Holiday Weekend Love

There's nothing better than a 3 day weekend, except for a 3 day weekend spent soaking up some sun and splashing in some water.  We took full advantage of Memorial Weekend's scorching hot temperatures by heading down to the lake.  For the past few weeks I've been thinking that this is the year that we need to try Claire out on some water sports.  She's comfortable in the water and is pretty willing to try out new things that she isn't familiar with.  After showing her a few rounds of kiddos knee boarding on you tube videos, she was game and ready to sign up.  But we don't have a knee board, and Jennifer and Chris weren't going to bring theirs over until Sunday - that's a whole half day longer than I was willing to wait, so I suggested we hunt down a set of kid skis to double the  drama  fun this weekend.  An hour later, we were pulling into the lake house with a new set of O'Brien Jr. Vortex skis and a 72" towable tube.  Claire couldn't wait to get started.

So get started we did, and we convinced her to go ahead and try out the skis - interesting because she's never actually seen anyone water ski.  Claire was excited - and asked that someone please video her while she skied so we could post it on You Tube with a title of "How to Ski."

I went over the key points several times with her:

What do you do when you fall?  LET GO OF THE ROPE
What do you do when you fall?  LET GO OF THE ROPE
What do you do when you fall?  LET GO OF THE ROPE

And... what did she do when she fell after that first attempt?  SHE DIDN'T LET GO OF THE ROPE. She sniffled a little after coughing up half of Lake Hartwell, but agreed to a few other attempts.  Overall, it was a good effort, but she was more interested in the tube and going for a ride on that thing - with me.  Ugh.  So tube riding we did, and vowed to return the next morning before the lake got crowded for more ski lessons on hopefully glassy water.

Yep, that's me... doing a knee board demo

Claire giving the knee board a try

So Sunday came, and it turned into a usual lazy day on the lake.  We had lots of friends and kids over, and we convinced all 4 of the little kids, ages 3 to 6, to take a spin in the tube during a boat infested Holiday weekend which created a whirlpool of waves in our little cove.

Only a few kids cried (ok... almost all the kids cried) and then we convinced Claire to give the skis another try, only now while everyone was here watching.  Like a good sport, she did.  And shocked us all when she popped up on those skis - shocking herself even, and promptly LET GO OF THE ROPE.

The summer has just begun, and she'll get skiing down before it ends.... 

Meanwhile, we'll zip around on the Rhino

And soak up some sun in the pool.