It's Always Fun When the Millers Come!!!

This post is long overdue, but it has been nonstop since the end of August, so I'm doing a lot of catching up. The girls have looking forward to their cousins coming into town for months. They love them so much and there was a lot of anticipation for their arrival. And once they did, it was nonstop action for a week. We started off with a family bowling night. My kids loved it, especially since they cut the music loud and turned on the blacklights. They were more interested in shaking their tail feathers than bowling and then it ended in an impromptu ice cream party at our house at 10:30p.m.

The next day, once Gabriela got out of school, we headed up to Deer Creek, and spent the day on some seadoos. We were suppost to have a family campout, but Rebeca suggested this and it was so fun, that we have decided to make this the back to school tradition instead. Sophia was hooked after the first ride and she went out as often as she could. She didn't care who she was riding with.

When the kids weren't riding, they entertained themselves in other ways.

When I took Julianne out on the lake, after much coersion and finally by force, I looked down because she was heavily leaning on my arm, and she fell asleep. I guess the wind and waves rocked her to sleep. It's actually the story of her life. So I had to bring her back in and Miguel went and laid her on a blanket to finish her nap.

So this picture has a good story! I took Elena and Sophia out for a ride, they are both 3, and we decided to ride the north perimeter of the lake just to see what was out there. As we got closer to the edge, I decided we better stay back for fear we might get stuck and as soon as I had that thought we ran up on the grasses and they got sucked up into the seadoo. What does that mean? Well we broke down and were stuck at the northern edge of the lake. I tried not to panic as we just sat there floating in the lake. I tried sitting on the back edge and pulling the stuff out, but it was useless. I didn't know how long it would take for someone to come looking for us. The girls were hopeless and said they would never see their daddies again.

So I used the opportunity to teach a lesson in faith. I suggested we say a prayer that someone would know we were missing and know were to find us. I tried flagging down other boats with no luck. The situation was looking bleak as a big dead fish floated by and we were drifting closer to shore. Then we saw our rescuer. Uncle Mike, Elena's dad, was coming. I was waving him down and then desperately tried to get him to stop before he ran into the muck and was stuck too. Luckily he stopped, but he ended up floating into it anyway. After a while he cleared and towed us in. That was scarier than being stuck, because it felt like he was just going to pull us over. The girls would scream with fright. It made for an interesting story. It was probably and hour and a half adventure.

The Ruiz kids: Beto, Rebeca, Graciela, and Miguel

The oldest of the girlie cousins: Gabriela, Annabelle, and Raquel

Miguel and I thought we better get some practice in before our big Sea World audition! We practiced all our tricks and syncronized seedooing to an eager audience. It was great. And then we decided that that was enough and a race sounded more fun instead, so Miguel dared to race him to the other side of the lake and reach a speed of 50mph. Yeah, no problem there. I actually felt like I was 16 again with the wind whipping through my hair. I like adventure and this was right up my alley. Thanks guys for a great day.

And as a side note: we had family pictures taken a few days later. I don't have them yet, but here's what I do have.

And don't let Miguel fool you. He's the KING of ugly face making!

We're a little crazy in this family.