Lake Lanier with Pops's Crew + Andy's Crew

We arrived at my Dad's house on Lake Lanier in the mountains of North Georgia on Wednesday night, and my brother and his family arrived close to midnight.  We stayed up too late hanging out and catching up that night, and were a little slow-moving the next morning.  But we finally made our sandwiches for lunch and got going so that we could drive to the marina where my dad had rented a pontoon boat for the day.  The weather was cool, overcast, and sprinkling off and on, but we wore our bathing suits and brought our jackets and hoped for the best.  Well, with the combination of it being a Thursday and the weather being so dreary, we practically had the whole lake to ourselves, which was really great.  And even though the air temperature was cool, the water felt pretty warm.  And the kids didn't let a little colder weather keep them from tubing and even swimming.  I think we had every combination of two children on the tube over the course of the day, plus Kyle and Eliza together a few times (with Eliza somehow staying on while Kyle got thrown off each time).  Ben and Andy got brave enough to tube with their little boys, but all the women stayed warm and cozy on the boat.  Pops let the kids drive the boat, which they loved, and Ben showed of his driving skills by making the tubing even more interesting as he turned the boat so that the tube criscrossed the boat's wake.  Cat adopted Ben's style of driving the boat and did her best to throw the tubers off the tube (and succeeding).  When we needed to make a pit stop, we docked and used the bathrooms at the Lake Lanier Olympic Venue, where the rowing competitions were held during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

We had dinner back at Dad's house that night, and Cat kindly made us her signature dessert: chocolate cake with whipped cream and fresh raspberries.  Mmmmm.  We loved it.