If success of a weekend is measured by what was broken, I won last weekend. I managed to break the propeller on our boat and possibly Trent’s nose. It happened on a particularly crowded Sunday tubing run. Like most boaters, I don’t like to boat when it’s crowded, but the weather only cooperated for short windows of time, so we were all forced to go out together. At one point, I heard a loud noise, and the whole boat shuddered. I never saw anything, before or after, in the murky water. We had been moving slow, trying to turn around. I knew we were in a shallow section, but I had boated there before with no trouble. Anyway, we pulled the motor up, and the damage didn’t seem too bad, but I decided to start heading in anyway, since, well there were other boats…lots of other boats, and things were choppy and didn’t feel safe.

At one point on the way back home, I noticed that there weren’t many boats around. So, I decided to do a couple loops for the kids on the tube behind the boat: Trent, Tessa, and Abby. On one of those loops, the tube hit a trough and then a giant wave. The tube went airborne and back. All we could see from the boat was the bottom of the tube. I thought that all the kids were in the drink for sure. But NO!! It came down with all three kids still on the tube!! WHAT! Except, Trent was screaming. A LOT! I had to stop the boat. And blood was pouring like a river from his nose! Oh boy! So I pull the tube in and yell at someone to give me a towel. I didn’t want all that blood all over the boat! NO, not the yellow towel! Give me the red towel! I’ll never get blood out of a yellow towel. As you can see, my parenting is practical, as well as helpful.

Anyway, when we got back, the prop looked worse than we thought. Whoops! The good news is that Trent was better that we thought. We still don’t know if his nose is broken. It looked straight, so we decided to wait and see if he has any problems when the swelling goes down. Solid parenting! There has to be a bat in the house for me to overreact. I am a selective overreactor!

In closing, I would like to thank all those in the military, past and present, who risk or risked their lives so that we may have the great life available to us in this country. An extra nod to those that gave their lives for our freedoms. You are always remembered and appreciated. And I send all my love to the families of those fallen soldiers. You continue to pay the ultimate price. Thank you.