The Lake

A week ago Wednesday, my mom and I took all four kids to the lake and we stayed until this past Monday evening. My sister joined us Thursday afternoon and my dad came for the weekend.

We had a blast! There were so many new things, lots of old, and so much fun!

Alyssa started off our week of new things by wading chest deep into the water. Previously, she never wanted to be in the water, she just wanted to stand on the pier and hand you bottles to fill with water so she could dump them in buckets on the pier. She loved this little Nemo that swam around. She kept putting it under the pier and Zachary loved to chase it for her.

On Friday Jacob added his "new" thing. He swam to the raft all by himself. Previously he had been going out, but one of us had to be there to help just a little. Friday he did it with no one needing to touch him. He loved jumping off and swimming back. His freestyle is really getting good too! (Jacob is in the blue suit and Kyle is in the green one)

On Sunday, Kyle, not to be outdone, also swam to the raft all by himself. He had actually been the better swimmer, but was nervous when he got where he couldn't touch. My sister, who by the way is a great swimmer, got him to come out with some help, but then got him to swim in all by himself. I didn't even get to see it because I was inside giving Alyssa lunch. But then I got to watch him swim back out. It was amazing! He discovered that he also loved jumping off and swimming back. However, he must have been a little nervous because he clenched his teeth so hard on the jumps that he knocked his first tooth out. The one next to it is loose as well. However, neither one was ready to come out so I hope that it's all okay. We have a dentist appointment next week to check it out.

Zachary didn't have any huge breakthroughs, but he loved this slide that the neighbors have next door. They have been so nice in letting us use the slide whenever we want and they weren't there for a few of the days. He was very sad whenever his brothers would go to the raft. He so wants to go so he started really working on swimming, but he's just not there yet. We'll do some more swimming lessons over the winter and hopefully he'll get there next year. Just since we've come home, he's able to go down the slide at the pool and swim to the side. I'm sure he'll get there next year, which is a whole year younger than his brothers were, but boy does he want to keep up with them!

We also went blueberry picking. The kids are great blueberry pickers. Still not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of the berries that we picked.

On the way up we stopped at the "I Love Toy Trains" store. It was pretty cool, but it was really small. I did get Zachary a video and a CD--one for his birthday and one for Christmas--not sure which will go where yet.

We went to the Loft for pizza and ice cream one night. The boys (and Alyssa) love to run around the miniature golf course they have right outside along with a wooden train they can climb on.

The boys also played a lot of catch, trackball, and went on boat rides. Jacob and Zachary love the paddleboat and we had Alyssa in the speedboat for the first time.

Alyssa had a couple of rough sleeping nights, but all in all did pretty well. Everyone was up early (like 6 am) but we were able to keep a pretty good nighttime schedule. Jacob did fall asleep on the pier Monday afternoon while we were packing up to go home. A perfect end to a perfect week!

B