lingering adventures

I must squeeze in my last lingering memories from Bear Lake before school starts tomorrow, Elle’s birthday comes up, we take off on a trip to the National Institute of Health for Lucy, and life escalates from crazy to nutty.
I can’t leave Bear Lake behind without reporting on two adventures we had up there:

1) The first adventure happened on my favorite day up there. It was the second to last day.

Things were calm and peaceful with only around twenty or so of us still hanging around.

The lake looked like rolling glass…gray with sunlight glistening making it sparkle. It was smooth as could be. I had the best ski on that velvet lake, with all my children snug in the boat smiling at me. I couldn’t help but whoop and holler back there, and they did their best to be enthusiastic and whoop and holler right back. I even attempted my “holding on to the rope by my foot” trick that landed me in a good face plant.

Then Max, with a look of determination on his face, decided he must forget the darn tube and wake board and slalom himself. I loved watching him ski around the lake, and most of all I loved watching his face glow when he climbed aboard the boat after he was done.

Max’s friend and Grace showed their stuff on the wake board.

My cute niece skied.
We took breaks to swim around the boat.Everyone was living in the magical moment until…

…the boat died.

Just plain quit in the middle of someone’s glory run out there on the water. FAR out there on the water. We tried to put in the reserve gas and get it started with no luck.(I think gas looks cool in the water.)

Finally we resorted to paddling. We gave everyone a ski and started on our way back as the sun began to sink behind the mountains. We were never going to make it the miles back to shore before dark (my arms were about to give out after ten minutes or so and I think all we did was make a little circle in the water). Of course, we didn’t let the kids in on that thought…we just acted like this was an exciting adventure…which it actually was.Especially since my brother was looking out for his wife who was with us in the boat. He borrowed our neighbor’s boat and came to the rescue. Boy howdy were we all pleased as punch to see him show up to pull us in!

2) The next adventure had to do with flip flops, a hike and a rattlesnake.

One morning Lucy and I took a walk up to my parent’s house up on the hill. I was SO proud of Lucy because a) she actually walked all that way which is darn steep for a three-year-old, and b) she hiked up there in flip flops. (Flip flops are a HUGE accomplishment for this girl who was attached to the hip with her crocs and hasn’t been able to maneuver anything else very well until now.) We reached my parent’s house triumphantly.

And wouldn’t’ you know it, our great hike was trumped by a rattlesnake. Yes, a rattlesnake of all things! It came right out from under the deck and to make a long story short, my Dad got out his gun and shot it.

I’m serious about that.

I had no idea my Dad had a gun let alone knew how to fire one. He caught us all off guard but he sure had a good aim and popped that poor little sucker before he hurt anyone (rattlesnakes can be pretty scary with all those little kids running around).

Last time we found a rattlesnake (two years ago) my brother and his wife skinned it and barbecued it up for everyone to try a bite. (I love this picture from that night.)

The kids still talk about it.

Not to be outdone by my brother who had left by then, my Dad dissected that snake with any grand kids who were interested.

…which was pretty much everyone.

Yeah, my Dad is pretty much the pied piper around these grand kids. They think he walks on water…even more now that he’s shown them the guts of a rattlesnake.
So there you have it.
Summer 2010 at Bear Lake.
And even though Lucy asked about 421 times when we were going back to our “new house,” she loved it up there.
Can you tell?

All the adventures ended with a huge double rainbow stretching across the sky as we all began to take off.

Good bye, gorgeous lake, ’til next year.