For the past four years, Kellie has been celebrating her birthday by doing a giant slip'n'slide in her back yard. It is AWESOME. We always have a blast and the boys always end up injuring themselves in one way or another.
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| Me and Kellie - 2009 |
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| The original group - Luke, Jon, Ryan, Kellie, me, and Andrew (2009) |
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| Andrew, Ryan, and Jon - 2010 |
This year, since I'm currently 7.5 months pregnant, I couldn't do the actual slipping or sliding (which is really sad), but I still had fun watching them do crazy things. And eating delicious lumpia. Thanks Kellie's mom!
For a sweet video of our slip n' slide adventures this year, click here.
Kellie's little brother Davis is incredibly talented and put together this compilation.
I love it.
I've watched it a million times already.
Not really.
But close enough.
As we were all sitting around the table inside, eating said lumpia, Ryan asked, "Hey guys. Do you want to float a river tomorrow?" I immediately said, "Yes!" I love doing river floats. They're relaxing and pretty and can become quite adventurous.
Oh, how little did I know.
So we all agreed that we would float a river the next day. (This said day being Thursday.) Kellie was going to try and get suggestions for good rivers to float, Ryan was going to provide the tubes, and Luke and I were coming along for the fun.
The next day, Kellie and Ryan picked me up around 3:30pm and we went over to Ryan's house where we gathered our supplies and left. Ryan's dad, Jay, came with us. And on the way out to the river we picked up Cameo, a girl that Ryan had met at BYU-I. So, with everyone squished in the car, we headed out to Flaming Geyser State Park in Auburn.
By the time we had dropped off one car at the stopping point, piled all of us into Jay's car, drove to the beginning, got our tubes and climbed into the river, it was about 5:00pm. The river was chilly, but we still had some sunshine and had been a very hot day. It didn't take very long for us to realize that there were a lot of spots in the river where it got really, really shallow. Shallow enough for all of us to get stuck because our butts were on the rocks.
We were floating down the river, enjoying ourselves, when all of a sudden we got to a portion of the river where it was moving much faster. Cameo, Kellie, and I had been floating together at the front of the group. Cameo and I made it down the little dip, but we looked back to make sure Kellie made it just in time to see her tube hit a big rock, and Kellie went flying off her tube! She bumped her elbow pretty good, but other than that she was able to hold on to her tube and her sun glasses (impressive, right?) and came out of the incident mostly unscathed.
After we had been on the river for a couple of hours, we were starting to wonder how much longer we had to float until we would reach the bridge that would tell us we needed to get out. We came across some people that were on the bank of the river, and Jay asked them about how far the bridge was. And we heard this:
"Oh, that's probably about another 3-4 miles down river."
Thus meaning that we had about another two hours to go.
By this time we were all starting to get cold, the daylight was starting to fade, and all of our shoulders were tired from constant paddling. But our high spirits were not conquered yet!
*Two hours later...*
It was dark.
It was cold.
And we were all tired.
We had been paddling down the river and still had yet to see the bridge. We were all fairly close to each other and made sure that we didn't get separated. My main concern at this point was for my little girl. However, after pausing my paddling for a second and paying attention, I felt her get the hiccups and she always gets squirmy when she has the hiccups. So she stretched and pushed, and I was instantly comforted.
As we kept floating, we started smelling what seemed like cows. And as we kept floating it was confirmed: we could definitely smell cows.
Finally, after rounding a bend in the river, we all got close enough to see the bridge! We were so excited and so happy to see it. No more floating on a cold river in the dark!
Now, I wore flip flops to the river because I didn't bring any sandals with me that had straps around the heel. So, I went into the river bare foot! Can't risk losing my trusty Old Navy flip flops. Jay, Kellie, and Ryan all had shoes on, but Luke, Cameo, and I were bare foot. We climbed up the bank on the right side of the bridge, took a few steps, only to discover that the ground was covered with blackberry bushes. Blackberry bushes mean lots of thorns. Thorns and bare feet... not fun. After a few painful steps, Kellie yells back at Ryan, "Ryan! Can't you like, carry Taylor or something? She's pregnant!" So Ryan snuck past Cameo who was behind me and very nicely carried me the rest of the way.
We stopped at a barbed wire fence. Jay was there holding the wires apart so that we could make it through. Kellie went through first and I followed her. As soon as I put my foot on the ground, it squished into something absolutely nasty. It's a good thing it was dark so that I couldn't see right away what it was.
Everyone made it through the barbed wire fence, and we started trekking through a field. We got to the road and realized there was another barbed wire fence between us and the road, and it was lined in blackberry bushes. Great. Ryan approaches the fence, touches it, and jumps back after a few seconds shouting, "It's an electric fence!! Guys, it's electric!"
I stopped walking. Let's think about this.
As we were floating down the river, we smelled cows.
We had to climb through a barbed wire fence.
My foot stepped in a big pile of something squishy when I climbed through the fence.
We were walking through a field fenced in with barbed wire and electric fence.
We were walking in a cow pasture. And our feet were covered in cow poop.
Yup.
Cow poop.
Jay found a spot in the fence where the bushes weren't as thick, and we all climbed through and stood in the grass. As soon as Ryan and Jay made it through the fence and all the tubes were thrown over, Jay ran down the road to get the car and come get us. By now, it's probably 10:00pm.
We're all wet.
We're all shivering.
And it's pitch black.
One very nice guy in a Subaru Outback stopped, rolled down his window, and asked to make sure we were okay. We told him that we were just waiting for someone to come get us, and he made sure we were okay, and then drove on. Finally a car came driving down the road flashing its lights at us. Jay had made it back to us with the car! We were so excited.
Kellie, Cameo, and I hopping into the car with Jay and we all drove down to the second c ar together. Jay and Cameo got in the other car, and Kellie and I followed them back to Luke and Ryan and all the tubes. We were finally in the car, with the heat on, our towels, and food.
As Kellie and I were driving, we realized how terribly wrong everything could have gone. We could have gotten separated, we could have had someone get seriously hurt because it is quite dangerous to float a river in the dark, or we could have just lost our minds and freaked out. But everyone kept their cool, which we were incredibly grateful for. And we were amazingly grateful for the fact that Ryan's dad was there. If he hadn't been there, I'm pretty sure I would have been an emotional wreck.
We picked up Luke and Ryan, put the tubes in the trailer, and drove home. It was 10:30pm by the time we started home. We had been on the river, walking through a cow pasture, and waiting for cars for four and a half hours.
Kellie and I came to the agreement that if we had been with anyone else, we probably would not have made it out as unscathed as we were.
It was quite an adventure. Little did we know that we would end up doing all of that when we set out to float a river. But I had fun! And I will always remember this trip fondly.
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