Catching Up

One funny story from tonight and then some catching up. We walked up to one our local parks tonight that has a climbing wall. It is probably about 9 feet tall and Madeleine has learned how to climb up it (which is great until she has to come back down!). She wanted to do it tonight and another girl who was probably about 7 started telling Madeleine and Jim that she didn't think Madeleine would be able to do it. Well, Madeleine showed her. The girl was impressed and asked Jim if Madeleine had taken lessons :) Jim's all ready to take her to a climbing gym now. It is something I have always wanted to do myself so I'm ready to go too!

Now for the catching up... In July, we headed to the lake with Jim's family. It was a fun week and we all enjoyed seeing Uncle Dave. Madeleine caught her first fish on the barbie rod! Both girls enjoyed swimming in an inflatable pool on the dock. At the end of the week Ann, Bart, Tanya and kids joined us. On Saturday, we started off for what we thought was going to be a short boat ride... we ended up spending most of the day on the water. It was definitely the most unprepared long boat ride with 5 kids but we had a fun a time. The ride back though was really rough in a ski boat with ocean size waves! Wish we would have had more time down there this summer.

Swimming off the back of the boat
Fishing on the dock
Madeleine reeling in her first fish... she knows you have to wait for the bobber to go under
This used to be a tree in our backyard
Hadley and Uncle Dave on the long boat ride... the camera was one of the few things we did have with us.
Swimming on the long boat ride... next time I will remember to wear my swimsuit when we set off for a "short" boat ride... it was really hot watching everybody else swim.

Land Between the Lakes

The summer has been flying by and we have really been enjoying it. This last weekend we met up with Holly, Nathan and Abby at Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky. It was our second time taking the pop-up out and all I can say is thank goodness for the AC in it! It was an extremely hot weekend mixed in with several thunderstorms. The kids all had a blast... so much fun that they didn't want to go to sleep ever. Madeleine was the best sleeper and that is unusual for her. Hadley stayed up very late and everytime we tried to put her to bed she would just call for Abby.

Holly and Nathan towed their boat and we went out on the lake on Saturday. That turned out to be quite an adventure. Lake Barkley is definitely not a great boating lake. It would go from 55 ft deep to 3 ft deep very quickly. As we headed back towards the launch ramp, the boat died. We were lucky to find some nice fishermen who towed us back. Madeleine seemed totally unfazed by this... I thought for sure she would talk about it non-stop. I guess we all did a good job of not making a big deal of it.

Sunday morning we woke up to a thunderstorm that seemed to never end. As soon as it ended we hurried to get everything packed up thinking another storm was on the way. As soon as we were all loaded the sky cleared and sun came up. All in all it was a fun weekend with friends and the girls really enjoyed playing with Abby. Next time I might plan this trip for the fall though and not the middle of August!

Hadley attempting to brush Abby's teeth for her
All the girls actually staying in one place and playing
Enjoying the sunset
Getting towed in the boat
It was so fun to see them all play together
Abby got a lot of hugs from the girls
Going crazy in the Visitor's Center... I think they were probably happy when we left but everyone sure had a fun time running around in the ac!
More silly pictures
Late night camping with Hadley
Breakfast in the camper