Our Seven Sister's Trip!

At the end of July, we headed out on a whirlwind trip to Greer's Ferry Lake, Arkansas, to my grandparents' lakehouse, aka, "Seven Sister's Cabin". I wasn't sure we would be able to go at all this summer, but we made it happen, and I'm glad we did. I got to spend some great time with my cousins Lina, Victoria, Anthony and Forest, and see several of my fantastic aunts. It is always a time of hysterical laughter and interesting conversation, and I love it. What made me love it even more this year, was that Dresden got to play with his other two little boy cousins, the three great-grandsons were all there to visit at the same time. We always have to laugh and remark about how my Grandma and
Poppy tried seven times for a boy, and got seven girls. With their grandchildren they got an almost even mix of both, and now, with their great-grandchildren, it's all boys so far. They must have just needed to wait a couple generations! :-) I loved seeing our boys play together, and Dresden had a blast.

Alex is always a bit skeptical of Arkansas, especially after being bitten by a monstrous tick when we were here back in May, so he was asking lots of questions about water moccasins and snakes in general, as in, "Do I need to worry about being bitten?" The first morning we were there and about to go down and get in the water, he asked that very question, and then promptly Googled information about the water moccasin, the most common snake in this particular area, aside from the big, harmless King snakes. I non-chalantly mentioned that in the 60 years my grandparents have owned this house, only one person has been bitten by a snake, my cousin Emmett, and that was in the afternoon, on the side of the stone steps leading to the water, because he had picked up a canoe and frightened a sleeping one. And he was fine once treated. I threw in a, "Well, I've never seen one!" for helpful good measure. We walked down the same steps I've taken every one of my 30 years, excited to be getting on the boat, for swimming and splashing with D. And there it was...a snake, about 10 inches long, swimming along the shoreline, right in front of the boat dock. "Oh....there's a snake," I said, calmly, as if remarking on the weather. And then things got all man versus nature on the shore of Greer's Ferry Lake. My 87-year-old grandfather was throwing huge rocks at the thing, after saying, "That's not a good one...", bless his heart, my mom is running to get a giant oar to chop it in half, and Alex has decided this is his moment of truth, and he's going to kill the monster. Dresden on the other hand, could seem to care less, and while we are engrossed in our own production of a National Geographic episode, calmly walks up the dock, crosses the two foot chasm between dock and boat, and sits himself in the driver's seat, waiting for us to join him. Ha! Alex has the oar in hand by now, and has gotten the snake enough up on land to begin what I deemed a reenactment of any one of the disturbing scenes you might remember from Lord Of The Flies. Eesh. And that darn snake just WOULD. NOT. DIE. Seriously. I'm getting chills typing it, because it really was a long, drawn-out process, that left Alex in a state of karmic dilemma for the rest of our trip. ("I killed that poor snake. And it cried out in pain. In it's own habitat...I...killed it.") It was really all very dramatic and upsetting. I had to keep reminding him that it could have bitten us, or at least grown up and become aggressive and bitten someone, so I really thought he did the right thing. But seriously, why are snakes impossible to kill!?! Oh, the carnage.

WARNING: Disturbing dying snake picture, courtesy of one macabre photographer (whose name rhymes with Schmalex)

The rest of our trip was snake, and carnage free, and filled instead with just amazing, delicious, and way-too-much-of-it food, and boat rides, and out-of-control games of UNO. 

My sunglasses are way too big for my face, I realize this.

On the first boat ride of the trip!

We boated to a part of the lake they turned into a nice big sandy beach. Dresden loved it!

Tired after splashing and swimming

Dresden spending time with his cousins, Ezra

And Gavin

Oh, and my baby caught his first fish!!! A little perch just jumped right on his line right after he stuck the pole in. He didn't quite understand how he was supposed to hold the line right by the fish to show it off for pictures, so Gavin did it for him instead, hehe.

The other highlight of the weekend was our first-annual Seven Sister's Zumba Class (oh you bet I will be making this a tradition!!!) It was hysterical and so much fun. We started the hour out with 9, and I was down to 3 when all was said and done, haha. They were great troopers though, and I had a lot of fun teaching my family!

Being goofy...I love this picture...

Part of the gang, getting ready to start

All of us, minus Sheri, who joined us in a few minutes and was AWESOME!

These were my die-hard Zumba fans!!!

These ladies decided it was wine-time in the middle of class. Ha!

We took one last boat ride the night before we left. Jackie The Great let Dresden drive and do donuts in the water. It was quite an experience, especially as we bumped high over our own wake waves over, and over again. I was like, "Dresden, let's try going straight for a minute!" LOL.

Anthony and Me

 Victoria and Angelina

Obviously were saying something funny...

The gang! We missed the rest of our cousins though!

Lake trips always go by too fast, and are always a blast. I wish everyone could have been there, but we had an amazing, relaxing time with everyone who was. I can't wait for next summer!!!

Love,

Cassie