I love being on river time. We just pack so much into one day! (and it really helps that I am getting very little sleep – I got just over 4 hours Thursday night. I am just TOO excited when I am with Val and Tiff. I blame them. Ha (not really).)

On Friday I woke up around 5:15 and was like “No Kim! Go back to bed!” Then slept until 5:35. Er.. success?

So I got up and did some blog post work. Then when Val got up a bit later we went on a run and Dad joined us on the bike. It was such a lovely morning! Nice cool weather (for July!) and there was a beautiful fog around the river. I really enjoyed working out and chatting.

When we got back I resined some of the rocks we’d been painting. I made a really silly mistake and tried to do the resin outside in the sun… er, duh, Kim. It cured like, immediately, because it’s UV resin. So I messed up a few rocks and had to fix them (but they are fixable).

Our big morning plan was to kayak and stand-up paddleboard (SUP) with my snis and her kids. So the family dropped us off at the boat launch, and we started with my snister’s two oldest kids in her kayak, Tiff and Val in their own, and Tiff’s son on the front of the SUP.

It was my first time doing SUP and I liked it! But I learned you have to pay attention the whole time. Ha. If you move to look at something or stop paying attention… you might fall in. I did! And right into a bunch of seaweed! It was pretty funny (Tiff’s son had already left my SUP to go to Tiff’s kayak by then).

It was a nice workout – we did that for about an hour, then had lunch (sandwiches and salads), then headed to McGregor after. The plan was for the girls to do some shopping and for Mom and Dad to hang out with the kids at the splash pad.

And that plan worked out great! We went to Paper Moon, the cutest little gift shop that has store cats (!!!!!!!), then checked out two other shops. I only bought a few presents and didn’t go overboard. Yay, me! Oh, and we hid some rocks too.

Val bought us all drinks at a café and I got a vanilla latte with actual coffee since I got so little sleep. I warned Val and Tiff they were going to get to see what I was like when I drink coffee (hyper and slap happy? or is that just the lack of sleep?)!

When we got back we went out on the river – at 6:00! That’s when I eat dinner at home, but hecc, we are on river time.

I took Tiff’s son on the new jet ski (and Tiff was on the old one), and Will was on his with his two oldest (with everyone else on the boat). We had fun driving around and went back to the beach and took a break, then went back out. Will let me drive his jet ski WHICH GOES 70+ mph and it was AMAZING and so much fun.

We were all out on the jet skis – me on one, Tiff and her son on one, and Will and William on one – and we were driving all over. At one point I realized I was “using up” all the smooth as glass river water with the huge jet ski and making waves for the others behind me and waved them forward and told Will to lead the way. He said “I’ve never been back here!” And I said “just keep going and go to the left.”

And he did that.

And got stuck in the sand.

The water was so shallow, the jet ski would not move.

He stopped and motioned for Tiff to stop, but she was already in a spot on the sand too. Then I stopped (thankfully, I was in the back since his jet ski is twice as heavy as the others). I didn’t get stuck nearly as bad, but we were pretty spread out.

So I got out and ran down to help Will and thought “should I grab his phone and text the others?” Then, nah, we’ll get out of here soon.

Um no. We could not push/pull them as far as they needed to go! So Will got his rope out and we pulled and pushed them with the rope assistance. It must have taken us 25-30 minutes to move them?!

I never felt worried and was just super focused on getting us out of there, and then it clicked that everyone must be wondering where the heck we were so when we finally got back to Will’s jet ski we let them know. They had already gone back, because it was getting so late.

Oops. But also, what a memory. I used so much muscle strength, and actually did a mountain climber like move at one point to push a jet ski. Ha.

We got back without trouble.

Just kidding, we stopped again and ended up in the sand but not as bad. Did I mention the river is low?

We got back to the house and dinner was started – burgers, broccoli, curly fries, and salad. I think we ate close to 9:00! It was delish. And we had more cake for dessert. I think I had it after every meal since we started eating it the day before.

After cleaning up we painted for a bit. We wanted to paint because we hadn’t all day. Val got a fun book at Paper Moon with a bunch of inspiration quotes and we decided to play a similar game to the stickers – pick a random page and paint the phrase it says. Everyone did that and no one like how theirs turned out except Mom, and the part that I painted on hers. Ha.

I think we were all just getting so tired! I was super freaking slap happy and giggly. We called it a night at 12:00 and I started to wind down and was asleep after 1:00.