4th of July Weekend / Ben's Birthday

First of all, a programming note for those of you who care. If you'll notice on my righthand sidebar, there is a little Flickr icon that flashes up my recent picture uploads. This is where I will be posting all pictures from now on that aren't on the blog. If you click on one of the pictures, it will take you into my photostream and you can view all my photos. But add comments there if you do ... please please. I like comments!

Okay, back to the weekend recap. So if you read my blog on Thursday, you already know that was Ben's 31st birthday. We, along with a group of our friends, celebrated by going to the Braves game on Thursday night! (Thanks to everyone who came out to spend the evening with Ben) The night ended up with a W from the Bravos and a fireworks show that we watched from the parking lot! I think everyone had a good time and I know Ben enjoyed his day.

I got up early on Friday morning to head up to the lake while Ben was scheduled to play golf for the afternoon before meeting my family up at the lake that evening. We got there around lunchtime, and immediately went outside to enjoy the sun. We were so lucky because the weather was perfect -- sunny but not terribly hot. Ben arrived up there early enough to fish off the dock with Dave (brother-in-law) while the rest of us relaxed a bit. Because Ben's birthday was Thursday, we all went out to dinner to celebrate that night.

Ben gets to see Ellie fairly often, but this is the first weekend he has really spent with her in a while. Because of this, he spent lots of time playing with her and making her laugh ... we took a few pictures of the two of them this weekend as well.

On Saturday, we spent the day on the lake -- swimming, riding SeaDoos, listening to JackAss neighbor cuss out his grandchildren, fishing, and boating. Before we left to go up to the lake, Ben made me promise to ride Big Mable with him. The first time I rode on Mable, I fell off and seriously thought I was going to lose my vision. I had a headache for 3 days after my big fall! I think the expression on my face in this photo shows you how terrified I was.

Sooooo, after I screamed my head off, Ben let me get off and was able to talk Dave into riding with him. They had fun .....

until .....

they were thrown off!!!!!! Ben is still hurting from that fall, so I think its safe to say he now understands my hatred for the thing.

Oh, and I don't want to forget to show you this badassery that I saw out on the lake. How awesome is this houseboat!! Multi-colored vinyl siding? Check! SuperSweet palm tree art on the outside? Check! Man wearing jorts inside the floating trailer? Check! Plastic slide attached to the boat? Check!

Who wouldn't love a beaut like this???

That night, we grilled out at the house and went down to the dock to watch the fireworks. Our lake neighbor (not JackAss ... another neighbor) has this awesome point lot, and does a huge fireworks show every 4th of July. You can sorta see it in this photo, but there were probably 100 boats parked out in the cove to see the show.

We capped off the night by shooting some flaming balls of our own ....

Sunday was a little overcast in the morning, but we still got in a few more hours on the lake before paking up to head home. Of course when we were about to leave the sun came out and it turned out to be a gorgeous day! Isn't that how it always happens though? I just love these lake weekends. Sad that the summer is ending so quickly!!

That's about it. All in all, a great weekend!

Pirate Catfish

I got some flack from my family this past week for not already having posted this story, so I guess this is better late than never!

Ben and I spent Memorial Day weekend at the lake with my family. The weather wasn't great the first day we were there but got significantly better the next two days so we ended up having a great time skiing, riding the boat, laying out and swimmng. I'd like to say that we rode the jet skis as well, but our lake neighbor, JackAss*, yelled at me for making a wake. (I had a 2 year old girl on the jet ski with me at the time .... I wasn't driving too fast). Anywho, that is neither here nor there.

ben with ellie (i have no idea why this is underlined)

me, kimmie, and ellie on the new kubota (and no ellie didn't really ride this)

dad driving his boat

mom and kimmie riding big mable!

me skiing ... yaaay! i only learned to ski 5 years ago and have not even attempted in the past 2 years so don't make fun of me for being on 2 skis. i'm too old to learn to slolem now!

Ben and my brother in law, Dave, always like to hang out on the dock and fish while the rest of us swim or lay out or ride the boat or whatever. Saturday afternoon I had a great idea that they should go out and get a bunch of bait because I was going to sit there and and fish with them. I feed the fish around our dock all the time so they're practically pets to me - we always catch and release so I just figured it would be pretty harmless.

I got someone to put a worm on my fishing pole (I really don't like to bait my own ... I'm a priss like that) and dropped it onto the bottom of the lake. Very quickly I got a bite but I just didn't set the hook in time so the fish got away. It didn't take long for me to get another bite and I set the hook this time and wrestled the fish to the surface. Once I got him out, Ben tried to make me take him off but I refused so he came over to help me (reluctantly). Anyway, as it turns out I set the hook too late this time so I hooked the poor fish through his eye!! I felt HORRIBLE. They released him and he swam away but I'm pretty sure he is at the bottom of the lake saying "yaaargh" right now.

I have decided that my fishing career is officially over. I can't be out there turning all the fish I catch into pirates.

* his name is Jack but I've decided that a more fitting name for him is JackAss.