Our next door neighbors have two children, Abby and Dawson (Cailee is a huge Abby fan). They are both in Pennsylvania visiting their grandparents – so naturally, you would expects mom and dad to be enjoying their down time – no, lucky for us, they were generous/brave enough to take two (nearly) 3 year olds, and an infant on their boat for the day. And we had a great time. It was Cailee, Connor, JJ and I, Tracy, Grayson and Brenda and Arnie (plus, Baxter, the doggie).

As you can expect, it took Cailee a little while to warm up to the idea of the boat/swimming in the lake (Falls Lake). It took a lot of coaxing just to get heroff the dock and onto the boat. Then she sat very still and close to mom the entire way out to the cove, and there was another fit getting the life jacket on her. We encouraged her to get in the water – but getting comfortable with that took a while as well.

However, fast forward 20 minutes and Cailee was swimming like a fish. If you didn’t watch closely she would jump right off the edge of the boat and was doing her darnedest to doggy paddle away from us. Fear be gone, she was loving life and the only other fit of the day came when it was time to get off the boat and go home.

Swimming in the lake was Cailee’s favorite thing, but she also enjoyed watching dad do a little wake boarding. We thought he looked pretty darn good considering he hadn’t done it for nearly eight years.