Rich, Heather and Alana’s Blog

Words always come up short when I try to express how thankful I am for my family or the joy it brings my heart to be with them.

For our summer vacation this year, we did lots of the same enjoyable things of years past…beaching, laughing, gaming, chatting, relaxing, and tv-ing.

Here I am at the beach, just wading out into the water. Rich just got a really cool, artistic blown-out look on this one. I love the way it looks!

Here’s my “little” HUGE brother (he’s 5′11″ at 13) teaching my bro-in-law to skim board. Shawn is excellent at it, and Jonathan caught on much faster than most people!

And us girls just totally relaxing in the abnormally serene surf. The beach was like a giant swimming pool on this particular day and was the most calm any of us had EVER seen it! This called for a raft and some floating!

Oh, man. For those of you who like ultra simple computer games and have some time to waste, do we have the game for you! Kitten Cannon is hilarious and totally sadistic. It involves shooting a kitten out of a canon and waiting to see how far it launches it before it dies.

The boys just thought this was the best thing ever and played it incessantly whenever we had down time. The girls enjoyed it too, but the boys were entertained by it FAR longer than we were. I attribute this phenomenon to the male brain’s ability to compartmentalize thinking processes and enter their “Nothing Box.” They can be wise and mature and engaging one moment and completely enraptured by the most elementary thing the next. It is truly astounding

This is Daddy Lashbrook playing Kitten Cannon…

And while we’re on the topic of testosterone-induced activities, here is a photo taken of Rich and Shawn’s apple-explosion experiment. Yes, they used fireworks to kill this poor apple since they couldn’t wait for the 4th of July to blow something up.

We celebrated mom and Amber’s birthdays a couple of weeks early since we were all together, and we surprised mom with an ipod. Group gifts are so much fun…and surprising people with something they want — but didn’t think they were going to get — is even better!

Amber and Jonathan taught us a new game they have learned from some friends in South Dakota. It’s called “Up and Down the River,” but for some reason I had a mental block and continued to call it “Up the Creek and Down the River,” which was the brunt of many a joke. That’s okay, I can take it. Oddly, I think I rather like being made fun of by people I love.

We all loved the game and dad and Rich were neck-and-neck the whole time. My hubby prevailed and dad was pretty gracious about it!

And here is #1, 2, 3, and 4 from our night of laser tag! Yes, these are the champions.

I won a prize, too, I was the very LAST place in a very large group of people during our first round.

It was SO MUCH FUN, and I highly recommend this as a “family bonding” activity. Nothing like shooting each other to really feel the love!

We ended our vacation with a night out for Transformers and the Cheesecake Factory. Wow. It was delicious and we dined on all things tasty. Here’s our last picture together as a family from Summer Vacation 2007.

Click the play button below to check out the fun slideshow!!!