*I will add the pictures when they come.*
I guess getting stuck in Beaver UT wouldn't have mattered that much if it weren't for the fact that it stole one of my last opportunities to be with Dallin before he went on his mission for two years.  Yeah, there'd be another ten days after he got back, but I knew he'd be wildly busy preparing to move his whole life to Chicago.
My mom was on the phone for a while that night.  As she hung up, her eyes gleamed with excitement. "His mom just invited you to Lake Powell!"
So two days later their friends picked me up on their way from Oregon. I hid on the other side of the car for a few minutes while Dallin helped unload, and then suddenly ran around and pushed him from behind.  When he turned around, the look on his face was priceless as he first stared at me in shock, and then embraced and swung me around.

I am so utterly grateful to his family for such a fun, amazing week.  I love the sensation of wind and sunshine and spray across my face while the boat tears through the water; my feet were left stinging and red yet I love the adventure of climbing up the sandstone hills that pave the shape of the lake. OK, so maybe it scared me a bit as Dallin and his cousin Reed took running starts to scale the more slippery parts of rockface, and when I tried to use the numerous ants as a reason for them to stay down, Dallin instead named them {*update, he wanted it known that the name is Sigore}.  We also discovered that the lizards have evolved with white scales to blend in!  In the afternoons we would park the boats for lunch on the beach followed by a round of tubing {the bridge of my nose was blue and swollen for days after I smacked my face on something haha}.


 His mom and sister found an obsession with driftwood, so I laughed when Dallin asked me and Reed to go for a ride on his giant stick, and then we chugged along in the water like it was a floating train {except I was mostly doggy-paddling since the boys held it with their knees and I am much shorter}.
We also pretended to be cool by getting rub-on tattoos or, in Dallin's case, I spent two hours drawing on his arm with a Sharpie.

At night we would join the little girls in a game of hide-and-seek with five trees, hang out on the rooftop balcony, watch Sharkweek, roast s'mores, laugh through pages and pages of FML stories, bake cookie dough cheesecake, or I would sit back and brainstorm book ideas while the boys played Halo.

On one of my favorite days was when the channel became too thin for the boat, so we hopped in the water and started exploring.  Trying to climb the slippery sandstone was definitely one of the hardest things any of us had ever done.
 I couldn't believe the beauty of the green water contrasted by red-streaked walls!

Even on the last day, the adventure wasn't over.  Dallin and I rode in Reed's car and last minute we decided to visit Horseshoe Bend {an AZ bucket list item of mine}.  To put it in Reed's words, "This was a good decision."

Less then 24 hours after throwing my cap in the air, I was in the car on my way to northern AZ with Dallin, his parents, his stepbrother Cooper, Adyson, Dallin's friend Braden, and Cooper's buds Ryan and Porter.  Alright, so maybe we didn't get there till very late at night, but despite Dallin's truck breaking down, his parent's car getting pulled over on the way to picking up a rental truck, and then Dallin getting pulled over for following his dad too closely when we were finally back on our way... everyone was in a good humor and it was easy to predict this trip would be a blast.    The house was a beautiful Spanish-style two story with an elevator, four bedrooms, two-and-a-half kitchens, luxury bathrooms, fantastic TV/lighting/vocal communication systems and a balcony with the most gorgeous view I've ever seen from a house. Us grads had had less than a wink of sleep in the past two days, but we we figured why not and pushed off our rest off even longer by dipping in the jet hot tub {and ended up doing so every night}.
Maybe it's because I don't think I'll ever be living in AZ again, but the closer I get to leaving the more I realize just how beautiful my home state is.

  There is something so relaxing about spending a day on the boat with the penetrating sunshine and the soft roar of water.  Ok, so it was cloudy much of the time, and on our first day out it started pouring. It was absolutely freezing so all the teens huddled on the floor of the boat with our combined body heat and wet towels for warmth. We all learned how to wake surf,  although I'm ashamed of myself for losing my touch on the wake board after so many years. Sometimes when the boat's tanks weren't filled properly, the boat would jump on every tiny wave, and we would stand as high as we dared on our knees or even brave standing fully on the seat while holding on.  When the song on the stereo gave off the perfect vibe {like Gasolina}, we would have a dance party.
  Ryan and Porter gave Adyson the "friend zone tap" but apparently graduating the day before put me in the "mom zone."  I'm not kidding, Dallin and I started responding to Mom and Dad.  {Why should I be surprised when the church gave me chocolate for Mother's Day?}
We also learned that if Dallin says it's time to get gas then it's definitely time to get gas.  Otherwise, you'll probably run out and have to stop a houseboat.

"SEPARATE THE SADNESS!" aka keep the couples apart for the picture hahaha.


It was so hard to leave.  Although perhaps a little sunburnt and embarrassed from the occasional awkward moment, I'd had an absolute party of a trip.