Water Plus Boat Equals Fun

While on vacation, we did a lot of fun things, like rent an eight-man party barge, water ski with friends, and lay around on sandy beaches. We decided to rent a party barge one afternoon, and we ran in to some friends of ours, who also happened to be at the lake last week. The "friends" are actually Katie's kindergarten teacher and her family, and we hung out with them a lot. They were great, and took us out on their boat for a whole day as well. They also taught Eric how to water ski, had lunch with us, fished with us, swam with us, went to the laser show with us...basically we had a good time with them!

Here is Mr. Coolio himself, enjoying his time on the party barge.

"Who you lookin' at?"Bud Bud as he was rising up out of the water.

Not only is Mrs. J an excellent kindergarten teacher, but she is also an excellent water skiing teacher as well! As you can see from the pics, there are a lot of "rocks" at Banks Lake. We stopped at some tiered ones, so the kids could jump off of them for a while. Mrs. J and myself also jumped, but you are NOT allowed to see pics of us in our swim suits (lol)!These particular rocks had platforms that were as high as 25-30 feet above the water, and as low as 3-5 feet, so the boys started lower and ended up higher. There were people jumping off of 50 plus foot rocks, but there was NO way that I was going to allow my kid to do that...or even myself!Miss Katie Kate did not like the water as much as me and Eric did. "It's too cold" was about all she had to say about the lake! She preferred to drive the party barge. Is that a sign of things to come? I hope not!
Not only did she like driving fast boats, but she also liked getting up on stage and karaoking with another little girl from our resort. I am definitely NOT letting her go anywhere on spring break when she is in college!!!
A big group of kids dug a huge section of sand out of the beach at the resort, filled it with water, and called it their hot tub. There was no way that I was getting in that thing! I am sure that it was full of all of the little kiddies pee...ick!!!!
The boys did a lot of fishing while we were at the lake, but Eric was the only one who caught anything. Here he is with his first Bass. "Well lookie what I got here! That there is a bonafide Bass fish!" OK, my son does NOT talk like that, but it would be funny if he did...tee hee hee!!

And of course, what would a family vacation be without a family photo...minus mom?
...and why, oh why, does my 6'4" husband, insist on kneeling down on the ground and taking pictures of me, while looking up?????? He always has a knack for making me look like a giant blimp in pictures! He is officially fired as picture taker, and no, my body is NOT that distorted looking in real life (lol)!!

All in all, we had an excellent time, and are sad to be back to the 75 degree, humid, allergy infested, part of our state!