Memorial Day Long Weekend

I had a very enjoyable long weekend that included the Memorial Day holiday.  I drove over to the corny state late Thursday night and drove back late Monday night.  You might notice a certain theme to most of the pictures from the weekend.

Other than kayaking, we did some yoga, cooking, mending, meeting, and we watched Napoleon Dynamite.  It was the first time I had seen it.  But somehow a lot of the lines in that movie sure sound familiar - almost like I hear some people quote that one a lot.

I'm thankful for fellowship and a few days of non-working time.  I think I'll do my "bullet points" in pictures this time.

Bex's friend CeeCee went kayaking with us on Friday down the Iowa River.  This was our lunch stop.  We may have had a conversation that involved clubbing baby seals in the woods.

We didn't like Bex bringing up clubbing baby seals, so we gave her a time-out in the kayak.

On Saturday, we met Jax in the northeast part of the state for some river time.  Can you see the mature bald eagle and the immature bald eagle in this picture?

Jax and Bex at the lunch stop on Saturday.

Bex and Jax ride the rapids on the Volga River.  Who knew Russia was so close to the corny state?

Good looking bridge.

Good looking bridge with some vertical sparrow mud huts.  We even got to see some sparrows playing in the mud picking up more mud for their huts.

Scenery on the Volga River.

Girls will be girls.  You can tell how much fun it was by how much my braid is flying.

On Sunday I was falling apart at the seams, so I did some mending work with Bex's sewing machine.  She made me do my own mending, can you believe that?  After mending three shirts I tried to lobby Bex to promote me to journeywoman seamstress, but I think her silence on the subject seemed to indicate that she thought I was still at apprentice level.  *sigh*  It rained most of Sunday, so mostly we spent the day chilling out and getting on Mother Mary's nerves.  We did play Small World with Father Dan.

The woikas arrived to the Shmerty abode on Sunday evening, and two of the three of them went kayaking with Bex and I on Monday.  We sat on that log in the middle of the picture and ate our lunch in a little meadow area in the lake.

We took a detour down this narrow area through some really green water.  In a pond at the end of this track we encountered a bunch of carp that would make quite a bit of splashing in the water.

The woikas on Lake Odessa.  Bex and one of the woikas had an encounter with "Odessie" the lake monster - apparently she bumped their paddles when they got too close.  We also saw turtles of various sizes and lots of blue herons flying.

 Now I'm going to go find my ChapStick.  My lips hurt real bad.  ;-)