At the Lake

Dear Daddy,

This weekend we got to go to Lucia and Finn's cabin.  We had a lot of fun, and everyone's favorite activity was fishing off the dock.  We fed the fish bread in the mornings so they would be nice and fat when we caught them in the afternoon.  We used leeches and worms as bait, and Mommy even baited the hooks for us, but Maud was the only one who could get hooks out of fish bellies if they swallowed it whole.  She had special pliers and calls this "surgery."  We saved our fish in a bucket, but they kept jumping out, so we put a net over them.  Clio held it closed.  We released some, but kept five fish to eat.  Maud showed us how to clean the fish.  When we cut the heads off, they still move around.  Maud and Mommy told us about nerves.  When Maud tried to cut the biggest fish, it flipped around and around.  Lucia and Clio got to eat that one.

We took boat rides, and Finn went tubing, but Clio wasn't ready to try it.  Maybe next year.  She says she doesn't want to try it ever, but we'll see.  While we tooled around the lake, under beautiful blue skies, we missed you, and I thought that you would trade one day of your time in Japan to be there with us like that, if only the logistics were not so complicated.  I hope we can all go next year; we know you would have the most fun of everyone.

Yesterday we took the boat to the sandy point.  We built a river.  We put rocks in it, and when it was full we made a dam so the water wouldn't go out and come in again.  We built a rock wall around it.

In the cabin, we did puzzles and Eleri is getting really good.  We did a 60 piece floor puzzle of pirates.  Clio and Lucia built a fort in the living room, using every single blanket and towel in the place.  They also found some old baby gates to use, and said No Boys Allowed.

My favorite thing was watching the girls swim.  They called the wading area by the shore the "shallow end" and the lake the "deep end," which is really very cute.

Clio would like to sign off now.

xoxo
(Clio typed those hugs and kisses)

Love,
Your girls