July 4th Adventure... Maybe?!

Jack... the last few fourth of July's haven't been all that memorable. We've seen a few firework shows from across the lake and had a few smaller ones at our house, but this year will forever been engrained into my brain and quite the fourth it ended up being. Both good and a bit scary, but we all survived... which is a good thing, right? Yes, definitely right!

Lets start at the beginning, we stayed in Point Thursday night and decided to go home Friday morning. Sleeping in your own bed is always the best so it didn't really pay to go home Thursday night, especially since Jay didn't get home until after 4pm and I didn't have anything packed and ready to go either. We decided that we would go leave here around 10 or 11am the next morning. We got to sleep in a little bit on Friday morning, got up and got everything together. I think we actually ended up leaving around 9:30ish which was even earlier than planned. But we didn't need to pack all that much either because we were only staying until Saturday anyways.

The drive home was pretty decent. For it being a holiday weekend the roads were not as busy as I expected them to be and I didn't really have to say anything to Jay about his driving. Mr. Tailgater did pretty good most of the way. I did say something once we got into Appleton, but seriously, in my opinion he drives too close to the other cars. I don't not trust him, it's the other drivers that you can't trust. But we made it home unscathed. Jay's parents were gone shopping when we got there so we went out to the back field and Jay, Ayden, and Steven were hitting some golf balls around. I was content just sitting back and watching. Shortly there after Jay's parents got home and since the lake was so nice we were going to make a day of it and head out onto the boat.

The original plan was to put the boat in at the harbor, head over to Jay's grandparents, just down a little ways from the harbor, dock the boat at their pier, have supper (his grandparents were making us some of the fish that they got in Alaska- which by the way was DELICIOUS!), then go back out on the boat to watch fireworks. Well, because the water was so calm we headed out around 12:30-1pm and decided to meander our way down to Velvet Beach and go swimming. However, because I didn't think it was supposed to be as warm as it was on Friday I didn't bring our suits along with us. But we decided that Ayden could just go in his underwear and Jay and I wouldn't go. I was fine with that because swimming in Lake Winnebago, not exactly my favorite thing. The water was pretty green on our way over there and we didn't think we'd be getting in at all, but at the beach it was a lot better. Still a little green, but swimmable. I probably would have even gone in had I brought my suit along.

We anchored in a spot that was only about 2 feet deep (one of the advantages of having a pontoon boat, can get in really shallow) and Ayden, Stevens, Gerald, and Michele went swimming. Michele had brought along some floaty things which helped Ayden. He kept the tube on like he did in the pool on Tuesday and had tons of fun. He could have just went in with his life jacket on, but he wanted the tube. Probably a good thing he didn't go in with his life jacket on otherwise he would have had to be in a wet life jacket all night. Good thinking...

After a while of swimming we headed back to Jay's grandparents and ate supper. The water on the lake still pretty decent. Not glass smooth, but not choppy either. Looking to be a pretty good night for watching fireworks on the lake. And isn't the saying, the lake calms down at night, or so it's supposed to. So I had no reason to believe that it wouldn't only get calmer during the following hours, but almost glass smooth. Yeah, no worries about waves!

You see, I don't mind being out on the boat. I don't get sea sick, enjoy the ride, but I do have a fear of big waves. Pontoon boats are not meant for waves and Gerald's isn't especially a super big one. All was pointing towards a perfect night! So we had our yummy supper and then headed towards Neenah (where we going to see the fireworks). The ride there was great... we saw a bunch of big fast boats pass us on the way there, but we were fine with our slow pace. Ayden was having fun and behaving pretty good. We got over to Neenah and anchored in some river. Don't remember the name of it. We got there around 7pmish and had quite a while to wait before it got dark, but because we were so early we got a really good spot with the boat. The one downside was that we didn't bring anything along to keep Ayden occupied during this time.

Michele said that she had a bunch of stuff that she was going to bring, but because we all hurried out of the house so fast in the afternoon that she forgot it. Ayden kept asking if we could go home and he was so polite about it. We tried everything to keep him busy until they started. It was a good thing that before the big ones started that other people were shooting some off so that kept his attention at points. Finally... and I mean FINALLY the fireworks started and it was an awesome show. We couldn't have had a better spot and Ayden really loved them. It did get kind of cold, but we had warmer clothes and lots of blankets.

The grand finale goes off without a hitch and it's time to pull up the anchor and head back towards Stockbridge. Little did we know we were heading into trouble and I mean trouble. We slowly make our way (along with tons of other boats) out of the river and back into the lake. Unfortunately, the wind picked up during the fireworks and turned the lake from smooth to crazy wavy and I mean crazy wavy... it was probably a good thing it was dark or I would have been more scared than I was. We didn't even get about a quarter mile out into the lake before Gerald told Jay to turn around and head back into the river. But before this, we were going to try and make it through the waves. We only had to make it half way across before the lake got smooth again (don't quite understand that, but aparently that was the case) but that half of the lake would have been a horrible ride. During the little bit that we were headed thay way the entire floor of the boat got soaked, the front of the boat dipped below twice, and we were seconds from getting life jackets on ourselves. You know things are bad when you have to be putting a life jacket on.

So, we got the boat turned around and were headed back into the river. All this time, Ayden and I are sitting at the back... I'm clutching him and my purse (because if it did come to the worst scenario I wasn't letting go of either). Ayden is still awake, but not quite aware of what was going on. He asked why we were turning around because he really wanted to go home after the fireworks were over and knew that going back into the river wasn't going to get us there. I didn't want to scare him, so I told him that the waves were kind of big and Grandpa said we needed to turn around so it wouldn't wreck the boat. Partly true, but I didn't think telling an almost four year old that it was too dangerous would be a smart thing. Next thing I know, anytime we are on the lake in a little bit of waves and he will start freaking out.

But now what were we going to do? We were in Neenah on a boat and our vehicles and trailor were in Stockbridge. Michele called her parents and they ended up taking their truck and hooking up the trailor and bring their van to come and get us. Thankfully Ayden fell asleep about 10 minutes after we got into docked in the river because what ensued was probably another hour of waiting for our rides. But simply getting rides wasn't the end of our fiasco. Firstly, Jay had the only key to his vehicle with him and using the keypad on the side of his truck to get in would only set off the alarm. What did this mean, we had no carseat for Ayden. Wait, that's not it... as Jay's grandparents had just gotten back from Alaska (a trip this took with their van), they had not put their seats back in. So, not only didn't we have a carseat for Ayden, we didn't even have any seats to sit on. Lol, what next?! One more thing, Jay's grandpa didn't have any lights working on the trailor when he hooked it up to his truck.

Well, we get picked up and manage to make it back to Jay's parent's house fine. Even through all the illegal things we did. I was joking with Michele that had we gotten pulled over I would have just turned on the water works and cried my whole story out to the officer. Maybe that would have worked, lol. Ayden slept through it all and only really remembers that it was wavy. Probably a good thing. When we got home though I had the worst case of land sickness there is. Wait, is land sickness even such a thing, well it is not. I had such a head ache and felt like I was going to throw up at any second. It felt like I was still on the boat moving. But I laid down to go to sleep and was probably out in like ten minutes.

Quite the adventure, huh? At least the fireworks were worth it!

We went to my mom's house Saturday morning for a while and chilled out there. She was nice and made us lunch and then we had to go because she was going someplace else. After that we went back to Jay's grandparents house to pick up Ayden's new bed. We switched vehicles and brougth Jay's grandpa's truck back to Point because the bed wasn't going to fit into the Explorer. The ride home was nice, not too much traffic and the bed stayed put. I didn't really have to say anything to Jay either which I was happy about.

The bed set up easily and we figured out how we were going to arrange Ayden's room with it. It didn't take up too much more room like I had thought it would which I am happy about. I had to go out and buy another railing though because the bed is really high off the ground I definitely don't want him rolling out of it. So really when you think about it, he's in a twin size crib, lol. Okay so the railings on either side are not super high and not the length of the bed, but it's a nice comparison. He will get getting a bed spread for it from Jay's parents for his birthday so we didn't need to worry about that.

Stevens Point had their fireworks last night and we went to go see those. Because it was Riverfront Rendevous there were a million and one people their last night. Honestly, it was crazy nuts! Once again, we had to go pretty early and ended up with a halfway decent spot. We had a tree semi in our way, but not totally and for about the two minutes that we spent looking for the spot we thought it was pretty okay. Ayden didn't enjoy them as much last night though. He was pretty antsy waiting the whole time and we even brought games and toys along this time. Even when the fireworks started he couldn't sit still. But it was worth it. Even the driving home didn't go as bad as I thought with the amount of people and cars trying to get out. Yeah!

Today has been spent relaxing. I finished getting stuff situated with Ayden's room (although not quite all the way done) and watching TV. Ayden had a bath this morning and didn't take a nap today. Hopefully he isn't too crabby later this afternoon. Looking foward to a relaxing week, but also need to get some GRE studying done as well. UGH!

Maybe I will get some pictures posted later. The ones I took of the fireworks didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but that's okay I guess. CIAO! LOVE ME!