I recently got back from a week at Lake Martin with some of my favorite people (the Hammetts and friends), and let me tell you, words cannot describe, but I'll try.
The Week of Amazingness began when Emily and I followed Charity and Erin's car into the boondocks of Alabama and arrived late at night to a cozy cabin with enough beds for 7 people in one room. Exhausted from the 5 hour ride, we all immediately picked a bunk and hunkered down, awakening next morning... NOT to an alarm, but to pancakes on styrofoam plates with the option of eating them outside against a sunshine-and-water filled backdrop. With coffee. Ahh.
Soon we were flying across the lake in the pontoon boat in the sunshine stretched out in our bikinis and sunglasses, soaking up the warmth and feeling the breeze in our hair and I forgot what day it was. We anchored away at Chimney Rock, where you can jump from 60 feet or 30 feet to what may look like death, but it isn't. Once you get yourself to actually jump. We got out and "swam like little guppies," said Faye Hammett, toward the rock, took a picture, and climbed all the way up to where I stood for a good 5 minutes deciding whether I felt like careening downward to my doom. I did. Pretty exhilirating, though I don't think I'll be ready for the 60 foot jump for another few years....
After that I just remember that the rest of the day I took a nap, read a book, ate some more, watched some crazy old movie on the couch in a towel ("Gidget is the one for me...!"), and took the jet ski out with Em. It was one of those vacations where you eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, forget what time it is for the entire day, do something fun when you want to, and you always have someone to do it with. It was glorious. The evening concluded with Rosie running into the cabin exclaiming, "You guys, the sky is so pretty you can see the stars really good" and all of us immediately deciding to follow her and go lay on the upper deck and watch. We saw 5 shooting stars and found out later that there was a meteor shower going on all week. We laid there talking about life and time and God and constellations and how small we were. And when the intervals of shooting stars got longer and our minds were full of wonder we went inside and went to bed.
Tuesday we woke to the smell and sound of crackling bacon (like Michael Scott with his George Foreman grill, but without the foot burn, for you Office fans). There is no. better. way. to wake up. Period. Stephanie and Beth took me tubing with the jet ski and it was quite a ride. I don't know what it is about getting your arm muscles torn in two and your tongue almost bitten off that is so fun, but it is. Then we all took turns jumping off the deck that was probably 10 feet off the water and taking crazy pictures. I think I did that about 10 times in a row, which gave me swimmers ear later and once Em kicked me in the leg when we went down, but it was totally worth it.
After wearing ourselves out enough for the morning, Emily and I just layed out in the shade...yes shade. When you get that much sun, you just gotta give your melatonin a break once in awhile. We weren't even in a hurry to tan. Eventually we moved into the beautiful sun until we got bored with that and took the 2 kayaks out. The thing about kayaks is that they are hard to keep in a straight line, so we, being your average everyday novice kayakers with zero upper body strength, bumbled along spinning in circles mostly, chasing each other around the lake. I was 8 years old for one fantastic hour. Then of course we happened to stumble upon a deserted dock with a really tempting plastic yellow slide, and we may or may not have succumbed to the temptation to dock our kayaks, climb up, and slide down it a few times. "Laura I think I just saw you as your 4 year old self sliding down just now." Yeah, it was that good.
We returned to Faye and Cherry trying desperately to fix the mini sailboat. They tried a little longer, gave up, and went inside. Emily and I still had our lifejackets on, but we didn't really feel like getting out of the water or taking them off, so we didn't. We just bobbed around in the still water as the sun set for an hour or so. It is really a great vacation when you can just float around and get pruny and be totally content with that. Emily periodically got scared of the fish and had to freak out every once in awhile and I had a good laugh. Then we may or may not have changed into our birthday suits and swam some more... We washed our hair in the lake, as we did multiple times a day. I never took a shower in a real shower. It made me feel like a mermaid.
The next morning continued the bacon tradition and I had my quiet time next to Emily under the gazebo with the waves lapping around us. I remember the air was breezing through and the sky was blue and it felt incredible, even though my drowned ear was killing me. I remember sitting there watching Emily kayak across the lake by herself trying not to spin around and I just couldn't stop grinning at her, my adorable little black dot BFF paddling away.
We ate at Sinclair's, a really nice restaurant on the lake where Steph and I split a chicken ceasar salad and Beth shared her giant brownie with all of us on her birthday. It reminded me of JP's, where I worked last summer. I love restaurants that are on or next to a body of water. Especially if you have to take a boat to get there.
I finally finished reading A Severe Mercy and Gilead (I typically read like 5 books at a time). Those books just became some of my favorites, by the way. I'm sure I'll blog about them later. I finished Gilead and Emily finished the fourth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants while Faye obsessively watched "Girl of the Limberlost," aka a very unfortunate use of film. I mean BAD. She made us all promise to give it just 10 minutes even though we only need about 2 seconds and and exactly at the end of 10 minutes we voted unanimously: this film should never appear on any television near our eyes, ever. So most of us bailed on that one. I really think I'll be okay in life.
The next day I failed at waterskiing, but at least I stood up for 2.9 seconds. Once. It is WAY harder than it looks, like most things, and my ankles totally were telling me "no, thanks, not again" after awkwardly trying to put the skis back on after awkwardly wiping out like 5 times. But hey, it was fun. Yet tubing seemed more fun, so we did that some more, except this time I was on the tube with Beth and Heidi was pulling us in the boat. I really think I invented a new sport- bodyboarding on the lake- when I fell off once. I skimmed across the water for like 10 seconds it was amazing.
I found out that Wednesday at 11am is when I will have the phone call with Chad to discuss location options for Young Life International. YIKES.
Pretty much the rest of the week was backrubs, painting nails, sleeping, movie watching, reading, bacon eating fun and I have no idea how I found my way into this family's life. But I'm glad I did (and not just because of all of the above, although it's very possible the way to my heart could partly be through cooking me bacon for a week).
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