Hello friends!

My whole family spent last weekend at Smith Mountain Lake – boating, kayaking, swimming, tubing, water-skiing… It was great fun! And we were so sore afterward, haha.

Enjoy a post full of pretty lakescapes (is that a word?), fun action shots, and hilarious expressions. 😀

This was one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve been to because of its setting: mountains rose beside us and tiny islands dotted the water.

We rented a boat and spent Saturday on the water. 1) Megan and Harrison being cute. 🙂 2) The boys chillin’. 3) A picture Sully took of me preparing to tube.

I took SO many tubing photos as you can probably guess. I couldn’t resist capturing the dramatic expressions and air-time action shots.

Logan fell off before Carmen and was left to bob on the waves until we circled back to pick him up.

Sully showing Carmen some funny video on his phone. XD Love this one.

I also love this cute squinty-eyed portrait of Sully, in part because the picture quality turned out amazing!

More tubing, featuring Megan falling off and mostly disappearing on the last one.

Apparently sunglasses were the thing to wear.

We found out that riding with three or more people on the tube is chaotic but very fun. I think five people was the best but I was riding instead of taking pictures that time.

The girls. 🙂

Some water skiing! Dad and my brothers were all pretty good at it (especially Dad, who skied one-handed for a little while).

Sully and Harrison had never tried it. Sully got SOOOO close, as per the top picture, and Harrison got it on his first try and did super well! Megan rode the waves too, and somehow managed to stand upright after letting go of the rope a couple of times, haha.

In the afternoon, Dad cut off the boat and anchored it so we could swim and relax in the water. It quickly turned into a “King of the Mountain” situation with the tube. There was much dumping people off, shrieks, and laughter.

Also a lot of jumping off the boat.

Miscellaneous pictures. 1) A picture I love very much of a very genuine Sully laugh. (Watching the tubing was ridiculously entertaining.) 2) Another picture Sully took for me of everyone gathered around the tube while swimming. 3) Mom resting and relaxing on the very comfy benches.

Our time on the boat ended with a beautiful sunray sky.

That night Mom fixed a delicious low-country boil for supper! Yum, that was so good. And a really fun experience too, eating straight off the table. 😛 Have you ever tried it?

On Sunday morning we watched a Tim Keller sermon on YouTube and *attempted* to sing to lyric videos of worship music but mostly ended up laughing about the typos and strange edits. Oops. The a capella songs went much better. Anyway, after lunch we went out and kayaked/paddle-boarded for a while!

Probably the most hilarious part of the trip was Megan’s chocolate milk escapade. She was so excited to show everyone her wine glass of chocolate milk, and happily collected various accoutrements for an aesthetic afternoon reading on the beloved pink flamingo float. You may guess what happened when she put the wine glass of chocolate milk in the cupholder and then stepped on the float…

IT SPILLED. She tried to get herself and her book and phone away from the spilt milk, which only made it spill more, so she tried to get back to shore, spilling it completely and getting drenched with chocolate milk, after which she resigned herself to jumping in the water. When she washed off the float, the water got all cloudy and gross. Maybe you had to be there but OH MY, the whole thing had us nearly crying from laughing so hard, goodness gracious. Fun times. 🙂

After we got tired of the water, we went out to a local restaurant for supper and said goodbye to Chessie and Logan (Harrison had left the night before after a game of Pictionary). Sully and I convinced my family to watch “Spirited Away” before we left. HAHAHA that was an experience. All in all, it was a super fun and refreshing time with family and I’m so glad we got to go and make memories together. ❤

Have you ever tubed or water-skied? What is your favorite water activity?

Thanks so much for reading, my friends, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. S. Photos taken with my Nikon D7200 and 35mm lens. Edited with Lightroom.