Elk lake 2011

 Bright and early, at 5:00am, my family and I jumped in (rather, stumbled in with glossy eyes) the van, and headed to Elk Lake. Thank the Lord for 15 passenger vans with lots of space!

 -The view, on the way to Elk Lake.

 Now, you'll have to forgive me, I have no idea what days I took these on. I had absolutely no clue about what day of the week it was.

 We spent most of the day at the lake, relaxing, swimming, rafting, sun bathing....eating. :) We also made numerous trips to other lakes near by, such as Hosmer, Devils, etc.

 My 'amazingly handsome' Papa.

 The guys had fun sucking on their suckers. ;)

 Love this photo of my Levi.

 The boys tried to use a log for a canoe. -so Levi.

 Even though Devils Lake was not stocked with fish, the little kiddos still managed to catch a few. :) They were absolutely thrilled. This was Brooklyn' s first time catching a fish, and she was pretty proud of herself. I can tell that she will love fishing in the future.

 I love this photo of the squirrel.

 The lodge put little concerts on every once and a while.I thought that it was kind of cute.

 Eating ice cream at the lodge is a Koch tradition for Elk lake. One of the nice things about Elk lake is that you can camp in tents, or you can go right next door and rent a nice cabin, and then you can walk to the lodge and get ice cream, food, rent paddle boards, motor boats, canoes, and other fun stuff. Everything is there.

 On our way to the lodge.

 Night at Elk lake.

 Aren't tents lovely? Especially if you share one tent with all of your 7 siblings, sleep next to the "wall" and....Felicity. The photo above shows my 'comfortable' sleeping spot, for which I had to fold my sleeping bag in half, and that stripped blanket is Felicity. (Don't worry, I fixed that problem the second night, and I ended up sleeping like a queen!)

 The guys helped the ladies out a whole lot while we were there. They made a nice breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and hash-browns.

 Mr.Bradley managed the pancake department...

 The guys are flexing in this photo, to show how difficult and hard cooking breakfast is. Too bad they had coats on...

 This is Hosmer lake. It is one of the most beautiful lakes I've been to or seen. This photo is from the parking lot, but when you canoe down the different channels with lily pads floating on either side of you, you can see loads of massive fish swimming under neath you, and then you are confronted with 3 beautifully breathtaking mountains. It is spectacular.

 Papa and Caitlin are fishing Devils lake.

 Love the above photo.

 This little cutie had a fun time eating everything. Dirt, sticks, gram crackers, and much more! ....

....Nickolas just watched.

 *chuckle* This is so Victory.

 These little guys were fighting, so they had to skip out on the marshmallows. They were so depressed. It looked like they just got in prison or something. :)

 "Don't look at me. I'm not too happy right now."

 There were some docks on the lake that we spent some time on. What we do, is swim out to them, (which is quite a ways) and then play "queen of the dock." (that's a game where everybody is on the dock, then on a count of three you start pushing people off, until everybody is in the water but you.) That's always fun...though I always loose. :) Just this time us gals, (Caitlin, Felicity, and I) figured out how to make the dock our very own ship. We swam out to it, pulled up the concrete blocks, then kicked on the back to move it around. We "sailed" it to shore, then the moms got on, and we kicked it back out to sun bathe. That was oh-so-much fun. I am looking forward to doing that next year too. :)

 The docks. One we kicked closer to shore, and the other is father out.

 Mama and J.Q.

 Love this photo of Levi!

 The little kiddos had a water fight with random cups. It was quite humorous.

I will have LOTS more to come, Lord willing. I took 600 photos, and am feeling quite over whelmed with them all. But I'll get through it. :) I'm sure.


Thanks for looking!
~Jessica