What a weekend. As I have mentioned before, this past ten days encompass my favorite ten days in sports. You get the NCAA final four, opening day, Bristol, Martinsville and The Masters. Can it get any better than that?

The NCAA finals were as close a game as we've had in years, Roy Williams finally won a national championship and got the nay sayers off his back, Kevin Harvick ended his 54 race winless streak by sweeping the events at Bristol, Bobby Labonte became the 12th driver to win in all three of NASCAR's top divisions when he won the Martinsville truck race, Jeff Gordon came back from three laps down to win at Martinsville (but not before he blatantly took out Kurt Busch in the process), and Tiger Woods overcame a six shot deficit after 36 holes, including a run where he birdied seven holes in a row in his third round to take a three shot lead going into Sunday's final round, and eventually his winning a fourth green jacket with a win in sudden death. Tiger shot his two best rounds and the overall two best rounds of the tourney in rounds two and three where he shot 66-65, and stormed back into the tournament in the process.

You can watch The Masters your whole life and you may never see one like this again. There have only been five other playoffs in Masters history, but how we get to extra holes will probably never be matched. Coming to the 16th hole, Tiger led by one, DiMarco was about 8 feet away and Tiger was over the green to the left, similar to Davis Love III in 1999 where Love hit the ball about 20 feet left of the cup and 30 feet past it, hoping the ball would come back (which it did) and get close. It fell in instead.

Woods had a much worse lie than Love III had, but he managed to get it out and up the hill, and then it trickled back down and as Nike Chairman Phil Knight experienced the marketing version of a wet dream, Tiger's Nike Logo hung on the lip for well over a second or two before rolling into the cup, giving him the two shot lead he needed to get to sudden death.

Woods then birdied 18 in sudden death from about 15 feet to win his fourth green jacket to tie Arnold Palmer. And folks thought his best golf was behind him. Shows what "they" know...

Anyway, back to my story.

Saturday, Uncle Todd asked if we all wanted to go to the lake with the Z's and a bunch of kids, and we said "Sure." Lauren loves the lake and the boat, so we were all very excited. Lauren was so excited in fact that she wore her life vest for about two and a half hours during the day leading up to our departure. I wish I had taken some pictures.

Anywho, we left a little before six with Molly and I knowing full well that this group wouldn't return until well after Stinky's bedtime. I figured it was Saturday, so what's the big deal?

We headed out and got started, with Lauren moving back and forth and to and fro, looking for every different view of everything she could see from the boat. Uncle Todd even let her actually steer for a little while, and she loved that.

checking out the sites

driving the boat

We got to Up the Creek (a restaurant on Lake Lanier) and the kids (Jack, Nick, and Nick's friends R-dizzle and Miskyle) decided to do some fishing with some crickets.

That didn't go too well as Jack dumped all of the crickets out on to the dock. Most were re-captured, but some did flee only to be eaten by ducks and fish. Too bad, fellas.

Lauren caught on and desperately wanted to try fishing. Young Jack kindly baited her hook and gave up his rig to my urchin. She dropped a line in, waited about ten seconds, and then it was "FISH ON!!"

I let her reel it in (left hand over the top of the reel trying to do it a millimeter at a time and taking forever in the process), but we finally got it to the dock.

Lauren's first fish

She was beside herself with glee, as you can tell in the following shots:

glee part one

glee part two

glee part three


Seeing this, the older boys got serious for a few minutes until Nick finally caught this whopper:

Nick's big 'un


Here was where UnkTodd was wandering toward the shore and gave us the "Hey!! It's a turtle!!" shout.

We all came running to the massive shape in the water, only to discover it was a trash can lid. Lauren, however, interprited that as "trash can turtle," and now she can't stop talking about the BEEEEEEEG trash can turtle she saw.

Here are two of my very patient sister in law teaching Lauren how to fish:

sweet picture

sweet number two

So we got seated around 8:15, had a great meal and good company to boot. My meal highlight was Nick's friend Miskyle pulling 30 bucks out of his duct tape wallet and then ordering the filet mignon AND the baby back ribs. Nice job, playa.

We got back on the boat and headed for home abou 9:30, well past Lauren's bedtime. She was asleep on my lap before we got out of sight of the dock, and didn't flinch all the way to the marina. She didn't move when we got her out of the boat, out of her life vest, into the carseat, or even into her pj's. When I was putting her in bed she said "why you not read to me Daddy?" to which I replied "because you're asleep, honey."

She replied "okay," and slept until 9am the next day.

But this is where the fish story gets good. After breakfast and our usual "what was your favorite part of yesterday" game, Lauren said "fishing."

Then we asked, "How big was your fish?"

She replied (with hands spread wide) "This BEEEEEG!!"

And how big was Nick's fish?

With thumb and index fingert pressed tighly, she simply replied "small."

Needless to say, there were laughs for the rest of Sunday after that one.

UnkTodd decided that fish tales must be in your genes, because no one taught a near 3-year-old to lie about her fish and diss someone else's.

Can't wait to hit the water again. Thanks T-clan.