.  The results were exactly the same.  After the fun, I joined with my friends for lunch at a Mexican place there at the Lake.  It's fun to branch out and do something different.  I'll definitely be on the team again next year!

 

 

My buddy, Michelle, convinced me to join the team.  It was one of those "I'll do it if you do it" deals.

 

Our Silver Medal

 

We were all given roses.  They were then thrown in the water in memory of breast cancer survivors. 

The Wedding

The main reason we went up to Bear Lake when we did, was so we could go to Idaho to be at Leticia & Chris's wedding.  I love being with my cousins and wish we could have had more time together but it was great to be together for this event.  It looked like rain but we got lucky and it cleared up by the time the ceremony had started.  There was a DJ and people danced until midnight.  I was freezing (in the middle of July) so many us wrapped up in blankets so we could continue visiting. 

 

 

Tyler served as the officiator and dressed up like the pope

 

Zack just got back from his mission so now the family is all back together

 

Here are some of the beautiful pictures that she shared.  I'm glad we were there.

 

The next morning we all got together for brunch and to watch them open their gifts.  We left Pocatello around noon and got back to Vegas at 10:30 pm.  It was a long day of driving but I needed to get back to work on Monday.  We put 1766 miles on the van in one week.  But spending the time with my kids was priceless. 

Bloomington Lake and Smores

On our way to find Bloomington lake, I wanted to stop and go on a quick tour through the Paris Tabernacle.  It was beautiful.  So much woodwork throughout the place. 

 

It took a while to get to the Lake.  We drove for 30 minutes on a rough dirt road.  I almost turned around several times.  But we made it only to find out that there was a hike to get to the lake.  The hike was only half a mile and it was a beautiful area.

The lake was freezing but there were some crazy people swinging off a rope into it.  It was fun to watch.  I did see some snow in the mountains because it was so cold.  Brianna did go with us, but she didn't want to be with us so she isn't in the pictures.  She wandered off the path on her own and ended up with a weird rash on her arms.  hmmmm.

Can you see the little patches of snow there?

After we got back to the cabin, my eagle scout built a fire for us to make some smores.  It ended up being a marshmallow burning session but that was fun too.  Afterwards Cord and Brianna went back in to finish their Monopoly game while Mason and I just sat and chatted as the fire burned down.  I'm thankful for quality time together. 

Paris ice cave

 

It took a while on a crazy narrow dirt road, but we reached the Paris ice cave this morning.  It wasn't very big, but there is always snow and ice inside.  There was a youth group there rappelling into the cave.  It looked exciting.  Mason carved his initials into the ice.  Mason also helped Cord climb around on the rocks. 

 

I have loved having this time with my kids.  One thing that was nice about this vacation was that it was so relaxed.  We slept in, went exploring, and then spent quality time together in the evening.  Things are really going to change when Brianna leaves our little group and goes to college.  So I treasure each moment together. 

 

This is the chunk of snow inside the cave in the middle of July.  So Weird.