Tag: lake (Page 1 of 4)

Summer’s End

September 5, 2017 / DB

The last real weekend of the summer is in the books. And, if you judge only by how tired I was last night, it was a good one. Fortunately by nearly every other measure it was indeed a fine way to wrap up the summer.

It’s become a tradition that our KC friends the Belfords come into town this weekend. They stay with our local friends the Heberts, and on Friday night we go to the local high school football game. We did not get a good result, so let’s not say any more about the actual game. The remnants of Harvey were pushing into Indiana, making it a cloudy, breezy, cool night, more like October than Labor Day weekend. Luckily the rain stayed just to the south of us so we at least stayed dry.

Saturday we stayed in Indy and took all the kids downtown to hang out at the Labor Fest and then the official Purdue tailgate before their game against Louisville. Bounce houses, face painting, balloon animals, and a beautiful day made it solid way to spend the afternoon.

Sunday it was down to the lake for the final time this season. We hadn’t been down for a month so it was a bit odd driving through the roads that split corn fields with the corn now being up above your eye level. Where back on Memorial Day weekend you could see the fields spreading out for miles, now it was like driving through a tunnel.

We’ve had some cool nights lately, so the water was a little chilly. It didn’t stop the kids from having lots of fun. There was the normal tubing and kneeboarding, kayaking and paddle boarding, and running around on the Lily Pad and lounging on the floating island.

Then, sadly, when we packed things up yesterday we began breaking a few things down for the year. The floating island was deflated. The hammock came home with us instead of being stored in the shed. We grabbed all the condiments out of the fridge. While we will likely take a boat ride on our next visit, whenever that is, it’s unlikely anyone will be back in the water.

The lake part of the summer was very good. I think we got a good return on our investment of building the new boat house and deck. It made our space a lot more useable, kept the boat cleaner, and generally made our shoreline look a lot nicer. We packed a lot of fun into this year, had a lot of great guests, and hopefully have a lot of great memories of everything we did in our eight weeks down there. As always, I’m wishing we had been able to squeeze another weekend or two in. I’m becoming more-and-more a fan of the Michigan school schedule, where they go a couple weeks into June and then don’t start the new year until after Labor Day. I’d gladly trade June weekends for August weekends at the lake.

Fall has been giving us hints for a few weeks. Although August was fairly warm and very dry, the nighttime temperatures have already been cooler for several weeks. Yesterday we bumped back up near 90, but tomorrow we’re only supposed to be in the low 60s. Morning lows are going to plunge into the 40s a couple times this week.

Yes, summer is over and fall, with its changing leaves and football and pots of chili and the distant glow of the holidays, is here.

Gearing Up

August 8, 2017 / DB

We got our final lake weekend of summer vacation in the books. Like our last visit, two weeks ago, this was a split weekend. Saturday was gorgeous: upper 70s, no humidity, warm sunshine, and a fairly open lake as a lot of the locals were already back in school. Then clouds moved in and Sunday was cool and rainy, which caused an early return home. We still have a Labor Day weekend trip planned, but with school and sports starting, it’s unlikely we’ll make another trip down before then.

We are pretty well prepped for school. We knocked the school supplies out early. We did a shoe-buying trip a week ago. Closets have all been organized, uniforms sorted and properly distributed. The school lunch calendar is on the refrigerator and the girls have marked when they’re getting hot lunch for the next three weeks. Backpacks are all ready to go Thursday morning.

C surprised us by starting to get up early on her own last week. And for the last two nights she’s gone to bed at 9:00 while her sisters stayed up until their summer bedtime of 10:00. For a kid who has almost no impulse control, C can sure surprise us when she is determined to do something.

When we got home Sunday I was hit with a flurry of “We have to do X and Y before school starts!” pleas. Funny how we had a couple weeks when no one wanted to leave their rooms or get off the couch, and when we had three days left with practices sprinkled in, all of a sudden everyone has an agenda.

You know what’s crazy: we didn’t go to a pool as a family all summer. We have a few friends who have pool memberships that we thought we’d tag along with as guests sometime, but those invites never came. And it was always on the list to go to the city pool, but it just never worked out. We may still be able to knock that out on a weekend while the pools are still open.

Today is full of practices, so other than a final Target run, we can’t really squeeze anything in. Tomorrow may be a State Fair day. We’ve never been, they’ve been begging to go for years, and it seems like a pretty solid way to spend the last day before school begins.

Catch Up

July 27, 2017 / DB

It’s been a busy few days.

Going back to last week, our friends the R’s visited from KC for a long lake weekend. They met us down there Friday afternoon and stayed through lunchtime Sunday. As a lot of you know, the R’s have two boys and they’ve not spent a ton of time with our girls. So we really weren’t sure how that would all go. Our concerns were without need, because after a few moments of awkwardness, they all got along famously. They entertained themselves which gave us parents lots of time to hang out together and catch up, which was excellent.

Crazy that we only have two more lake weekends left this summer.

Monday was kickball day. We closed registration on Friday and Monday was my day to divide up all the teams. Four of the grades have a single team, so they were easy. But the other two I had to take the results from our last round of evaluations and do my best to make even teams. This was much easier than last year, when we didn’t have any evaluations to work with, but still involved a lot of adjustments until I had them where I wanted them to be.

And then a lot of emailing. To coaches, to the parish office, to league officials, to parents. Then making adjustments in our management system. For a day it was like I had a real job again!

I think things turned out pretty well. The hard part is I can create two 5th grade teams that are 100% equal in terms of talent, but then one team will get put in a very difficult division and the other will get put in an easier division, and suddenly it won’t look like the teams are all that even. I shared with the parents how I got to the final rosters, so hopefully there won’t be any complaining.

All three of our girls are playing. M’s team again seeking that elusive city championship. C’s grade is an interesting mix: there are some really good players at the top,[1] and then a lot of really weak players. The in-between players are kids with talent who need to learn how to focus a little better. Both of those teams could either be really good or kind of suck, it all depends which direction those middle girls go. And L’s team is going to be a trip. It’s their first year of playing, so they have a lot to learn. Third grade games are brutal because no one can play defense, and you end up having 90 minutes of 20-run innings back-and-forth. We’ve done some summer pickup games and there are a few girls on her team that are going to be good from the first day.[2] We have a couple girls who don’t seem to be afraid of the ball, which is a huge bonus in the field. We’ll see how it all shakes out.

And then we watched my 14-month-old nephew from Tuesday evening through yesterday afternoon while my sister-in-law helped run an event downtown. The last time we watched him for an extended period was in April, when he was just getting mobile. Now he’s walking which made it a little more challenging to keep him corralled. Fortunately he’s a really sweet kid and was no trouble at all. He slept great overnight, took a good morning nap, but wouldn’t nap in the afternoon. That was about the only negative in the 24 hours we had him.

L and I tried to teach him how to play Nerf basketball in her room. When he would get the ball, I would stretch out my arms and say, “M! Pass me the ball!” He would walk over, grab my hand, then turn his body and try to sit on my lap and hug me. I told his mom we need to work on his will to win a little bit. Although the hugs were nice.

Some schools in the area started fall classes today. Our girls are two weeks away from their first day. Once we get M home this weekend we’ve got some work to do on our Summer To Do lists before the school year kicks off.

C is in this group. If she wasn’t so goofy and giggly, she could be the best player in her grade. I kind of like her being a top 4 player and spazzy, though. At least I know she’s having fun that way. ↩
Again, including her. ↩

Summer Doings

July 10, 2017 / DB

Time to get back at it. After the long holiday week, bookended by trips down to the lake house, we’re finally home for what should be a very quiet week at home.

Last week we had my brother-in-law, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter from Boston staying with us. It was good to catch up and hang out with them. The two-year-old, we’ll call her Little L, has reached the hilarious stage of kid-dom. She does funny things and then continues to do them when they get a reaction. Our favorite thing she did was calling me “Uncle Ken” and S “Aunt Cindy” all week. I’d go walking through the room and hear a little voice say, “Bye Uncle Ken!” Apparently she does have a great uncle Ken, but he and I have zero in common in appearance. And Cindy is the Asian lady who runs her daycare. So we’re not really sure how we got labelled with those names. It made us laugh all week, though.

She has a fun way with words because of her background and how she spends her days. Her mom is from Kuwait, so Little L has learned Arabic from day one. The daycare she goes to in Boston is run by Chinese women, so she learns Mandarin from them. She does the normal, two-year-old babbling where you can only pick out a word or two clearly from every 7–8. With her you wonder are those words you miss really either Arabic or Mandarin words and she just said something that makes perfect grammatical sense if you allow for three languages. She’s going to be one smart cookie!

This weekend we had three families from St. P’s down to the lake house, 18 people total. It was a busy and fun weekend.

C got to check out a little early as she headed down to CYO camp yesterday afternoon. This is her first time going and she was super excited. We’re a little nervous about her going away simply because every time she has a sleep over she gets herself worked up and ends up with a stomach ache or headache or sleeps weird and can’t move her neck without pain for three days or some other weird ailment.[1] She’s in a cabin with at least five of her classmates from St. P’s, so hopefully they’re getting so wiped out during the day that she can pass out at night.

L is camping it this week, too, although she’s just going to a half-day basketball camp five minutes from our house. She’s in a group with four classmates and apparently they are the only girls in a camp of about 100 kids. She claims they still “dominated” at today’s session, but she always says that. She was pretty excited to get her school shoes early so she would have new kicks for camp. She picked out some Kyrie Irving 3s with matching socks this year. But she also got a new Steph Curry ball so she’s properly representing her favorite player.

So M and I are home alone for three hours a day all week. She went shopping with S this morning, as S had no meetings today. But the next four days I imagine will involve her sitting in her room reading and listening to music on her iPhone while I sit in another room and read and listen to music on my iPad. Apples falling close to trees and whatnot.

As much as we love going to the lake and sharing it with friends and family, we’re kind of glad to be taking next weekend off. It’ll be nice to have a quick break and do some summer things closer to home.

The best was the night she was sleeping away and woke her host family up at 4:00 AM saying she felt like she was going to get sick. Which meant we got a call and I had to go pick her up. She never got sick. ↩

Lake Weekend

June 12, 2017 / DB

The first big, friend lake weekend of the year is in the books. I believe all who attended will judge the weekend as a success.

This was a four-family, 17-person weekend, including us. The kids ranged from 13 to 8, so it’s a pretty good time. The 13-year-olds, all girls, are still capable of relaxing and having fun with the younger kids. And the youngest kids are all comfortable in and around water. The beauty of that is the kids pretty much take care of themselves. Sure, we keep an eye on them, ensure they follow rules, etc. But we also get interrupted a lot less than we used to.

It was the perfect lake weekend, weather-wise. Mid-upper 80s both days, sunny, hot. Last week was still very cool at night, though, so the water remained on the chilly side. It was warmer than two weeks ago, but it did take a few seconds to get used to.

We determined on cool water days, the best way to get acclimated is to just jump off the upper deck. I took my first plunge ever this weekend. Our guests agreed with my impression from our first view from the top deck: it looks a lot higher when you get up there. It’s not really that high. I’m guessing it’s 11–12 feet down to the water. But it feels higher once you get up there. My leap benefitted from me having to remove my glasses. I pretty much held my breath as soon as I jumped because I couldn’t gauge when I was going to break the surface. Anyway, it’s a solid drop, it’s fun, and it’s deep enough where you aren’t hitting anything other than some tall seaweed[1] after you enter the water. You do have to be careful with your limbs. You’re moving pretty quickly when you hit, and that impact can sting. One of the other dads, who jumped off a good 20 times over the two days, had big bruises on his inner biceps Sunday morning. Tuck those wings.

What else? There was a lot of tubing. One of the 13-year-olds is a real daredevil and likes to go by herself. I whipped her around more than the other kids and even dumped her on the big turn. She loved it and the other kids enjoyed watching her antics.

L did her usual fishing. Her count was down this week, only five total fish. But she also landed this beast, by far her biggest catch ever. That’s an adult’s hand next to it for comparison.

Other than that, lots of good food and conversation. The obligatory Cards Against Humanity game at about 10 pm Saturday evening for the adults. Plenty of beer, wine, margaritas, and bourbon was consumed.

The crazy thing is our summer is something like 1/3 over already. I kind of hate these shorter summer breaks. Ask me again how I feel when we hit mid-July.

Or lakeweed, I guess. Why does everyone call it seaweed, including me? ↩

Summertime

May 30, 2017 / DB

Memorial Day weekend is in the books, the girls are out of school, and summer is officially here!

The school year wrapped up uneventfully. All three girls passed. Or at least we assume so; middle school grades are mailed so I supposed there’s still a tiny chance we’re going to have an uncomfortable talk with M about her academic plans for next year.

I kid! By our calculations she’s going to get her highest GPA of her career. Which is a good thing since she had her phone taken away for five weeks to being this quarter after she failed to take care of some academic business in the third quarter. Point proven, lesson learned.

If there’s one weekend when everyone in Indiana is watching the weather forecast, it’s Memorial Day weekend. “Think they’ll get the race in?” is the most popular conversation starting question around here. And this year it did not look good. At various points over the past week, it looked like the entire weekend would be a washout. Fortunately some of the storms went south, some went north, and the rains Sunday waited until both the race had ended and we were pretty much done in the water for the day.

It’s been a crazy wet 4–5 weeks around here, and because of that, the lake was not super warm. I dipped my toes in a few times and thought better of dipping more. So I contained my enjoyment of our new dock area to the decking. C and L did a few jumps off the elevated deck into the water. There were a few tubing and kneeboarding trips. And they kayaked and paddle-boarded a lot. But this wasn’t one of those spend three straight hours floating kind of lake weekends.

It was a family weekend, with most of the local family coming down for at least part of the weekend. A highlight of the gathering was the first birthday for one of the local nephews. We had the obligatory smash cake for him, which he enjoyed. Lots of other good food for the grownups.

We hung around through yesterday afternoon, which ended up being the best lake day of the weekend. The sun finally came, and stayed, out and it warmed up a little. A perfect day to spend mostly doing more work in preparation for the summer season. Yard work, power washing, adding some hardware to the new dock, and some other activities that had me over my FitBit steps goal before lunchtime.

And now summer break has begun. The girls aren’t doing swim team this year, so there’s no built-in activity each morning. There are some camps coming up. But for now we’re just going to wing it on our daily activities. Hopefully I can keep them from sitting in front of screens all day. And hopefully they, and I, all get along most of the time. We have a library trip scheduled for here in a bit. And our one trip of the summer – to Kansas City – is just three days away. Other than that, the next 10 weeks are wide open.

Finishing Off and Starting Up

May 22, 2017 / DB

Last weekend of spring, last week of school. Just four more mornings of an alarm at 6:35 and the normal grumpiness as the girls and I navigate the time between me waking them up and dropping them off at school each day.

We set the stage for the summer by putting the boat into the water on Saturday. We’ve usually done it a week or two earlier, but had a good excuse for waiting this year. Our big project for 2017 was to have a new boat shelter and deck built. The existing boat house was not sturdy enough to hold a boat lift safely, nor was it wide enough to install a drive-on style lift. Our lake is really clean – the conservancy always brags that it’s the second clearest in Indiana – but it would be better for the long-term health of our boat to get it up and out of the water when we’re not using it.

We met with contractors last October, went back-and-forth on the quote for awhile, and sent in the deposit just before Christmas. Then we sat and waited and hoped that the winter was mild enough for them to get started in time to finish before Memorial Day weekend. They kicked things off in early April and other than a few days lost to storms, have hammered it out. There are still a few details that need to be wrapped up, and hopefully those will all be done with week. But last week we got the ok to go ahead and put the boat on the lift. So we dodged some crazy, heavy rain and got the boat in, along with a lot of yard work, on Saturday. We had to come back that evening, so only got one quick lap around the lake in.

The girls did take advantage of the new deck area. We have both a large deck that extends from our shoreline, and a “party deck” above the boat lift. The water was fairly warm, so all three took their first leaps off the party deck ten feet down into the lake. I think that’s going to be very popular with the young people. We’re headed down this Saturday for the holiday weekend with family, including the first birthday for one of the new nephews.

L wrapped up her soccer season Sunday. We were really worried in warmups, because the other team both looked huge and had some kids that could kick the crap out of the ball. L’s team dominated possession early, but gave up a goal against the run of play and we wondered if that was the beginning of another thrashing. But our kids stayed cool, kept the ball in the offensive end of the field, and tied it right before halftime. They took the lead shortly after halftime when L hammered one home from about 15 feet out. Eventually they went up 4–1 before giving up one late goal and dodging a couple near-misses to hold on for a very satisfying win. It was the best they played as a team all year. They worked together, passed, charged down every loose ball, and didn’t make too many defensive lapses.

I believe L ended the season with 10 goals, which I’m about 90% sure was highest on the team. Having a five-goal game will pad your stats a little bit. She had a lot of fun again. Last night S and I had the first discussion about moving her to a more competitive league next year. We’re anti-travel sports at this age,[1] but several of the travel programs around us have rec leagues that could be a step up for her. When she’s 11–12, if it looks like she’s good enough for travel soccer, we’ll put more thought into it. For now we’re good with one game per week at the same location each week.

Tuesday is the last spring sports day of the year for us. M’s team finally plays for the city kickball championship. There was a rain postponement in the other division that extended their season until last week. Then we had to dodge the city track meet and a parish festival, thus the game being pushed to this week. The team we expected to win the opposite division did. So they’ll face a team that can really kick but may not be as strong in the field as our girls are. I’m already getting nervous.

I want to emphasize travel sports don’t work for our family at this age. We’re not saying they’re bad for other families, or judging families that are all-in early. We’ve just always said we will balance the three girls’ interests, and putting an 8-year-old in a travel league gets in the way of that philosophy. ↩

Breaking It

April 10, 2017 / DB

We stuck close to home over our spring break last week. Doesn’t mean we didn’t do fun stuff. As is tradition, a quick recounting of the past 10-ish days.

The girls’ final day of school, March 30, was an all-school day of service, a first-time attempt at St. P’s. There were some minor hiccups but, all-in-all, it was a good day. I was supposed to help out with C’s class, but they got rerouted and I ended up at the same place as both C and L, the Down Syndrome Society. They learned about Downs Syndrome and made Mother’s Day cards for women who are involved with their programs.

On the first day of spring break, the Mrs. worked a half-day and we decided to go check out the lake house for the first time since November. Since I was last down there to blow leaves away, we’ve had the land surveyed, our dock area dredged out, and two huge, dead trees removed. Most importantly, the day we went down a crew started tearing down our old boat house in preparation for building a new one. Our old one was perfectly fine in most ways, except for it was not built to safely hold a boat lift. So our boat has always been in the water during the three summers we’ve owned it. We have a clean lake, but it’s still good to get the hull and engine up and out of the water if you can. Last week they got most of the framing for the new house up, so we’re hopeful the weather holds and everything is knocked out by Memorial Day weekend.

Last week, we had at least one activity lined up each day.

On Monday the girls got to cook with their aunt, who is a chef. We also mixed in a trip to the library. They borrowed a huge stack of movies and I think they watched one or two of them.

On Tuesday we hit the zoo and a fancy bakery on the way home.

On Wednesday, we went with the cooking aunt to a cool Asian market to help her load up on supplies, then took the girls to a Vietnamese restaurant. They had bubble tea smoothies while I had some tasty Pho.

Thursday each girl had one friend over for a trip to the bowling alley and then a sleep over. It was funny to watch them all separate into their own groups. The sixth graders were far too cool to hang out with the fourth graders, who wanted their own space away from the second graders.

Friday, after returning their friends home, I took our girls to an indoor go-carting place. They had fun, although they were all a little light on the gas pedal. They were racing only against other kids, all of whom were boys who hauled ass. My girls got passed early and often. But they liked it and want to go back again sometime.

Saturday the weather finally turned warm. C had kickball practice, M and L had play dates, and we all went to dinner with friends from St. P’s.

And finally Sunday L had her first soccer game of the year. They lost 5–3. Since severe storms, cold weather, and spring break had wiped out their two scheduled practices, this was the first time they were playing together. And two kids were still on spring break. L struggled a little. She just didn’t seem to have a ton of energy, and was often bent over huffing and puffing. It being the first really warm day of the year may have had something to do with that. After the game, the coach called all the parents over to say he was proud of how the kids played for having zero experience as a team. And he said he really appreciated that his son and L gave it up for the team by playing in goal and sweeper respectively. “And those two HATE to play defense.” She’s played for this coach twice before and I’m glad he hasn’t forgotten homegirl needs to play up front!

Bedtime was not easy last night, at least for the older two, who were loaded with complaints and foot-dragging to get their shit done before lights out. Just seven more weeks of the school year left. And kickball season begins for both M and C Tuesday, so the next three weeks are going to rocket by.

Tuesday Notes

October 18, 2016 / DB

A few assorted tidbits for Tuesday.

Here’s the thing about Indian Summer: you never fully appreciate it. Sure, you can talk in wonder about it being in the mid–80s in the back-half of October. You can take a long lunch, leave work early, or just take the day off to get outside. But as good as these days feel, we are also craving those cool, autumn breezes. It looks like the weather here is going to shift dramatically in the next 36 hours. I’ll miss these warm, muggy, breezy days.

Sunday afternoon was kind of crappy around here. It rained pretty hard for about 90 minutes, which just happened to coincide with the time of L’s soccer game. I think the kids mostly enjoyed running around in the rain and mud. I was a little surprised there wasn’t more sliding around. L played probably her best game of the season, scoring two goals, and just missing three other chances. I think it helped being little, as the bigger kids were having more trouble cutting on the wet grass. Four times she brought the ball up the sideline, cut hard back into the penalty box, and then fired away. One went in. Another hit the post, the goalie, and then bounced away. And two others the goalie knocked away.

We took advantage of yesterday’s delightful weather by heading down to the lake after we dropped the girls off at school in the morning. S and I did some yard work, met with some contractors to talk about some winter projects, and then pulled the boat out of the water for the year. Our contractors showed up a little late, and our conversation took the better part of an hour, so I missed the chance to haul ass one, last time. I did get to take a quick spin as S was getting the trailer into the water at the marina. I think the boat knew this was her last chance to show off, because she jumped up and went fast quickly. Or maybe it was just having one person inside and not towing anything behind that made her go so fast. Regardless, I enjoyed the five minutes of racing around the dam-end of the lake while waiting for the trailer to be ready.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather that the Royals were playing in this year’s MLB playoffs. But I have really enjoyed this year’s games so far. I think it helps having no strong feelings about any series, other than wanting Toronto to lose.[1] It’s way less stressful to watch the games that have been close deep into the contest when I can be reading an article on Instapaper, or scrolling through Twitter as I watch. And I’m free to go to bed at 11:15 even if the game isn’t over yet.

That said, I’ve missed a couple excellent finishes by calling it a night before the final out has been recorded.

Such a shame that team is on the verge of losing to a team from the AL Central for the second-straight October. ↩

Last Summer Weekend

September 6, 2016 / DB

The last weekend of the summer is in the books. It was a busy and fun one.

It started super early, at least for C and I, as she had her first cross country meet of the year Saturday morning. I had to have her at the course by 6:30 am, which meant a 5:45 alarm for us. I was not super fond of the early wake time, but she did just fine. She was in as good of a mood as she’s ever been in first thing in the morning. I think she was looking forward to running.

That showed in her performance. She ran in the 3rd–6th grade group, and finished 16th overall out of 105 runners. She was the second-fastest fourth grader, and the fastest fourth grader from St. P’s.[1] More importantly, she cut 30 seconds off her best 3K time. That’s huge, especially when she’s only been going to practice sporadically because of kickball. Her kickball season ends this week, so who knows what she’ll be capable of once she’s running 2–3 times per week before races. She was pretty pleased with her performance, as was I.

After the meet, we grabbed the rest of the family and headed down to the lake. Our guests weren’t arriving until Sunday, so we had the afternoon to get the house and yard in order. It had been exactly a month since our last visit, so there was lots of work to do. The girls swam a little, and we took one trip around the lake with L in the tube, but overall it was a pretty relaxed day.

Sunday, our guests the Heberts and KC Belfords rolled in. There was a lot more tubing and swimming with the addition of five more kids to the mix. Lots of catching up, laughs, and good food and drinks for the grown ups. We had beautiful, if not quite ideal weather all weekend. We had a few cool nights late last week, which extended into the weekend, so the water temperature had already dropped a bit. It was right in the refreshing zone as long as the sun was out. When a cloud passed, it got a little chilly. Naturally, when everyone was packing up to head home on Monday, the temps shot back up into the 90s after five days in the 70s and 80s. Just in time for us to sweat like lunatics as we packed away the dock toys.

And thus wrapped up our 2016 lake season. It’s always crazy to me how quickly this part of the year goes. When Memorial Day rolls around, you’re hoping the water is warm enough so that everyone will want to get in and enjoy it. By late July, the big Friday night trips to the grocery store and the packing up on Saturday begins to get old. August is always a light lake month with school and fall sports beginning. And then suddenly it’s Labor Day weekend and you realize it’s the last chance to spend two days lounging in the water.

We’re going to try to do better about getting down for at least part of a weekend before the month is over. It’s tough with cross country meets every Saturday morning, and L having soccer every Sunday. And while it may be too cold to swim for hours if we make it down later this month, we can still take the boat for a spin or two. We just want to try to make sure our next trip isn’t the annual quick one to get the boat out of the water before the first freeze, or to just do yard work.

And now I guess it’s time to start drinking Oktoberfests.

There was a St. P’s third grader two spots in front of her. That kid was moving! ↩