Extended Family Vacation

About two weeks ago, Jessica, Mike, Travis, Nicole, and Mike's parents, Ron and Jan, came for a visit. Travis had packed along his Wii video game. So even rainy days were action packed.

Mom wasn't terribly impressed with the game, or maybe it was just that she has been busy working on her latest needlepoint project.

One of our guests got in a little solo hot tubbing time.

Ron and Jan prepared an excellent breakfast for all of us.

Can you believe these two have been married for exactly one year?

Josey frequently hung out under the table looking for scraps.

One night, Kathie served up a bunch of the fish we had caught recently.

We played group Pictionary one evening. Here are Nicole and Jessica working on ... Can you guess?

There was an especially interesting turn by Jan, who left us with this signed drawing. (Use your imagination!) We don't usually keep the various drawings, but this one was just too good not to keep.

One day, we rented a pontoon boat so that we could all have an outing on the lake together. There were some fishing attempts, although it was quite cool and rainy that day.

Mike did land a whopper, though.

Ron and Jan, who have a pontoon boat at their cabin back in Maryland, were our navigators and pilots.

Travis and Jessica were being Travis and Jessica.

An even bigger whopper!

Everyone took turns cooking. I was supposed to cook one evening but had contracted a case of Lyme disease and was not up to the task. Nicole and Travis bailed me out and took over for me. Thanks guys!

Later that evening, Travis introduced everyone to the mystery of the Land O Lakes butter carton, which Nicole is displaying here. (If you don't know the mystery, we can show you sometime.)

We thoroughly enjoyed having everyone with us.

First Summer Weekend at the Lake

We are back at the lake for the first of our summer outings. Rob, Carrie and Eleanor were here for the Memorial Day weekend. Earlier, Kathie spotted a painted turtle moseying across our driveway. We thought Eleanor needed to see it, so we retained it in a big cardboard box overnight and then gave her a chance to see it when she arrived. We took it to the lake to be released, and unfortunately, this is the only shot I got of it. I needed to be quicker on the trigger. Maybe Carrie will post her picture of the turtle.

Here are Eleanor and her mom from their turtle watching post.

On Sunday morning, we went to a new favorite breakfast cafe. Eleanor likes to make things out of the little jelly or creamer packets.

But she doesn't like posing for pictures. Her Pop, as she calls him, always tells her to at least look at the camera and make a chipmunk face. She seems to have a good teacher.

The cafe had a bunch of old games for people to play if they want. Kathie spotted one called Stadium Checkers that she has always loved to play. So, she introduced Carrie to the game.

Meanwhile, Eleanor and her Pop continued to study the jelly packet structures.

I bribed our waitperson into taking this shot of all of us.

After a subsequent visit to our favorite local garden nursery, we took a boat ride. Rob grabbed my camera and took some shots along the way.

Eleanor wore Kathie's bandana and liked to say "babushka", which we told her was what such head covering could be called.

Our neighbors were out playing with their log rolling apparatus.

Later, Rob took Eleanor for a walk along the beach near a place we had stopped for a quick lunch.

I told Carrie that shots like the one below are really precious to me for reasons I expect you can see for yourselves.