Eight Point Lake '17, Pt. V

(and now, the thrilling conclusion. . .)

Monday

July 24th
"The Sandbar and the Exodus"

A questionable start to the day, but ultimately we lucked out with another  day of beautiful weather.  Kris ended up having to go back to work, so Yours Truly was on solo-parent detail until dinner time, thereabouts.

Today ended up being pretty chill for the most part, with not much going on in the morning at all.  Later on, in the afternoon, we decided to take all the kids up to the Sandbar.  The girls and I rode over with the Whites in their boat, while Bryan took Blake and his friend, Nick, in Dad's.

I about fell into that muck-trap off to the right, retrieving Bradley's ball: underneath those lily pads is about two-feet of mud and grime that sucked me in to thigh before I managed to scramble back.  That'd be a really crappy way to die.

Bryan's friend, Brent, and several members of his extended family clan were also at the Sandbar while we were up there, and eventually we were joined by Lucy, Dad and Cindy, who drove over to the Waites' cottage and walked over (they're located a convenient 100 feet away.)

Alayna, bored.  She's to that age now where splashing around in the water gets boring after five minutes.  Fun times.

(That's not a beer.)

Collecting rocks and 'shells.'  A lot cooler in Florida, I'm afraid.

Alayna, still complaining about being bored.  Bradley, bein' weird.

Cindy and Lucy

After the kids complained enough, Bryan and I walked the kids over to Lucy and Larry's cottage in order to smoke some cigars and let the kids play in the sand.

One of the coolest cigar labels I've ever seen.  Love the kukris.

A couple of lazy-ass dogs. . .

Heading out for another tubing venture.

This is pretty much how the rest of the day was spent.  The kids were pretty exhausted from playing in the sun all day, so aside from swimming and fishing, they pretty much just loafed around most of the evening.  I ended up reading about 1/3 of my four-inch-thick book (Aztec, by Gary Jennings) throughout the day.  Can't complain.

Monday

July 24th
"The Swan Song "

One, last tranquil morning over Eight Point Lake.

A lazy, liberal-leaning morning at the Cottage

Bryan had to fly back to Vegas in the morning, Kris was away at work, and most of the Grants, Waites, and Whites had - over the course of the last twenty-four hours - gone their separate ways, back to everyday life in the Civilized World.  The girls and I would be following their example in the afternoon. . . after we had ourselves one last day on the lake, of course.

My Command Center this week.  You know how I roll.

Taking the Whites' boat out on a leisurely cruise around the lake with my crew of Sprite-chugging miscreants.

Cleaning up the dock (not sure what the hell Abby's doing.)

I forget what this game is called, but Alayna loves it.  And the fact you get to play with Shopkins cards makes it all the more enjoyable. . .

Aunt Lucy, in the zone.

Some forced wind-down time after a morning/afternoon filled with swimming and boating in the sun.

Moana on a tablet.  This kid's in Heaven.

Paddleboatin' with Nana.  This is way too much of a workout for me - more power to 'em.

Cleaning up the offspring before reintroducing them into Society.

A last family picture (sans Kris) at the Cottage as we finished loading up all our crap back into the van, ready to head back home.  Until next year, Eight Point.

- Fin - 

Hildts, Hilderdudes, and Houghs

Meh.

A long, long time ago, Yours Truly lived in Africa.  Technically I was over there serving in the U.S. Peace Corps, but more accurately I was over there avoiding adulthood for a few more years, traveling on the government's dime, and otherwise still acting like I was in college.

Read a shit-load of books, got a whole slew of diseases one doesn't see outside of Oregon Trail, was made a chief, and sweated more than any human being is designed to do.

Anyway, I made lots of friends while I was over there living like a Victorian Englishman in India.  In the decade since returning to American soil, I've stayed in touch with basically everyone, as is the norm with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (after all, in Ghana we lived social networking before that became a thing.)  Over the years, there have been a handful of large-scale RPCV reunions all across the country, notably an '08 reunion in Chicago and a '13 reunion in Washington D.C. - both of which I was unable to attend due to my work schedule or the fact I was bringing miniature human beings into the world.

Though I did get to teleconference  in via Skype to the D.C. one:

(Note the handsome man on the laptop.)

Well, this past week we had ourselves a mini-reunion down here in America's Wang.  Mike and Tara Hildt (who both served in the volunteer group a year ahead of me, and consequently became engaged during their term of service in Ghana) were bringing their offspring down to Orlando for the whole Disney park thing.  As such, they ended up staying their first night in town at our house, where our kids (who are the same age) mingled, we drank the usual RPCV amount of beer, caught up on gossip and prevented Watson from sodomizing their young son.

Yes, seriously.

Hildt and Yours Truly at Bywell's Tavern in Accra, Ghana, ca. 2004

Anyway, towards the end of their Orlando vacation, they invited us over to their hotel - the dreaded Coronado Springs Resort Kris and I stayed at for our five-year anniversary, which you may or may not remember - to swim at the pool and hang out one last time before they returned to Massachusetts.  

And as you all know, we're hardly the sort of people to turn down a resort pool.

Behold:

Abby, a fake Mayan pyramid, and some fat guy making a retard face.

The Hildt's daughter, who happens to be Alayna's age, already knows how to swim.  Alayna has a hard time floating.  This angers me.

Lauren (holding the boy at top) swung out to hang out with us. She was also in the Peace Corps (same year as me), and also worked with Guinea Worm during her term of service.  You may remember my somewhat foggy account of her nuptials a few years back.

Abby loves dog-paddling.

Lauren's son isn't buying what Abby's selling.

This is not authentic.  Or even close to being historically accurate.

Play area adjacent to the pool.

An attempt at an offspring group photo (nice job, Lauren's kid.)

Orlando Mini-Reunion '14

Alayna and Quetzalcoatl

Funned out with swimming.

Processed food!

Post-swim shenanigans

As usual, Disney paid a lot of attention to their decor in this resort.  I'm assuming its supposed to be 'Mesoamerican' or something, hence the Quetzalcoatl statues and pyramids.  Still, I was bummed there wasn't any human sacrifices on hand.  I wouldn't definitely taken pics of that.

These are the first children to play Checkers since the 1950s.

Somehow Mike and I got stuck with kid-watching detail.  Not sure how that happened.

Delegating checker duties.

Not sure what exactly Abby's doing with my backpack here. . .

Scheming.

The kids didn't take to Checkers. . . so they just said 'screw it' and built a tower instead.

This was bound to happen.  Kids can't engineer for shit.

En route back to the Hildt's hotel room. . .

Chasing lizards.

Chaos back in the room.

After saying our farewells, we began the mile-long trek out of the resort (like idiots, we parked on the opposite side of the lake from their hotel room.)

This ended up happening about three minutes into our walk.

Front lobby on the way out to the parking lot.

See the attendant on the right?  I had him in SEVENTH GRADE.  He's a high school graduate and going into the army in a few weeks.  I'm so frickin' old it's ridiculous.  Still, he said I was the best teacher he ever had, so I guess I have that going for me.

Out.

- Brian