Yay for Independence day as a National holiday and yay for taking an extra day off from work...National holiday + vacation day = 4 day weekend!! Kelly Brooke and I drove up to my aunt and uncles lake house (Lake Mohawk, Sussex County New Jersey...The GARDEN state people!) late Thursday night and I rode back with Chris and Becky (and Abby) on Monday afternoon. What a relaxing weekend! The weekend consisted of boating, eating, sleeping (ie. hammock napping) and more eating! Here's a pretty short weekend photo documentary
Friday morning we slept in, ate a big brunch and went for a boat ride. We were stopped/floating talking to this guy from Brooklyn (known Mafia connections) about his 4th party (say this with a Brooklyn accent...a
thick Brooklyn accent) "320 sausages, 30 racks of lamb, 30 racks of ribs, 50 pounds of ice cream (he had a name for this special ice cream and it was not gelato). You know, the works. We got four guys working the whole thing" ... we look over and a HUGE black bear is walking through the little yard next door. of course I am surrounded by idiots and everyone ran towards the bear to get a better picture. Everyone on our boat (non-idiots) stayed ON the boat. I tried to get a good pic from my (crappy) camera phone as the bear literally BROKE the fence by barely pushing on it to escape the moron's chasing him. VERY EXCITING :) sorry I didn't actually get the bear standing up pushing the fence...instead you can see the fence broken and the faint outline of the bears rump as he ran away...Beautiful creature!
We took off down to the boardwalk and putzed around for a while on the beach and the little town. Kelly had never been.
Abby, Chris and Becky arrived and Abby spent the rest of the weekend letting us all know who and what was hers (ie. my aunt jj...my mommy, my juice, my boat, etc...) and trying to feed me because I obviously looked emaciated from only eating 3 times a day ;)
Kelly isn't a huge fan of tubing so we zipped across the lake at a speed of about 5...5 miles per hour ;) She was paranoid I would do something devious to throw her out...I wouldn't do that...to her
This guy on the other hand I would totally throw out of the tube if given the chance. My uncle drove much faster on this trip. We were in the Ski Nautique, so he was whipping around corners and stirring up some huge waves. I have a huge bruise on my left hip/back (literally about 6 inches in diameter) from this tube ride. Chris (my older brother) tried numerous times to throw me out...here we are fighting over the middle handle coming up on a wicked turn.
Abby loved the tube. she was a little apprehensive at first and held on tight. When my brother would let go to wave to the camera she would say "hold on daddy"...but she finally loosened up and started waving while the tube was going; and when they hit some waves Abby would laugh and yell "again, again!!". When we stopped the boat she stood up and yelled "yay!!" and clapped!! She is soooo precious!!
She wanted to lay like Jj on the back of the boat...the life jacket was hilarious. She looked like a sumo wrestler trying to maneuver her way around!
Abby loved going on the boat. She wanted me to take her in the canoe for supper on Sunday night..we opted to just take the deck boat instead ;) She absolutely hated her life jacket and said "jj, take off! peas take off" We talked her into keeping it on anytime she go on a boat, moving or not.
This was taken with my crappy camera phone on the way home from supper Sunday night and it cracks me up...it's so elongated for some reason and it looks like the end of an old 70's Western!
The long ride home (6 hours...it's a 4.5 hour trip! LOL)! Thanks Debbie and Will for an awesome weekend!!
In other news: I must have turned 90 this year and someone forgot to tell me. I managed to pull my lower back muscle somehow over the course of the last 48 hours (lifting the canoe, planks, tubing, or stretching before my run...take your pick) and it somehow caught up with me yesterday mid morning... I am now in a back brace (a very discreet one though...you can't tell. It's more like a girdle!! LOL) I'm on steroids and muscle relaxers and I'm in 4 weeks of PT... I'm going to go ahead and register for my AARP card so I can start getting better discounts ;)
8. Saying "HEY-eeee" to my friends /security guards at the ATF building on a daily basis to and from the metro...They always ask about my day :)
