Lake life

I guess this is what it's like now that we live near a lake.  Graham and Charlie have been so excited to just wander around the lake by themselves:

A few minutes later, we are already seeing water!

And suspension bridges.  It's definitely a bit wobbly!  Supposedly these connect the east side of the neighborhood to the west side of the neighborhood:

And soon enough, there are kayak sightings - lots and lots of them!

Poor Charlie was not looking where he was going and bumped his head on the tip of a kayak.  Unfortunately, it was one of the metal ones.  OUCH!  4 days later and he says his head still hurts.  Poor fella!

But "Play Island" is helping ease that pain a little bit:

I still don't know how kids swim in the lake.  I just read another case of brain-eating amoebas in the news - in Florida.  Totally freaks me out!

I say let the boys stick to jumping on these suspension bridges :-D

Woah, those houses on the "West side" are ENORMOUS!!!

There's a cute little reading nook in "Rest Island":

Okay, some of the houses on our side are also quite large.  I think we have one of the smaller homes around here:  Even at 3,300 sq ft!

We went to an Italian restaurant nearby and our waitress asked what we were celebrating (I wonder if there always needs to be a celebration when eating at this particular restaurant??!).  We said to celebrate our move to this new area.  And she gave us a yummy tiramisu on the house for dessert. Definitely coming back again :-)

And oh, Bob survived the trip! I put him in a box within a box and had him in the car the entire trip.  Charlie even wrote its name "BOB" on the box so we didn't forget to bring him along:

I think Bob survived.  Oh yeah... this is "Bob the Cactus" if you didn't know of it yet.  He's my very first cactus/pet from my first year of college (back in 1995!).  Coincidentally named him Bob before hubby Bob came along.  How funny is that??! LOL!!

I didn't get a chance to clean "Bob" off so he has remnants of all the leaves and fallen flowers from California.  And now, he's actually stuck in some spot in the garage and I can't get to him because there's too many boxes in the garage!  So hopefully he will survive another week or so without water, or until I can clear up a few more boxes.  Never a dull moment when it comes to moving.  But I thought it was so funny when Graham and Charlie were the ones that said we couldn't leave "Bob" behind.  

Oh, here's a photo of all the snacks that our friends had packed up for the kids.  Funny enough, they put it in an Emergency bag.  Ha ha!  There's actually a story behind the emergency bag because that's how the mom and I met - during an Emergency Training Session about 4 years ago:

Here are two more house plants that survived the trip.  I just had to bring one of the Agave babies to our new home :-D

Back to lake life... boys bought some bait from the local gas station yesterday:

I wonder who is actually handling the worms.  On our last fishing trip, I made sure I had some gloves on before touching those worms.  Just can't quite do it with my bare hands.  At least not yet!

Off they go!

I love how they can go and do all these activities on their own.  We are having them carry 2-way radios at this time and so far so good on those.  Hopefully in time, they will make some friends around the neighborhood.  Everyone has been great so far - waving every time we drive or walk by.  It's like a dream!  And thank goodness it's catch and release here.  If I'm not letting the boys swim in the lake, I'm not so sure about eating the fish in there either!!