Rowing on Lake Crabtree...

this fun activity we actually got into last Sunday, I just haven't gotten around to publishing it...but since amigo Pablo has linked our site on his, I better get going with more stories than just breakfasts at infamous places...

Anyhow, last Sunday we decided to drive out to Lake Crabtree near RDU airport (actually right behind it) and although it has been 8 years since I lived in Raleigh, we hit the right exit on the first try. Driving into the park brought back many memories of bike rides, playing Frisbee on the field, or just laying out on the grass...today it was a beautiful day and before we went out onto the Lake Luc had to inspect the playgrounds and Lya certainly didn't mind. The playgrounds were really nice (while being completely deserted - this is always still a shock to me after moving back here from Barcelona - I guess it still surprises me to see so few people everywhere).

After running up and down the platforms, sliding down the slides, peeking out through plastic bubbles, and turning wheels, we walked out to the dock and boat rental building, picked up our life preservers, and got everybody into the row boat. Right there at the dock mosquitoes were present in the hundreds (causing everybody to relentlessly spray around with their bug spray) but once we got out on the water this at least no longer was a problem.

The attention span of our 1 year old girl Lya and our 3 year old son Luc didn't last very long and quickly caused us to become more inventive (for example ropes turned into snakes that continuously had to be thrown overboard). Especially Lya didn't turn out be the sailor we would have liked here to be - but fortunately she did come around in the end after we had noticed that she was sweating tremendously under her life preserver (we had also managed accidentally putting her life preserver on Luc and his on her).

In the end we did stay out for about an hour and Sabine was all smiles once we got done and everybody was still in good spirits.