Easter 2010

This year Spring Break fell at the same time as Easter, so we decided to take a long weekend trip. We (meaning Daniel and my two friends, Rachel and Alli) bid on a week-long vacation at a 4,000 square-foot house on Lake Norris (Eastern Tennesee...about 1 hour NE of Knoxville) at the VIA live auction in the fall. We were lucky enough that we were able to find a weekend we could all go!! We left on Friday night after Daniel got home from work. Our good friend let us borrow his boat so that we'd be able to take the kids on boat rides. All was well until our GPS totally led us astray and got us good and lost at 1am. I was NOT impressed. We were on these tiny 2-lane winding roads....towing a boat...which make it impossible to turn around. I had to get out on more than one occasion at walk/guide Daniel and the boat. At one point Daniel started to get a bid stressed out...the kids were feeling the stress....Addi was scared....and Daniel says, "I mean, this thing (the GPS) could have taken us miles, and Miles, and MILES in the wrong direction." At which point I said with clenched teeth, "WIll you PLEASE be quiet!!" I explained to him later that WE are the parents and the adults and the kids depend on us to stay calm and to keep them safe. He was not helping..... We finally made it there....come to find out there was a main road that could have taken us most of the way...so frustrating.

After we got over the urge to toss our GPS into the lake, we had a GREAT time. We spent a lot of time eating, chatting, eating, playing games, eating, going on boat rides, eating, hanging out on the shore of the lake, eating, and eating. Did I mention we did a lot of eating?? We had SO much food. We'd clean up from one meal and start prepping for the next....it was totally therapeutic! The house even had DirecTV, so we were able to watch most of conference. It was a true vacation...we had no distractions (we didn't have phone service or Wi-Fi), so we all did a great job of relaxing and the kids played great together.

We left Monday night....a little sooner than I would have liked, but we had to get back so Daniel could prepare to go to Denver to present his research at a conference. It was nice to get back home and get things in order, but we all (meaning Rachel, Alli, and I) were less than impressed about getting back to reality.

The bummer about going down to the dock was the 50 stairs you had to climb to get back to the house. It was beautiful scenery and we had great weather.

Mike, Alicia, Addi, Alli, and Brynn heading out for a ride.

Jason and Daniel fishing. I had flashbacks of the beach and their unsuccessful ocean fishing last year. Daniel claimed to have caught a big fish this time, but wouldn't you know that No One was around to witness it??? Unlucky, or just convenient???

Brynn, Addi, Alicia, and Jackson (Rachel and her kids hadn't arrived yet) had a great time dying Easter eggs.

The Hunt....

Poor Tristan....he is commonly the oldest kid by far.... He did pretty well, though. He watched a lot of ESPN. Daniel and I had the brilliant idea AFTER we got there that we should have let Tristan invite a friend along. Maybe one day we'll get the hang of being parents of a teenager....