Lots of pictures

Wednesday we left for a little camping trip on the St. Croix River. This is one of the areas I consider "ours" -- we did a lot of camping there pre-kids and a fair amount post-kids -- but we haven't made it out there the last few years. It felt awfully good to be back.


Thursday morning sunrise, by Pete (who thinks that he doesn't take good pictures! Ha!)

Thursday happened to be my birthday. At my request, we celebrated by spending the day on the river in a canoe. It was perfect.




(There's no good way to take a picture of four people when they're all in a canoe, I'm afraid.)

On a side note, I am delighted, for the girls have finally discovered and are enthralled by Harry Potter. (Pay no attention to Morgan's Spy Kids. She didn't want to bring the bigger book on the river.) They're gobbling them up as fast as they can, and we've already had several deeply satisfying discussions about books 1, 2, and 3. Huzzah!

Friday we went fishing in one of the small river channels. Morgan caught her first fish within 20 minutes



(it's so small that we really should have thrown it back, but she didn't want to; I guess we're going to have it mounted -- don't laugh!) and another two little ones right after that (she was OK throwing those back in). After the third fish almost touched her leg on its way back into the river (ewwww!) she decided fishing was grand fun, and she was done.

Emma and I stayed out there for hours, but Morgan -- who, for the record, wouldn't have anything to do with putting the bait on her hook, getting the fish off the hook, or handling the fish at all -- had apparently nabbed all the luck, for poor Emma caught nothing but nibbles. Given that Emma was putting bait on the hook all by herself and had no issues with handling the fish, she thought that was more than a bit unfair, but overall stayed fairly cheerful about it. She and I are going fishing on Sunday, though.



And Monday, and Tuesday, and every other day until she finally catches a fish. That's all right. I like fishing. I actually feel sort of bad that we haven't taken the kids fishing before, even though we live right by a river. It's weird, but it's just not something I think to do. Lame, I know. Well, that's about to change, because Emma's caught the fishing bug bad.

I'd have loved to have stayed through Sunday, but we had to pack it up and head for home Friday afternoon, because there was something Super Cool going on Saturday morning (today) that we absolutely had to be here for, no ifs, ands, or buts about it...


Emma taking off.

Flying!! See, a few weeks ago, I saw a blurb in the newspaper about the Young Eagles program and promptly signed the girls up for today's session. Oh wow, that was amazing -- and I was just on the ground taking pictures. If you've got kids between the ages of 8 - 17, you should really check out this program. The pilots were awesome and the planes were phenomenal. The girls' flights ended several hours ago, and they're still bouncing around.

I'm afraid I have no plane knowledge whatsoever, so forgive my ignorance about makes, models, and stuff.




Emma got "the red plane."




Morgan was in "the yellow plane."


Taxiing.


Into the wild blue yonder -- literally! It's kind of weird, watching your kid zoom off into the sky...


Emma coming in.


I know her face is hard to see in this one, but she was SO excited, I had to post this one. And I love the pilot's grin.

Emma, our little chatterbox, was stunned speechless for about 10 minutes after she got out of the plane. I've never seen her like that before: she literally couldn't talk. She's flown before, but that's been on big commercial jets, nothing like this. A whole new world just exploded into being for her.


Morgan didn't wave coming in, or even smile. We were a little worried that maybe she'd been frightened out of her gourd -- but no. (Turned out that she had a control panel in front of her that she was focusing on.) She loved it. She's usually the quieter of the two (this isn't saying much as they're both talkers), but she came off that plane babbling a mile a minute and quivering with excitement. I don't know that it was quite as earth-shaking as Emma's experience -- the kid wants to be a pilot, and not when she grows up, but now -- but that was totally WICKED! (Who knows what movie that's from?)


They're officially Young Eagles now. Awesome, girls.


We sat around watching the planes coming in and out for a while after, and someone came out and took our picture, because these are new benches and they were pleased as punch that people were actually sitting on the benches and watching the planes take off and land. Tee hee.

(There are a ton of Chapter 54 Young Eagles pictures -- taken by the Chapter 54 folks, not yours truly -- from today's session here, if you're interested.)

And then we went out for breakfast, and then headed home, and that was the end to our super-fantastic mini-vacation. Now we have to go mow the lawn. Pooh.