Every summer my family travels to one of my favorite places called Bear Lake. The lake is spilt in two with half of it in northern Utah and the other half in Idaho. I love riding my bike along the lake because I can say that I rode my bike from Utah to Idaho and it sounds really far! In all it is about a 30 mile round trip from the place we stay. This is a beautiful lake and it is notoriously cold.

I have been going to Bear Lake since I was three and it is so fun to share it with my kids. This was the year we decided that we needed to get all of our younger kids to be better at water skiing. I love to ski so I volunteered to get in the cold water and be the helper mom and teach my kids and nieces and nephews be successful little skiers. (A side note- my nieces and nephew told me that I was nicer to them then their moms- that’s why they wanted me in the water! Take that sista’s!) So what started out to be nice morning turned into me staying in the lake two solid hours turning purple and a total combined effort of all skiers up and out of the water and skiing -about 10 seconds.

Now, I am no quitter and my reputation of the best teacher, favorite aunt, and best cheerleader in the family was at stake so that meant we had to face another day of water skiing. We woke up the next day- and this is a funny side note for my LDS friends out there. There were no boats on the lake that we could see except one and they just returned from a very early ski. As they were walking past us we said hi and because I was facing two hours with no wetsuit in the water, I ALMOST SAID to the older man wearing a wet suit. “Hey- you’re a wimp wearing a wet suit out there. Can’t you take the cold! But something stopped me and they went on their way. My mom said that was cool we talked to them and I said who? She said “Honey, that was Elder Eyring.” (He is an Apostle, a very high position in the LDS faith.) Yikes!

I did have a silent chuckle. That day of skiing was a lot more successful. Maybe I was being blessed for NOT calling an apostle a wimp. Two of my students- er -uh kids skied 1 minute and 40 seconds each and two made it up for at least 6-10 seconds (depending on how fast you were counting!) What a day! And just for the record- I showed off to my teenage nephews with a great ski and I can still jump the wake at 40 years old!