Surprise!

I have always been too much of a planner to get anybody’s money’s worth out of a surprise. Now, anticipation, I love. I can MAKE money on that. At the lake this weekend, Jeff and I were thrown a couple of unwelcome curve balls-not at all anticipated. After Jeff came home from work on Thursday, we hooked the boat and trailer to the back of our vehicle along with lake gear for two nights and food for seemingly five. It thrills us that Julia and Brighton love the lake and all that goes with it. One of my favorite things to see is Brighton laid back in the water just floating, arms outstretched and eyes squinting in the sun. Julia gets almost as excited about finding a strange shaped pebble on the “lake beach” as she does an unbroken sand dollar on St. George Island. This trip, like all trips, we threw out the anchor close to our favorite shore, tied our oversized tube (nicknamed Big Bertha) to the boat and were about to jump in to play when Jeff sort of tapped me and gave me a look in a certain direction. I began looking for what I already knew I didn’t want to see. Wanting to keep the kids “out of the know”, Jeff and I had our own private freak out shows when we saw not 1, not 2, but 3 snakes. While trying to distract the children things like “Oh my gosh!”, “No way!”, “Sick.”,“What kind are they?”,“Yikes!”,“Creepy!”, “THREE?”, “Right here?”, and last but not least, “What are we going to do all day tomorrow?” stopped just short of our tongues. I am not yet home to research and try to find a reason for their abundance and their boldness and to our dismay, their new found love for our swimming holes.

Curve ball #2: The second night we settled in on the bunk beds with popcorn and hot chocolate to watch an episode of Little House on the Prairie. Jeff projected it on a big screen hung from a rafter of our 16x16 square foot one room cabin. We have started reading the books to the children and about once week or so we read a couple of chapters and then watch an episode with them calling that night a “Little House Night”. (No snickering, please. I actually know a handful of people who read these books and watch these shows who DON’T home school.) How can you go wrong with Little House—Pa and Ma, Mary, Laura and little Carrie? Our surprise? The “D word”! We quickly turned it to “dumb” and for the children’s benefit became incredulous that they used the word “dumb” on Little House on the Prairie. Thankfully, it wasn’t Ma who said it, however, she did call someone a “mean, stubborn old man”. Well, I never. We will cross the 4-letter word bridge at some point, but not just yet.
First surprise: bold “swim right by us” snakes- unexpected and major. Second surprise: profanity from the banks of Plum Creek- not major, just unexpected. I think the worst part is now having to put my censor ears on as we watch the Ingalls family survive drama after drama and wondering if anyone will ever accept our invitation to the lake after reading this post.

"Post- post"-- The next day as we were riding (note- not swimming) around the lake, we saw several turtles on some rocks and decided to take a closer look. As we got closer, this is what we saw. (Picture below.) You will have to click on the picture to see all the, I can hardly type it, SNAKES sunning on the log!! Now you can say all those words that went through our minds! I told the kids I was taking pictures of the turtles and as you can see, all the turtles had slid off the log into the water. My observant children weren't fooled for a minute. Julia adamantly said, "NO YOU ARE NOT! You are taking pictures of snakes!!" (We have sent the pictures to a, for a lack of a better word, snake expert, so maybe he can help tell if they are water moccasins or banded water snakes. We are hoping for the latter.) In all my days on Lake Sinclair and Jeff's on Lake Lanier, we have never seen a snake in the water until this weekend.