Pontoon Boat Rental

We still have lots of pictures to share from our trip to Milwaukee earlier in the month. Patrick and I will be tag-teaming the blog posts for the next week or so. Today, I wanted to share a few details about when the whole family went out on a pontoon boat.

Grandpa loves being in a boat on the water and misses the boat he had when they had their cottage. It was getting too hard for him to get the boat in and out of the water by himself, so he sold that boat. He used having everyone there as an excuse to rent a pontoon boat on Friday (August 8th) after everyone made it to town. While he rented it for the entire day, the kids, particularly the younger ones, were done after a few hours.

We found a nice spot near an island in the lake to relax a bit. Unfortunately, the island was private property so we simply stayed in the water. The island was for sale but none of us seemed to think we'd make enough use of it to spend our spare change.

Braeden wasn't thrilled with wearing a life jacket but in the end he tolerated it and was a champ. He did get to take it off and go into the water with his dad, though, and he really enjoyed that. Everyone except Grandma, Grandpa, Lisa, and Melanie went out in the lake near that island.

Alex swam out there and got short of breath. We were wondering if he had some exercise-induced asthma, but it also could have been due to the fact that he didn't get much exercise this summer. Hopefully, it's not the asthma.

We lost the lid to one of the styrofoam coolers we had on the boat to hold some of the drinks and sandwiches we had for lunch. Derek, Lisa's husband, made it his mission to retrieve the lid, first driving the boat right to it. He tried to reach for it while still in the boat, but couldn't get it, so he dove in. He challenged Melanie to put that on her blog, so of course she took some pictures and well--now it's on the blog. :)

Eric loved meeting Derek and had a blast playing with him. Honestly, everyone had a blast together. The entire trip was a lot of fun. Here, Eric was pretending to surf while standing at the front of the boat with the wind blowing against him. Derek decided he would do the same--fun!

Grandma and Grandpa ordered some Subway sandwiches for lunch for everyone. We had Chicken Teriyaki, Club, and Roast Beef sandwiches with veggies. Unfortunately, some children (my younger two) complained about the veggies in the sandwiches. Natalie coped with it (although she probably removed the veggies when she ate the sandwich). Eric is our pickiest eater and refused to eat anything because of the veggies included. What else could Melanie do but remove the roast beef from the sandwich totally and put it on a separate plate? He then ate all the roast beef. He had to be hungry by then.

Grandma and Grandpa didn't get into the water but relaxed on the boat. We all had a nice ride around the lake. Of course, Grandpa was constantly going near the shoreline to check out the cottages, particularly any that were for sale. He is perpetually looking for real estate.

We went back to the dock after about three or four hours. Patrick's sister Linda and her son Joe came in that afternoon, so they missed going on the boat. There will be another post this week about the other activities we did together.