Gater done!

We're spending the weekend visiting Nancy and Grandpa Doug in south Texas, so of course there are all kinds of adventures to be had.

First up: Mia's first board ride.

Leigh had the normal amount of excitment about cruising around a lake near my parents house ... until he found out there were alligators. My dad said we'd go looking for alligators. You can imagine how Leigh reacted to this. I'm sure you can imagine how I reacted to this.

We headed out on the lake, which was already creepy to start with.

Mia thought the boat ride was fantastically fun. She giggled a bit and closed her eyes in the wind.


First, my dad said, "I'm going to take you to see King Kong." Awesome. Not only does my dad know where all the alligators hang out, he's dubbed the biggest one King Kong. Leigh, of course, thought this was amazing. I, of course, was pretty sure that King Kong was going to leap out of the lake and over our boat, snatching Mia up by the noggin as he flew through the air. As Leigh and my dad looked eagerly for King Kong, Leigh snapped this photo of me.


Unfortunately/fortunately, King Kong was nowhere to be seen. We moved on to the next cove, where Leigh used his hawk eyes to spot an alligator. It's hard to see in the photo, but his little eyes are sticking up out of the water just to the right of those white stick things. He looks kind of like a gray smudge.


The more we watched him, the more he slide around. Eventually he did a massive flop manuever that was amazing/horrifying. We ended up spotting three more alligators on the boat ride. Mia, however, was unimpressed. The trolling motor put her right to sleep.


After a mini-nap, my dad let her drive the boat, which she though was absolutely wonderful. She especially enjoying tinkering with the GPS and trying to kick the horn button with her foot.