The Summer of the Paddle Boards

This summer will forever be remembered as the summer we bought our first paddle boards.  I bought a small kayak for the kids (after nearly taking out a whole crowd of people as I tried to get it off the display rack at Costco) and decided to wait for a day when Randy and I could go together to buy the paddle boards because doing it on my own was a bad and very embarrassing idea.  Well, Randy finally purchased some boards and in typical Randy fashion {all or nothing} he came home with 2 junior size paddle boards and one full size.  The boys were thrilled!  

That's 3 paddle boards and 1 kayak I loaded up with my helpful assistant

Randy took the boys and the boards out for a little sunset ride on the lake and had so much fun he decided to buy a couple more full size boards, "For when friends come with us," he said.  Which also meant he'd need more life jackets too.  Those lucky friends!  Anyway, we now have a bunch of fun toys for the lake and enough for our friends too, so our garage looks like some sort of paddle board rental shop.  For the record, I'm getting quite good at loading the boards on top of cars now.  {The first time I had to ask some stranger in the parking lot to help me after 20 minutes of struggling but now I've got it down to a 5-minute ordeal.}  It's pretty sweet to load up and be on the lake in a matter of minutes and I love having a lake so close.

That's Landon rowing around in the kayak

I also love our friends on the lake.  A couple of them have fun water trampolines and one has a huge collection of water trampolines that we call The Bermuda Triangle.  My boys could play on it for hours, and they usually do.  There have been times when I drop Marcus and Bean off at the lake and they just paddle around looking for friends out playing.  It's so cool!

A kids paradise

Walking down to the lake

At Lake Sammamish with the Frank kids

Digging to China with the Frank kids

Marcus and Macie used to ride the bus together to kindergarten every day in Okinawa.  They've grown up!

Parker in the "mud tub"

Unfortunately the sunny days allowing all this fun lake stuff to happen have been few and far between.  So far, we've had better weather in May than July and there seems to be no end in sight for these cloudy, barely 70 degree days.  You know it's bad when we had to pull out the art/craft box that is typically only used in the winter just so we could have something to do. 

Paddling off to find friends and water trampolines