Monday, July 26, 2010

Del Lago

This past weekend my wife's family and I took a trip to the lake. Yeah, we took the baby with us too. The in-laws decided to rent a 5 bedroom lake house for a few days and they asked us to join them, so off we went! Funnily enough, my family had done the exact same thing a month before and ended up renting the exact same house completely on accident. So the wife and I already knew how to get there, as well as all the little quirks that the house seemed to have. Or rather, not have. The house was very large and very nice, but the owners just seemed to be leaving some things out that you'd think a normal house would have. Such as curtains or blinds on the bedroom windows- we didn't want to be woken up at 7am while on vacation! (This was solved by stacking pillows in the windows, and hanging comforters over them as well)

My father-in-law is a huge fan of Bass Pro Shop, and a fan of manly outdoorsy stuff in general. So he decided to rent a pontoon boat for the second day of our stay on the lake. He and I picked it up at 9am and spent the next 2 hours exploring a few coves and trying to catch some fish- we failed. However, I did manage to catch the bottom of the lake. As well as a random dock. And a tree branch, which decided to keep the lure. Farewell crank-bait.. you served me... not very well. But you served me, nonetheless.

Roundabout 11am, we piloted the boat back to our lake house to pick up all the womenfolk so we could enjoy a nice picnic lunch. However, this is where our story takes an unfortunate turn, my friends. You see, the weather this last half of July has been incredibly hot. I believe that day the heat index was around 110 degrees. So naturally, we looked for a shady spot on the water. As it was now just about noon, we had to get our boat directly next to the bank underneath some branches. Everyone busts out some sandwiches and we begin eating. However, the pontoon boat has continued drifting along the bank... directly toward a branch overhanging the water. I called to my wife, who was sitting at the bow, to let me know if she was about to hit the branch, so I could back the boat up.

A couple minutes later I hear "Uh... back up please. Branch is about a foot away."

I move to back the boat up, but find that I seem to bring the prop online- it had gotten stuck in the mud. As I began to raise the prop up out of the mud, the bow of the boat struck the branch.

Unknown to us, the tree branch was the home to a large colony of mayflies.


Chaos erupted from the front of the boat where my wife was sitting, accompanied by her mother, sister, aunt, and our 18 month old child. Every single one of them let out a blood curdling scream as hundreds of mayflies boiled out of the tree branch and descended upon them with murder in their hearts. Just kidding, mayflies are harmless, but they didn't know that.

"BACK UP! BACK UP!" they all scream as they desperately attempt to cover their food. It was like one of the plagues visited upon Egypt in the Old Testament.

Finally the prop came free of the mud and I was able to reverse us out of the roiling mass of mayflies. Everyone calmed down quickly, aside from the baby (who had never seen 4 adults scream in terror, so naturally she was terrified). We spent the next 10-15 minutes killing random mayflies as we encountered them all over the boat.

Cool story, eh bro?

Monday, July 12, 2010

I swear I'll update this thing with more than just a list of my child's words. According to our baby book, Bean should be able to say 3 words. May possibly be able to say 50 words. Well, we've got 55.

1) Hi
2) Bye
3) Kitty
4) Dog
5) Meow
6) Woof
7) Mama
8) Dada
9) Pop
10) Gamma (grandma)
11) Kell
12) Up
13) Down
14) Uh-oh
15) Yay
16) Bowl
17) Here
18) This
19) Ball
20) Owl
21) Bear
22) Elmo
23) Bird
24) Ear
25) Eye
26) Hair
27) Yes
28) No
29) Yum Yum
30) Moo
31) Duck
32) Quack
33) Roar
34) Go
35) Keys
36) Beep Beep
37) Six
38) Eight
39) Bubble
40) Nipple (hehe)
41) I love you
42) Frog
43) Ribbit
44) What’s That
45) Hat
46) See You
47) Cookie
48) Juice
49) Fish
50) Ah Ah (Monkey Sounds)
51) Sit
52) Get
53) Baby
54) Bauer
55) Thank You