White Water Rafting

Wednesday while Tom's family was in town turned out to be Ronan's (Tom's younger sister Andrea's boyfriend) birthday. For his birthday he wanted to take all the boys white water rafting. I'll have to admit I was a bit jealous, but I'll just have to do it another time.

Anyway, the night before Tom got the grand idea to give himself a sleeve of temporary tattoos to be funny. We got about 700 from Wal-mart, which we thought would be PLENTY, and at about 10:30 got started. Tom was placing them on one at a time while I checked e-mail and things. After about an hour and hardly any progress, he asked for my help. It was still taking a long time . . . apparently the surface area of his arm is GINORMOUS . . . so we just started taking the page of temporary tattoos and putting the whole page on his arm at once instead of placing the tattoos one at a time. It helped things go faster, but it still took a LONG time and TONS of pages. At about 1:30 and 500 to 600 tattoos later, we finally finished and headed to bed.

The morning rolled around too quickly as Tom had to be up early to get going. He also decided to be "funny" and copy our nephews' hairstyles - fauxhawks. With his fauxhawk and tattoos in place, he headed up. Of course everyone LOVED his hair and the tats. In fact, while they waited for everyone to get ready, our nephews put some of the extra ones on. Finally everyone was ready, they loaded up, and headed off to Ogden.

As usual, they didn't have any life jackets for someone the size of Tom. The life jacket they gave to him, he couldn't even button around his chest until he found the extensions.


With life jackets on (can we say . . . "Fat guy in a little coat"), they listened to instructions. This is also where they met their guides. The one talking, Jorge, was the guide of Tom, Dylon, Ryan aka Frank, Travis, and Tyson. When he asked Ryan his name, he couldn't hear him, so he called him Frank. Therefore Ryan was Frank for the day.


Here's the redheads . . . Tom and Dylon. They also are the entertainers of the family. Life is NEVER EVER . . . NEVER EVER EVER dull with these two around. I'm thinking it might be a coping mechanism for growing up as a redheaded boy. Whatever it is, they have us crying with laughter, especially when they're together.


Here is Team MK . . . Dylon came up with it therefore it's a little inappropriate. We have Travis, Dylon, Tom, Tyson, and Ryan . . . oh I mean Frank.


Here is Team CT. Again this name is too inappropriate to write and yes Dylon came up with this as well. They are Ronan (the birthday boy), Jon, Cassidy, Jeremy, and Max.


And they're off . . .


When Team MK would paddle, Frank would yell a number and the rest would paddle and yell "Huh" with each stroke, kinda like the Vikings.


Sometimes the boats would get close enough for them to start a splashing war. Tom, being in the front, ended up eating a TON of water.


At the beginning, they came up on some weak rapids and Dylon ended up flying out of the raft and almost broke his tailbone. Later on, they did the Bucking Bronco where you kneel at the front of the boat, facing the back of the boat, holding on to a rope, and balancing on your knees. Tommy Boy ended up falling out of the raft.


Here's the Birthday Boy again, paddling his heart out. Joyeux Anniversaire, Ronan!


You can see Tom's boat going under a bridge.


Finally after a good trip down water, they finished.


The biggest casualty of the day . . .


Tom's backside from being bucked off the raft. It was a mighty pretty bruise.

They had a good time. The weakest rapids ever, but it was a good time. Thanks again Ronan!!