Lazy Days at Lake L'Homme Dieu

Five. Yup that's how many days we enjoyed at the lake this year. Five. Amazing. Beautiful. Days. We usually wind up bringing some pretty awful weather with us whenever we attempt to vacation at Auntie Cheryl's lake cabin. In fact last time we were there we experienced sustained winds over 40 mph for pretty much 2 days straight, even through the night. Joyful. We couldn't have asked for better weather this year.

The trip down last summer was kind of rough. Neither of the kids particularly enjoyed being in their carseats longer than an hour or two, so much of the time found Mama squished in the back seat between the itty bitties, desperately trying to keep them both from fussing/crying/threatening mutiny. This year, much more entertaining for all, well maybe not for Ky! 

Some of the highlights from this year's festivities include:

Daddy and Kyle time

Trips to the lake bring a million first time experiences to the lives of our itty bitties, not all of them pleasant. Our little mister had his first dose of heat exhaustion and was sick for one evening. Not even a brief episode of dehydration and the pukes held him back for long though. Not when there are so many pish to be caught! It's not hard to smile when you outfish every one else on the dock!

  A HUGE change from last year's reaction to catching those pish:

  Yes, the favorite wellow hat survived the previous year to make a return trip to the lake!

Babies in sun hats (kinda makes me wish we lived some where tropical, sigh)

Helping Papa man the boat.....

and scout for icebergs!

No trip to the lake would be right if we didn't have at least a little bad weather. Fortunately this year the icky stuff came at night. Auntie Cheryl decided that at 3 years old, Kyle was more than man enough to help clean up after the storm and earn his keep!

You might not guess this to be true, but being related to a dinosaur genius (a.k.a. Cousin Heidi) comes in handy at the most random times. One might think that the discovery of a small stash of dinosaur toys would delight a 3 year old boy to no end, but alas just doing the "dinoswar stomp" with his new found treasures was not enough for Kylesaurus Rex. BTW, when little boys who love to watch "Dinosaur Train" on PBS ask you to name the dinosaurs, they are not impressed when you tell them Larry, Moe, and Curly. I quickly uploaded a picture of the dinos in question to Facebook, hoping that Heidi would see it, and behold, within 1 minute the following conversation ensued:

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Fourth of July

For the past couple of years Travis and I have joined his parents at Aunt Cheryl's beautiful lake cabin near Alexandria. I was a little nervous about taking a toddler and a newborn this year, but we have always had such a relaxing time there that I didn't want to miss out.

The first obstacle would be the car ride. Even with the spaciousness of Travis's Altima, two car seats would make for a pretty tight squeeze for Mama should the need for her to crawl in back arise, but the call of Lake L'Homme Dieu was much too strong to ignore, so off we went.  Luckily the two angels slept until Fargo. Kyle's newest fascination is to watch videos of himself on the video camera, and so once he woke up I was able to jam the Handycam under the head rest of my seat so that I could feed the obsession of the little narcissist.

Once we arrived in Alexandria Kyle was very adamant that he was "all done" with the car ride. Counting the flags that lined the streets pacified him, and we made it to the cabin with only some minor screaming and tears.
Nana and Poppa were a couple of hours behind us, so there was only Aunt Cheryl to greet us. Kyle played shy, and Cheryl ooh and ahh-ed over Emily while Travis unloaded the well packed trunk. It didn't take long for Kyle to feel comfortable, and he soon made himself at home.

Travis and I tend to bring bad weather with us when we go the Lake, and this year was no exception. The wind howled at 20-30 mph sustained winds, with 40-50 mph gusts Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Usually we spend a lot of time on the lake, but we had to find other things to keep us busy

 Like snuggling with Nana,

 reading books,

 watching the fake kitty sleeping,

and having water gun fights!

But we had traveled too far to keep Travis from introducing Kyle to two of his favorite things, boats and fishing.

Travis even made a special trip to town to get Kyle his very own fishing rod, but Kyle quickly found that fishing was way more fun if Mama held his rod for him.

And, much like puppies, fish are fun from a distance, but a little scary when they get too close

 

 Fishing and boating must be in Kyle's blood because when we had to be inside, sometimes he did this

and patiently waited for Daddy to take him back outside, but most of the time he did this....

Sunday morning brought calm winds and comfortable temperatures so Kyle got his first wave runner ride. Poor little guy was so exhausted from the weekend that he looked kind of like a zombie while Daddy drove him up and down the shore line, going a little too fast at times a perfectly safe speed. 

In the end Mama did end up scrunched in the back seat for a lot of the car ride home, but it was all worth it. Happy 4th of July every one!