Eight Point Weekend, Pt. II

 (contd.)

Saturday morning I was able to wake up early enough to snag this mellow sunrise pic. It's easy to sleep in up here at the lake, so pics like these are rarities.

My nephew Bradley once again ran in the annual Eight Point 5K, and once again none of our family felt like getting up and around to go check it out. My parents did, however, so here's some pics and video of Bradley running down the street.  Enjoy.

(I think he placed second.)

After morning coffees and showering, it was time to break out the Bloody Mary business - a lake time necessity.

Festiveness.

As folks were still getting up and slowly getting around, Chris, Nicole and their daughter, Nora, rolled in - just in time for Bloody Marys (Maries?)

Abby and Maddie making some bagels for breakfast.

The Whites showed up shortly thereafter and, after making them both a couple Bloody Mary's (Jill's a diva with hers), we set up shop in the adirondacks out back.

Dad and Chris

Teenagers, already suited up and ready to roll.

Maddie, Alayna, and Watson (eating a bush, for some reason.)

Brian White takes a flip off the dock.

I continued whipping kids around the lake on the jet ski throughout the late morning and early afternoon, but the lake was definitely getting busier due to the Fourth of July/Saturday traffic.  No space at all for donuts and what not, that's for damn sure.

Gassin' up the ol' girl - she guzzles through that stuff like crazy.

Meanwhile, being lazy on the raft and not helping whatsoever with entertaining kids, here's Kris and Jill.

The Cannonball, Lily, and Abby

Kris, Jill and Nicole

Nora stuck to the beach for the most part.  Not surprisingly.

Smoking a pork shoulder (I think, I don't remember), courtesy of Brian White 

Couple 'a Brians on a raft.  I'm a snappy dresser, folks.

After hanging out on shore for a bit, the kids managed to convince Brian to take them out tubing on the lake.

As always, Alayna hung out on the boat and took pics and video - she's never been big on tubing.

How did she get my hat?  Anyway, while these guys were tossing the kids around the lake behind Brian's boat, the rest of us - Dad, Yours Truly, Jeff and his girlfriend Carissa, and Chris, Nicole and their kids - all loaded up drinks, snacks, towels, sunscreen, and toys and took the pontoon over to the Sandbar for an hour or two.

As could be expected on Fourth of July Weekend (and on a Saturday) the Sandbar was slammed, but we were able to find a spot for both of our boats (Brian White and the tubing squad met us up there after whipping the kids around the lake for a bit.)  When we anchored there, we saw that some dude had a floating barge set up with a generator and a big PA system, and was singing and playing guitar.  Definitely haven't seen that here before.

Pretty typical drunk, country-ish music - wasn't anything impressive, but as far as background music is concerned I've heard far worse.

A panoramic shot of the Sandbar I attempted with my phone.

Carissa, Jill, Abby and Kris doing one of Jill's go-to poses, the staged 'telling a hilarious joke.'

Couple of Brians, a Chris and a Jeff.

This guy, still doing his thing.

Standing around thigh-deep in water, having drinks, listening to generic music.  Usual Sandbar stuff.

Meanwhile, back on the pontoon, Dad hangs out with Chris, Nicole, and Nora - who stuck on the boat the entire time.

Tossing balls around - also fun at the 'Bar.

After an hour and a half or so out at the Sandbar, we loaded everyone back up and brought the boats back to the lakehouse, where Cindy had some snack stuff all set up for us.  Definitely much appreciated.

Pulled up to the snack bar.

Grazing in the kitchen.

Cindy challenged Blake to an arm wrestling match.  The results were as as you'd expect. . .

Note that bottle of tequila at the bottom, there - Jill went to war with that thing throughout the day. 

Bailey leaves his stamp of approval on the yard.

After hanging out at the lakehouse for most of the afternoon, Chris and his fam took off.  We remaining, younger-ish adults, for a change in scenery, decided to head down to the pole barn and play some corn hole.  

Loading up six adults onto the golf cart was a little tricky - thank God we're all pretty small folk.

Attempted group selfie.

After arriving at the pole barn, we quickly realized we had forgotten a speaker, so Kris and I drove back to retrieve my big JBL. . . and Kris got herself another selfie along the way.

The pole barn is tall and long enough that there's more than enough space to play corn hole completely indoors (which comes in handy if the weather sucks.) 

Only downside to this is there's next to no mobile network service out there, so streaming music is basically impossible (here we have Jeff walking around the lot trying to get enough signal to stream some music from his phone to my speaker.  It never ended up working, so we're going to have to keep that in mind next time and download playlists to our phones in advance prior to heading down there.

Kris and Jeff square off against Jill and Carissa. . .

After playing a game or two of this we loaded back up and came back to the lakehouse to check in on the smoking pork (and kids.)

Lily tries out Maddie's paddleboard.

Loading the kids up for another tubing trip around the lake

I stayed ashore this with Jeff and Carissa this time around, with Kris and the Whites taking the kids out.

Maddie laughs at the misfortune of others.

Lily and Abby, post-wipeout.

Tubing at sunset.  At this point you're on borrowed time - pretty soon it'll be too dangerous to tube in low light conditions.

Meanwhile, Jeff had to take a random call from his recently divorced ex-wife, Annie, who decided to call and complain to him about God knows what. He was on the phone with her for awhile when I decided to capture the moment for future hilarity's sake.

The Cannonball.  Still not tubing.

Back ashore, there was ice cream and dessert to be consumed.

Samson enjoys ice cubes a great deal.

The Whites and some of their family friends (I assume) decided to stage an impromptu softball game in the backyard as the sun continued to set.  Not entirely sure who all these random people were.

Sunset over Eight Point Lake.

Lily and Abby, chillin' on the dock.

I got us a fire going once again as the evening set in.

Watching the 'game.'

There would be no sunset cruise tonight, as the lake's annual Fourth of July celebration as at hand.  Like every previous year, a water skier holding a flare makes his way around the lake, and as he passes by your house you're supposed to light up your own flares (provided by the lake association, I assume.)  This year folks were anxious and apparently jumped the gun - most flares were already lit before the dude made his way around.  People are idiots.

Lighting the flares.

Flares around the lake.

The legit firework display wouldn't be until Labor Day Weekend, but lots of folks were shooting off their own, personal fireworks to commemorate the event.

We didn't get any fireworks in town this year, but there were some sparklers and what not on hand that someone had lying around - good enough for the kids.

You can tell the dogs aren't huge fans of fireworks - when we came inside at the end of the night they swarmed us.  Bunch of cowards. . .

- Brian