...was spent at my father-in-law's lake home on Lobster Lake near Alexandria, MN. We spent the vacation with Rob, Erin, Sophie, Polly, Patrick and Wes. We managed to some camping, some drinking, some fishing, some four-wheeling, some canoeing, some boating, some eating, some sunning and managing to build a REALLY crappy "ladder golf" game using PVC pipe, old golf balls and rope. Incidentally, we played one series of ladder golf (best two out of three) for world domination and I swept. Just saying...
The weather was great until the day we had to drive home. We couldn't have asked for more. Here are some pictures of the adventure, with captions of course.
Here's Lucy and me on the four-wheeler. She LOVED it. At first I just tooled along slowly with her in the front, but she would get irate if I wasn't going fast. Lucy, Max and Sophie took turns driving up and down the drive for what seemed like an hour. They all really dug it. I was surprised because my kids are kind of scaredy cats. I realized another thing too...I want one. 
Like I said, we spent a lot of the time fishing. And one of the days Shanna decided that we would keep what we caught. She caught a nice bass while we were boating and I caught the other in the bull-rushes next to the lift. Along with this there were...
...numerous sunfish that were unfortunate enough to be good enough size to eat. After being caught and lugged up to the garage, it was time for a lesson in cleaning and filleting. Then Shanna greased up a cast-iron pan, dunked the nuggets in eggs, milk and flour and cooked up some delicious shore lunch. And although I've never been a fan of bass, the sunny nuggets were great as always. 
This last picture is of Max with his very first fish. Now, he's caught others before, but this is the first one in which he helped bait the hook, cast, watch the bobber, reel in and hold. It was super fun for him and saying I was a "proud papa" is an understatement. Even more exciting was the fact that he wanted to fish constantly. Every morning, as soon as he woke up he would come and wake me up and pressure me into going down to wet a line. Sure buddy, twist my arm.
