Grin and Bear It

We obviously didn’t have Internet service at our final Lake Powell destination…well…we actually did, but it required a boat ride out into the middle of the lake. It was a pain in the butt, so I only forced Buv to take me out once (sometimes twice) a day so I could get connected to turn in/complete homework assignments.

When Jake was released from the hospital on Sunday afternoon, it was too late to leave the marina, so we left Monday morning…just as we had originally planned. That extra two days we were all so excited about…turned out not to be extra.

Anywho…after we left the slip at the marina, we started off towards “Cookie Jar” (one of the landmarks). We found a good spot to anchor into for the remainder of our week. The four men (Mike, Anthony, Bill, and Buv) dug and dug holes deep enough to hold our house boat, “Grin and Bear It” into place. After all the digging and other associated anchor setting duties were completed, we all started to relax…FINALLY!!

The rest of Monday was spent relaxing and just hanging out together. Tuesday started with Buv’s early morning fishing trip…which was followed by tubing and riding the jet skis. Sydney and I rode the tube and the jet skis and had a blast together. Shanna taught Derek how to drive the jet skis and I let Carsen do a little of his own driving too...with us of course.

Funny enough, Sydney hadn’t planned on even getting wet…the entire week!! That changed quickly!! She was a trooper and was by far the biggest help the entire week. Any time we needed help with ANYTHING she jumped and did every task with a smile…she didn’t complain one time!! She never had a scowl or a foul attitude…she rocked and made the trip a lot easier on a lot of people.

Wednesday was more of the same fun activities…except that the number of sick people on board had increased from Jake, Billy and Austin (Shanna’s 10 year old) to Mike, Anthony, Sydney, Shanna, Richelle, Robyn, the rest of the kids and me…plus the original three sickos. That really only left Bill and Buv… “healthy”. We all put every ounce of medicine of any kind into a pot and everyone tried their best to take what they thought would help.

I introduced Mike to my “nose bong” or netti pot…which seemed to help him quite a bit…it did not work it’s normal magic on me, however. Since I rarely get sick, I wasn’t too worried…plus the nose bong usually clears out anything that would become something. This time, I was not so lucky. I can’t remember the last time I was this sick: my throat is freaking killing me, my ears both hurt, my sinuses are jacked and I have so much chest congestion I feel like I might die at any moment….This feeling of death looming close by has been here since Wednesday morning…possibly Tuesday night. But I can’t complain, we all feel like crapola.

Our houseboat must have been the most germ infested boat on the entire lake…all we needed was large red cross on the side. But like our boat’s name, we all just grinned at kept bearin’ it!!