Bear Lake

I love Bear Lake.  For one it is beautiful, but my childhood memories of many fun times at that lake with my immediate family as well as extended keep me wanting to go back for more.

We stayed in a cabin in Garden City July 30-Aug. 2.  The view was amazing!  We ended up going with a family in our ward, the Bergs.  They have kids most of our kids same ages so we thought the more the merrier!

We went to North Beach and let the kids play and boat to their hearts content.  I never stepped foot on the boat the whole time so I have no pictures, but the kids had a blast tubing.

Rachel and Eliza had fun eating chips in the water.  Eliza's chip bag came back to me full of soggy chips.  Yuck.  Rachel doesn't particularly love boating and wasn't feeling very well so she stayed on shore with me, Eliza and Austin.

A nice microburst came through and blew everyone's floaties, rafts, umbrellas, food, children, etc. away!  Luckily we were already cleaning up, but we still got sand blasted.  Poor Eliza was so scared. The wind passed quickly, but the clouds didn't so we headed back to the cabin.

I loved how the storm made the water such a deep color.

As I said before, Rachel wasn't feeling very well.  When we got back to the cabin she was burning up with a fever.  She rested for a while then was in tears saying her neck was so sore and she could hardly move it.   I gave my cousin a call who is a doctor in Montpelier and he suggested she come in for some testing.

She ended up getting a spinal tap to rule out spinal meningitis. Lucky for her all her tests came back okay. I was sad I had to put her through that, but I would hate to have it turn out to be worst case and I did nothing. (My great grandmother and her little boy died of menigitis so it isn't something any of us in the Crane family take lightly).  Rachel was really scared, but she did great. They had to put her completely out to do the procedure. She took forever to wake up. We finally got back to the cabin around 11:00 p.m. or so. Not a fun way to spend a vacation.

The next morning Rachel woke up with a spinal headache, like the ones they warn you of when you get an epidural.  Bummer.  I had one after I delivered Rachel.  Not fun.  So we tried to keep her flat on her back as much as possible and drinking tons.  She had to just lie on a blanket at the lake.

She wanted her picture by the Idaho sign so badly.  She was putting on a happy face, but she was hurting.
 
The rest of us had fun, though.

The next day Rachel still had the headache so we took her in to get a blood patch to hopefully stop it.  While Nate was with Rachel I went to my cousins house to let the kids play.  We had fun chatting and catching up.  I hope we didn't wear out our welcome too much.  We appreciated their hospitality.

We decided to stay one more night in Bennington at my grandma's old house and let Rachel rest and relax without a headache since the blood patch seemed to work.

Sadly, the next morning Rachel woke up with the headache again.  We were so sad.  It was really bad.  Kaden was a great brother and let Rachel lie across his lap the whole 3 1/2 hour drive home.  What a lucky girl to have such a sweet brother.  All in all the vacation was good.  Of course Rachel's fiasco put a damper on things.  It wouldn't be the first vacaction that someone got sick on (remember fall break of 2009, ugh)... nor the last I'm sure.  We want to do it again and we'll hope and pray we all stay healthy for it.  Anyone want to vacation with us?! ;)