September Boarding!

So we've loved the extension of Summer we've had this September!  Hard to believe that it is almost October and we were out wakeboarding. 

We've been out boarding a lot this summer, and Sarah has lately been a little frustrated with her progress.  Tonight she had a great night, so I mashed up a little comparison video.  I took footage from early in the summer and compared with footage from tonight. 

I'm so proud of the progress she's made!  It's awesome to see how stable she is now, and how she's ready to take it bigger!

Jumpin Jamie the Tuber!

Labor Day Camping

How great is it to get away for 4 days without even taking vacation!? We went camping with the Allens near Ione, Washington on the Pend Oreille River. Here's a few pics of our adventure:

Sunday was a chill day.  After going to church in a SMALL BRANCH, the kids made collages out of stuff they found around camp.  What a great activity.  Caitin's ended up with a beer bottle cap and a fuzzy dinosaur.

We also went on a hike Sunday afternoon around Sullivan Lake and spent some time throwing rocks into the lake.  Caitin's got a powerful arm, as I witnessed first hand when she clocked me in the back of the head.  Throws just like her mother.  Luckily I was wearing a hat, or there would have been blood.

The girls loved tubing...at least these two did:

Caitin loved the idea.

But she's been developing a strong sense of survival.  It really put a damper on things:

 

Oh, and we did use the boat for some wakeboarding too.  The water was a bit cool, and occasional breezes made for a bit of chattering teeth, but August is NOT the end of the season!  Yeah for Labor Day!

What?!!!

Thanks to fact that our friend was on call this weekend and we didn't go boating, we actually had some basement progress.  The wall is up and some insulation was put in.  Next in line is closets, ceiling insulation, electrical and then drywall.

 

By the way, we LOVE boating just as much as we LOVE chocolate covered cinnamon bears and homemade rolls.

Wakeboarding

This summer has played out awesome for wakeboarding!  Although the weather was slow to turn warm, once it finally did it stuck.  We've had the fortune of being able to get out on the water quite a bit already, and I have worked on landing the backroll almost every time.  With more than a few bruises and sore muscles to show for it, I finally landed one today!

This first clip is the highlights from today.  I successfully tried my first board grabs, and felt super comfortable.  And yes, that first fall hurt a bit...but not the worst I've felt.  Lesson learned...don't celebrate too soon.  Later I landed another one off-camera, with the same wheelie-type (manual) landing. 



We've been fairly diligent about taking the camera out, and I have all but about 4 or 5 of my attempts recorded, so I put them all together chronologically for this progression clip.  The first attempt was last July, and my cameraman was the same for that clip as for the final landing today.  If you're counting, that's 19 attempts on film, and I remember each one...


By the way, progress on the basement was minimal today.