sup

Home! Home is so nice, albeit boring and work-y and weirdly, awesomely quiet. I don't even know where to start with the telling, so I'm just going to grab snippets here and there in no apparent order, so you'd best sit back and enjoy your uncle merv's vacation slides.

Every time we visit Connecticut,  there is a list of things we must do and see. It is sometimes tricky to coordinate outings and agendas when lots of people converge, and although we always say that not everyONE has to do everyTHING together, we sisters tend to find it exceedingly difficult to be apart when we find ourselves in the same state.

At one point during this visit, we took stock:

Stew Leonards... check
Shorehaven...check
NYC....check
Cannonball contest...check
Steamers at SoNo....check
NHS drive by....check

With the obligatory events all checked off our agenda, Jane and I tried to think of a thing to do on our last full day together. Our kids are all gangly and tech/sleep/eat obsessed, and we wanted to plan something that would be active and fun for everyone. We nixed the maritime museum and thought about looking into a boat ride of some sort. 

I was thinking about how we had planned to rent Stand-Up Paddleboards in Tahoe, but kept not getting up early enough to avoid choppy waters. The same thing had happened to us last year in Hawaii. Life is hard when you have to sleep past 10 every day!      

I asked mom about paddleboards while riding in the car with her somewhere. Jane was behind us in her rig. Mom said she had never seen or heard of anyone paddleboarding around there, so I took out my phone to look it up just as we crossed a bridge over the lovely Saugatuck River. The river that was dotted with canoes and kayaks and stand-up paddleboarders! I texted Jane "SUP!" she replied "YES."

Right at the crack of noon 1:30 on the very next day, we hit the river.

We rented two boards and took turns out there while the rest of the gang lounged on the sunny dock.

My boy gave me endless shit about not pressuring him to do it, then jumped out there first

Jane's younger boy was a total natural

Spoiler: no one crashed into that little bird dock

Next up were my girl and Jane's older boy

Then Jane and I took a spin

Ellie was game to go next, and MB wanted to but all she had on was a dress

but after a quick lesson by my future son in law on the dock

Off she went!

While the peanut gallery watched from the dock

until they decided to make it interesting

We really loved it out there on the river.