Seneca Lake

We had the best time up at Seneca Lake with some friends last weekend. Seneca Lake is one of the Finger Lakes in NY and the church owns property and cabins next to it. It's actually the second deepest lake in the US and they test submarines in it!It's about an hour and 45 minutes away and is also where they have girls camp. Crescent's husband, Dave, headed up all the plans and we were going to stay in one of the cabins that sleeps 16 people. The wives saw through what could have been a disasterous night of the kids all waking each other up all night and Crescent figured out that there was also a house you could rent. We decided it would be well worth the money. Boy were we right!

Friday rolled around and it was a horrible, stormy, rainy day. I still have anxiety when it comes to road trips, so Trav was kind and kept it around 70 mph. Even so, in the pouring rain, our car would suddenly start to rock as though it were fishtailing. The first time it happened, I kid you not, it felt like my heart stopped while my legs simultaneously went numb and the rest of my body got hot and tingly. He tried to assure me it was the road. I knew it wasn't. That continued to happen at least 7 or 8 other times. Thanks to a protective Heavenly Father, we arrived safetly. (Now we just need to get our car checked out. Any ideas what the problem could be?!)

I didn't know what to expect when we pulled up to the house, but it certainly wasn't this! The house was huge, with five bedrooms and three bathrooms. ChaChing!

We picked up some pizzas in town for dinner then put the little kids down to bed so the games could begin!

I guess Megan loves ice even more than yours truly. Since the freezer didn't have any, she resorted to "ice cups" (water frozen in a cup). Here is Bron showing off his ice cup now :)

We started out tame with Loaded Questions, then got a bit more rambunctious with Spoons. (not spooning, the game spoons - although spooning was brought up :)Then Brad introduced us to the best game EVER-
NINJA!
So, you stand in a circle, bow, then strike a ninja pose. You are frozen in that pose unless someone tries to "attack" you. Then you can move to avoid the attack, but are stuck in the resulting pose. One person starts by trying to hit someone's hands. If you get your hand hit, you're out. If the person misses. They have to stay in the pose they ended in and then it's the next person's turn to "attack". Don't know if that made sense, but watch the video to get an idea of how it works.

We were still learning, so everyone is pretty slow in the video, but after we got the hang of it, it moved faster and was seriously so much fun!


There were a few shocking poses. This looks bad, but no, Trav did not slap Crescent. (Dave took care of that for him - just a few mishaps :)Sometime you got stuck on the floor if you dove for someone's hand. Bron enjoyed the floor.

We must have played Ninja for over an hour. We got so hot and sweaty we actually opened the windows to the freezingness that was outdoors! After that we figured there wasn't going to be another time that we had a whole huge house without fragile decorations all to ourselves. That's right, it was Hide and Seek time! Can you picture it? Lights off. Grown adults acting like children. Running amuk. It was hysterical. We played different versions like Sardines and Murder in the Dark. By about 1:30am, it was time for a ghost story. Serioulsy. Dave actually had a pretty good one. Bron snuck out and tried to scare us by jumping out and screaming. Nice try Bron :) We talked until 2:30am then decided to call it a night.

The kiddos woke up nice and early and we shared a big pancake breakfast. We took a walk down to the lake and I was more than amazed to see this:

Since when can you see through lake water?! Oh, right, I'm just used to the polluted nastiness that is Saguaro or Canyon Lake. Haha.

Well what comes next is something I'm going to claim bragging rights to for a long time! On October 3 in New York, we went.... WAKEBOARDING!

Crazy? Yes, most definitely. The thing was- after a cold and rainy day the day before, we were duped into thinking the sun meant warm times on the lake. Warm times to us is 67 degrees. The church had a ski boat they rented to us for $20 an hour. We just couldn't turn it down.

Here is our trusty driver, Brad. (Notice Jen has on a ski jacket.)

Dave went first with a full wetsuit on and claimed it wasn't too bad. Then Jen was next but her wet suit didn't have sleeves. This is what she looked like each time we circled to pick her back up after falling.

And here is my crazy husband. We haven't been wakeboarding in years and he gets out there and starts jumping and ....throwing back flips. Seriously, this guy = nutso. No tower, but he tried anyway.

And then I come along. I screamed when my body hit the water. And kept screaming. I've never been immersed in water that cold before! ICY. (I looked it up later and the water was around 65degrees.) I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get up, but that wasn't a problem after all. Although, I'll admit that right after I got up all I could think was "AHHHHHHHHH, SCAAAAAAAARY!!!!!". I put on quite the show by sitting behind the boat, just holding on. That was plenty of fun for me!

Here is the whole gang before we headed home. Thanks for a great time Marchants!!! We would do it again in a heartbeat! (Next time with the Shaws! We missed you Rach and Doug!)