Summer Fun

The summer has been flying by with lots of mini vacations and outdoor fun. Last week we spent our annual weekend at the cabin with all of Seth's family - only this year we got a whole week of fun in the sun. We lucked out with the weather and created many more wonderful memories.

Frankie was teething or growing or getting over an earache or something, so he didn't allow me too much time to run around with the camera capturing moments on "film" (what's the digital version of film?), but I did my best. I'll share a few highlights:

Charlie and Reed once again had several "concerts" out in the back yard, joined occasionally by Noah. Fortunately the neighbors like kids and commented how much they enjoyed the music.-

The kids had so much fun swimming, boating, tubing, etc that getting them to sleep was quite a bit easier than it has been in the past (with the exception of Frankie, but we've never had good baby-sleepers). Charlie even napped most days and still went to bed with the other kids - a huge improvement from last year!

My favorite Charlie moment was one morning when he woke up, crawled in next to Seth and started talking quietly. He must have wanted to sleep a bit longer, but couldn't fall back asleep. It sounded like he was whispering "Eyes! Stay shut! Stay shut, eyes!!" I wasn't 100% sure I was hearing him right, so I asked Seth what Charlie was saying. Seth said, "He's telling his eyes to stay shut."

Here he is napping with Seth out in the lake:

I will also probably never forget the lip retractors from the weekend. After watching the "Watch Ya' Mouth Game" video on Youtube, of course we wanted to try it. (China is making a killing off of dental lip retractors now). The adults played a little bit, but the retractors were a huge hit with all the kids. I didn't think they would fit their small mouths, but as you can see, they had no trouble. Several times during the week, I looked out onto the dock to see kids casually fishing with their lips peeled back unnaturally far.

Sam also tried knee boarding and did impressively well.  He stayed on for quite a long time, and had a blast. The only problem was that he was strapped in good and tight so he wouldn't slip off the board, so when he finally let go, he flipped under and didn't know how to unstrap it. He was submerged with no way to get out for about a half-minute. Richie was driving the boat and whipped around immediately so Seth could jump out and get Sam, but I'm sure those 30-40 seconds seemed like an eternity to Sam, who couldn't see that help was coming, and was panicking under water. He managed to get his mouth above water once for a quick breath before going back under so he never swallowed any water.  The next day I saw him strap himself onto the kneeboard (on the ground) and practice unstrapping it over and over again - something we clearly should have had him do beforehand. I don't know when he'll want to try it again, but it looks like he's not going to shy away from it. I hope at the very least this usually fearless boy will now have at least a healthy fear for the water, which could serve him well in his "invincible" adolescent stage. 

And the fishing! At our friends' cabin 2 weeks ago, Sam was fishing on the dock when we heard him start hollering for help. Thinking Charlie had fallen in or something, Seth ran down as fast as he could to see Sam's fishing line bent over as he tried to reel in a bass. We ate this beauty up for supper, and it was delicious!