Vacation at home

Due to unforseen events we were unable to make our planned trip to see Grandma Dusty and Gra. We were disappointed that we didn't get to see them, but have reschedule and are looking forward to it. Plus I was able to make good use of the time to take a breather after some very hard weeks at work. I did take the days off from work and enjoyed our weekend as a "vacation at home"

Saturday we took the canoe out on our local White Rock Lake. Lea was much more thrilled than this photo shows. This is a canoe that Dan remember riding in with his dad when he was a wee lad and was excited to share it with our wee lass. I was petrified that we were all going to end up very soggy by the end of the day, but thanks to Dan's expert boating skills and Lea's full cooperation we had our driest canoe trip ever.

We had a fabulous time. It was picture perfect in parts... other parts were spent rowing around picking up litter. BUT we found this corner of the lake where the water was clear as glass... brown glass, but still... We rowed around the tree line and saw turtles and ducks. We saw two kinds of turtles - soft shell and some other kind. Lea would cry "MORE!" when the turtles went under water to get away from our prying eyes as we intruded on thier basking in the sun. Not surprising, her cries did not bring the turtles back and even the power of parent wishes would not bring them back to their sunny spots.

When turtles were not in view, Lea busied herself by throwing rocks overboard. Fortunately I had the forethoght to bring cups of rocks (I'd learned that this was a good past time from our pond fishing trip)! And it worked!

At the start, she tossed some toys out, which were fished out of the water by Dan from his spot in the back of the canoe and finally mom learned that Lea should hold nothing but the cup of rocks. We did lose the cup.

We paddled to the opposite side of the lake and had a wonderful picnic. Lea loved the picnic and said so. Its very nice now that she can hold a conversation, even if it is a one word at a time conversation, she gets her point across. Lea says "boat" and we say what did we see on the boat? "turtle" what else? "ducks" (by the way somehow we've regressed to a point where ducks say "FAT!" Some how Lea makes the word believable as a quack, but it is clearly a fff at the begining and a ttt at the end... very bizarre duck noise) what did you have in the boat? "rocks" and what did you do with the rocks? "wahder" (as in "I threw them in the water.") and with "SPLASH!" she sums up the day.


I didn't take the camera on the trip because of my aforementioned fear of tippage, but this is pre trip prep!


Lea was such a good girl in her life jacket. She didn't complain at all and wore it well.




Then Sunday we continued our celebration of home by turning on the sprinkler pooh bear and frolicing. Lea enjoyed the buckets of water and spay. Lea and I played Monday too, but as the weather was threatening to storm it was a bit breezy so it was shorter lived than our original wet frolic. These photos are from Monday.