For those of you who aren't family members-warning-this is a super long post-all about Isaac, our fourteen year old-so you may want to skip it or skim it :) Although, there is a super funny part in the midst of our kayaking pictures.
As many of you know, Isaac spent his summer in Trinidad with Teen Missions. He loved it! Here are a few pictures from his trip....
Saying goodbye....
They spent the majority of their time building a pastor's home.
Seeing him at the airport was rather shocking! He looked so different! And he acted sort of cool and indifferent...but that didn't last too long-thankfully!
His boots were unbelievably disgusting----and his feet-worse. They were whitish-pink, sort of pasty looking. I knew for sure something was wrong them-and a little googling later and yep-he had athletes foot. We are still trying to get him to be consistent with the medicine and get rid of it, several weeks later!
I caught these boys having the best of times playing rock, paper, scissors, shoot. I've never seen them laugh so much together! I snuck up behind and took some pictures. When they were done Andrew said, "my hand is swelling" and sure enough it was bright red and swollen. Isaac had been smacking his hand incredibly hard but Andrew just laughed and laughed the whole time!
The hand-smacking caught on camera!
And Isaac turned fourteen! For our kids birthdays, we let them pick what they want to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and what they want as their birthday dessert. Cake is almost never picked! (My mom had a hard time with that one and really wanted to bring a cake in addition to the 2 dozen donuts we bought at Isaac's request!) Isaac wanted Trix for breakfast (that was really hard for me to purchase!), subway for lunch, burritos for dinner and donuts for dessert (those were hard for me to smell and not be able to eat!). We usually plan something special for our kids on their birthday, not always a party, but sometimes a special trip somewhere, or like this year-kayaking.
We went on a 3 hour (but took us 4 hours) kayaking trip down the Chattahoochee River in Helen. It was really fun, really beautiful, and a lot harder than I had anticipated! My core was sore for days afterwards and my legs are still burning from the sunburn. I never sunscreen my legs so didn't think about the fact that they would be directly facing the sun for 4 hours in the mid-afternoon! Big oops!
Isaac absolutely loved it! He was in his element I think.
We took these pictures where we entered the creek (the creek dumped us into the Chattahoochee eventually) and then gave the camera to the guy who we rented the kayaks from. I'm so glad I did now-it was have gotten soaked. But I was bummed not to be able to take any pictures! We let the boys get out and swim in some of the deeper areas. Often times Andrew and Micah would get out of the boat and just hang on to the back or swim along the side. They were in boy heaven. :)
Andrew kept saying how much fun he was having. All the boys said they wanted to do it again.
The only mishap was me-there has to be a bit of dangerous adventure in every trip we take it seems. So....under ever overhanging branch are spiders. Every time I've gotten close to those branches (on this trip and on tubing trips in the past) I have seen spiders. I don't know why they like to hang out (literally) right over the water. So sometimes your kayak will veer to the side with the current and you have to be purposeful to avoid those overhanging branches. Me and Micah were riding together and somehow messed up and were headed straight for some low hanging branches...as I got to about 2 feet from them and began screaming I saw, not one, not two-but three spiders!!!! I did what any girl would do---SCREAMED and flipped out of the boat into the river taking my backpack, camera and binoculars with me. (Steve and all the boys witnessed the event to their delight) Thankfully, I missed those spiders-just barely-the camera recovered after bathing in rice for a while-but the nice binoculars are ruined. I didn't know they weren't water proof-or I would have been way more careful! Oops. But I'd rather have ruined the binoculars than gotten THREE spiders on my face!
When we got home around 5:30 Isaac's grandparents came over and one of his friends. We were super pooped out-but ended up having a great time. I'm so glad Isaac picked donuts and that I didn't have to bake a cake or something like that! I admit, I do like easy---even when it is krispy cream donuts that smell so good and I can't eat them!
He is such a cheeseball.
It's pretty fun having a fourteen year old. He is crazy, at times annoying, most always silly, and everything you can imagine in a teenager-but I like having him around. Thank you God for giving us Isaac! Happy birthday!
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