This past week, the Monson family all got together for 4 days at Bear Lake. Mom and Dad rented an amazing cabin that felt spacious even with all 19 of us in it. We spent the days playing at the beach, playing at the cabin, playing lots of Nertz, and eating as much raspberry shake as we could (along with other yummy things)!
The house truly was amazing! The thing that stuck out the most to me was the fact that the kitchen was designed to comfortably seat 30 people at a table or counter and also had extra stools to add to the other side of the counter if needed! I’ve never seen a kitchen like that before! They also advertised 21 beds–13 of which were all nestled together in an impressive array of bunks. Clearly a “cousins’ room.” Our kids were the only cousins who were old enough to sleep away from parents; so we just claimed that whole corner of the house.
This only shows a few of the beds.
Other things to do around the house included: a playground, tetherball, a pickleball net, a games closet, TVs on which we played Switch, Game Cube, and Scene It, a little indoor pool downstairs, a closet filled with Barbies and dress-up, and an absolutely phenomenal view of Bear Lake!
Other toys came out as well. 🙂 
This puzzle’s completion was notable because of how many people contributed to its disassembly at various times. 
This may have been Carter’s favorite thing in the house. Richard seemed all too happy to introduce Carter to a new video game console. 
Good morning, girls!
The first evening we arrived, Mom announced that she wanted to eat a raspberry shake every day we were there. Josh was determined to make sure her wish came true! But he wasn’t the only one to help it happen. We really did have shakes all the days at the house!
Yum! And check out this kitchen!
But we spent most of our time at the lake itself. The first day we got misinformation about having access to a private beach. We had a lot of fun there, and the true owner of the beach was very kind to us even as he told us we didn’t actually have access.
This water-bike-contraption was pretty sweet!
The other two days, we went to the North Shore beaches which were really nice, if a little busy. Everybody got plenty of water time–such that our kids didn’t mind so much that they never got in the pool downstairs–and lots of sun! Despite our best efforts to sunblock everybody thoroughly everyone in our seven person family ended up getting burned except Carter. (Lucky!) Six of us got quite burned.
Mom rented us some paddleboards and kayaks for the trip and we had tons of fun with them! There were multiple sandbars that made it such that even when we felt like we were really far from the shore on our paddleboard, we could still easily touch the bottom. Even the kids could touch most of the time! It made it much less nerve-racking as a parent. 🙂
After we packed up and said goodbye to the beach on Thursday, we caravanned together down to Logan where we finished off the trip with Aggie Ice-cream. Even after all the shakes, everybody was able to thoroughly enjoy it!
Even Bianca!
One more thing I want to mention is how much of a rockstar Josh was on this trip (even extra on top of his normal rockstar levels). Since his company got acquired, he is now in a limited PTO situation at work; and since he just started at the first of the month, he doesn’t have any yet. So he worked some last Saturday, and he woke up at 5 and 6:00 each morning of the trip in order to get most of a day’s work in before the rest of us had really started the day! I was super impressed, and grateful for his diligence.
Finally, here is a video Josh made of the trip. I tried to include different pictures in the post than he did in the video; but I apologize in advance if there are duplicates.
