Our Vacation, Part II

We had a great week at the cottage. Am I surprised? A little. To be honest, I thought we'd all be ready to kill each other by the third day. Everyone got along really well and genuinely enjoyed hanging out together. My Dad was generous enough to treat the family to this get-away and we are all very thankful.

Kevin and I got out running quite a bit and Dan and Jon were very interested to hear about it. We mapped out a five mile course with some giant hills, and we posted our best times ever. We ran the five mile course at a 7:12 pace, which was the best for both of us. We ran three days of vacation and biked one day.

Apparently Higgins Lake has a nasty case of Swimmer's Itch which Kevin and I ended up getting the worst cases of. It looks like chicken pox and itches like poison ivy. I've been itching the snot out of these until my legs are all chewed up.

It sounds odd, but one of the coolest parts of the cottage was this amazing swing they had between these two giant trees. At it's peak, you could swing someone fifteen feet in the air and if you did it right, you could spin someone seven or eight feet in the air and let 'em wind down until they threw up. It was funny to see the adults playing on the swing as much as the kids.

My sister Susan did a far better job recapping the vacation on her blogthat I will, but I had some pictures that amused me for some reason or sparked a memory that needed to be shared.

I thought my wife looked especially hot in this picture.

This is Kevin trying to duplicate my feat of lighting my cigar Clint Eastwood style off of a burning ember in the camp fire. Kevin's bald head happened to be very sunburned, hence the shirt pulled up over his very, very large head.

At one point I saw Nate outside with this fire-place air-breathing-thingy, using it to play tether ball. I never thought I'd need to tell my son, "Don't use a fireplace thingy to play tether ball", but I did. The picture on the right is what Nate and Jon would look like if they started a towel gang.

I had this giant mug that Cathie got me that was perfect for beverages throughout the week. They went well with my pink shirt, which I inadvertently wore up to the local grocery store. It went well with my vacation 'stache. Susan made Kevin carry her around like this most of the week.

This picture made me think that in six years, Maddie will be driving a car. Cripes.

The boys played lots of poker. We had a tournament one night involving the boys and Kevin and I. My nephew Drew won. Not to take anything away from the boys, but my brother-in-law Kevin put it best when he called it a "button-mashing" game of poker. The boys would bet huge and go all in all the time, making it really tough to bet against. That's my excuse, anyways. Emily and Allie had their own high stakes card tournament.