Brenden's Boat

First off, NO...no one has actually bought Brenden a boat. We're really not crazy, I promise. However, his grandparents did get a deck boat yesterday. They've been thinking of doing it for awhile since Brenden loves to be on the boat but doesn't do so well on grandpa's fishing boat. He could get caught in one of the lures and there aren't a whole lot of seats. Hence..."Brenden's boat."

The new boat!

Thanks grandma and grandpa!

(We were in the driveway, which is why he's allowed to sit there with no life jacket.)

Ready to go! He begged to put his life jacket on. He knows we won't go without it.

We knew it would be a bigger boat than the fishing boat but we had no idea how much bigger. That thing is HUGE! It can seat up to 10 people and rides really smoothly through most waves. (more on that in a sec.) Brenden absolutely LOVES it. He can sit in the front and be bounced around a little, sit with grandpa and "drive" the boat, or sit in the back where there is a lot less wind and he can wave at other boats.

"Driving" the boat!

So those waves...yeah. We were headed to the marina to eat at Cross Timbers. You can dock your boat and walk up to the restaurant, which is pretty nice and has a great view. We were maybe 100 yards from the dock when we saw a huge boat go by. It was a double decker thing and even Tim doesn't know what it's called. The one thing we know for sure is that it makes HUGE waves in the water, as in 5-6 foot waves. We didn't see them until we were right up on them. Mike slowed way down and we thought we'd be just fine. Yeah, we were wrong. As we hit the first wave a giant wall of water came over the front of the boat, right where Tim and I were sitting. Tim told me later that there was a 2nd wave but I didn't sit there long enough to watch that one. Luckily Brenden was sitting on his grandma's lap behind the glass partition. Unluckily I had just been taking pictures and my camera was sitting on my lap, taking the full force of at least one of the waves.

Only a few minutes before "THE WAVE".

My camera is not the most expensive. It doesn't do amazing things that other cameras can do. Yes, there have been times that I wished I had a camera like Karen's, which takes crazy good pictures. But still, I love my camera. And I know it's not just MY camera, but out of every 100 pictures Tim maybe takes one, so I claim it. So when I looked at my camera, after squeezing a bit of water out of my clothes and shaking my head to get water out of my ears (that hurt!), I was horrified to see the screen flickering. Yes, I cried. It's not like we have money falling out of our pockets. I can't replace my camera immediately.

The last picture I took with my camera. :(

Mike felt terrible. I don't know how many times we told him there was no way that he could have known that was going to happen. It could have been Tim driving the boat. I should have put my camera up when I was done. A million what ifs, it still doesn't fix my camera or make Mike feel better. (Although I hope he does by now...it's all good, Mike!) Mike and Connie let us borrow their camera for now so I'm not camera-less. There are much worse things that could have happened and looking back I'm so glad it was just my camera we lost.

Needless to say, the restaurant was out of the question until we were dry. By the time we got back to their house it was getting late and by the time our clothes would have dried we would have needed to head home. Instead, Mike and Tim went to get pizza, which I will never complain about.

It may not have been the first ride that we expected, but it was definitely one to remember!