Running With Scissors: As promised

My picture of the cow doing what every kindergartener wishes he could do got second place over at PhotoFreak! So, if you voted, THANK YOU...if you didn't then it doesn't matter because I still wouldn't have gotten second. I don't know enough people in order for me to have beat Ms. Ashley!

Next, The LAKE:

(TYPICALLY Labor Day weekend is when everyone calls it quits out at the lake. We went this weekend because it was Athen's Birthday and lucked out by getting to stay at the Youth Center....since Aaron's Aunt Katie's husband Jon is a Ranger out at the lake, we were able to got first dibs when someone else backed out... leaving us with this AMAZING place. Also, since Oct. is usually too cold to be fun, there was NO one on the water. We pretty much had the entire place to ourselves!!)

I never realized how much energy it takes to 1) keep a wondering eye on a 3 year old to make sure she doesn't drowned 24/7 2) incubate a baby somewhere where you don't have the luxury to find a place where you have the perfect temperature, shade, cushioning, and cleanliness. 3) NESTING where there is a nothing but dirt EVERYWHERE! Here's a mental picture for you...I felt like a hen scratching at the ground everytime I swept all the dirt out of my tent. (Yep, I brought a broom) 4) when you have a forgetful mind like this pregnant woman does, it is not easy to find things that really have no specific place to go!!

Okay, I'm done complaining. In spite of how uncomfortable I was most of the time, it really was an awesome trip. We got rained on one night, but besides that the weather was better than we could even imagine! The nights were warm enough that you didn't have to zip up the windows but the days were cool enough that you could actually stay in the tent and not die of heat.

Here is Papa Willy being a bad influence, which of course means he was letting Emily have fun. You would think with having 4 kids of his own that he would have learned by now... NOPE. He taught Emily how to honk the horn (big no no).

Again, the guilty "am I going to get in trouble if I keep doing it?" face.

What do Ricky Bobby and Emily have in common? "I wanna go fast!"

Papa Willy had showed her where the throttle was and how it worked. He immediatly looks over at me and says "That probably wasn't smart of me..." at the same moment Emily pushed the throttle all the way down and lurched the whole boat in to full speed. She was, of course, having a blast!