It started off with about 10 hours in the car. Trust me, he wasn't this happy for the whole ride.
And he was in a car seat in the back of our car, not strapped in the front of my dad's truck. My dad, brother, and niece left Friday evening, and Keith, my mom, Bert, and I left early Saturday morning. My mom had the rather large responsibility of entertaining Bert in the car, and she did an excellent job. We only made one unplanned stop for him to get out and run around, and another because of a diaper that reached capacity.
Shortly before three on Saturday afternoon, we arrived at the lake. Ahhhh...
It was a little hotter and muggier than usual, so we didn't waste any time getting in the water. Bert is still on the fence about large bodies of water.
We did some flea markets on Sunday (no really exciting finds to report), and on Monday, we headed into the closest bigger town for a little shopping, and a photo op.
Lobster baby!
Bert held up until we got back in the car, where he pretty promptly fell asleep. We made the mistake of waking him up, thinking he would nap better when we got home. Wrong. He managed to go the whole day without napping. Needless to say, bedtime was early. Like 6:30 early.
We did let him sleep long enough to take a picture of him with his new lobster from Uncle Travis and Zoe on his head.
Bert didn't do much more swimming, because by midweek the temperatures were only in the mid-70s, but he did like leaning off the dock and splashing in the water.
We also played some enthusiastic peek-a-boo around the tree.
And he not-so-willingly sat not-so-still for one quick picture with me.
Zoe spent most of her week fishing off the dock or waiting patiently to catch little fish in her net.
Here's one of the fish Zoe caught in the net.
Bert was pretty eager to touch it.
Zoe was the s'more chef.
I highly recommend the dark chocolate Reese's s'more.
We did a campfire on several nights, hoping to keep the mosquitoes at bay. If you could stand the smoke, it worked. We also tried every mosquito repellent available, homemade and commercial. The best remedy was a cool, breezy night. That or heading back inside.
Mom and I got our knit on. We kept moving our chairs around to stay in the sun; that's how chilly the mornings were.
Random cuteness in his shark hat.
Mmm, mmm, mmm. Spam for lunch.
Bert being retrieved from the neighbor's yard. Look at him hamming it up.
Keith and I took a morning to go into Augusta and check things out, only to find there wasn't much to check out. But it was still a nice morning and we found a great place for lunch on the way back.
And we stopped at bought some infamous wild Maine blueberries at a stand along the road.
Which Bert devoured. Imagine my surprise when I changed his diaper and it was a, shall we say, unusual color.
Zoe checked out all the lures in the tackle box.
We got a kick out of this one, called the "Hula Popper."
Travis and Zoe squeezed in the kayak to do a little fishing. (It's a one-person kayak.)
And look what she caught! This was the biggest fish of the week, at about 9". A bass, I think.
We were on the catch-and-release program.
Bert found a hollowed out stump to play in. And I was playing with my camera and forgot to put my settings back so no, he did not turn blue from too many blueberries.
Bert decided to try his hand at fishing off the new bulkhead.
And he decided to climb up the neighbors' dock that was pulled out of the lake.
Quite the daredevil.
So that was our week. It was nice to have so many people to keep an eye on Bert since all he wanted to do was run around. We were just glad to survive the week without him tumbling off the dock into the lake. He slept and napped pretty well, so we did have some downtime for just hanging out. And we went for ice cream almost every night, taking turns with who stayed back with Bert since it was usually his bedtime.
We are really lucky to have such a great place to stay. My great-grandparents bought the place in the early 60s (I think it might have been 1960, if I am remembering right), and my grandparents have taken such good care of it over the years. There is room for all of us to sleep and it is nice to have a kitchen so we don't have the expense of eating out all week long. Waking up to a crisp morning and drinking coffee while sitting on the dock has to be one of my favorite parts of our Maine vacations. We are certainly looking forward to many, many more weeks by the lake and can't wait to see Bert swimming, fishing, kayaking, and roasting marshmallows as he gets older.
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