I turned 28!

 I turned 28 ! Well, I actually turned 28 over 6 months ago, but I'm just now blogging about it.  I've had computer issues over the last few months and it took a while to get them sorted all out and get my pictures all in one place, and then I debated about going back to blogging since it'd been so long, but I finally decide to since it's nice to have a record of things more than just a facebook timeline.  That was a really long sentence.   But here we are.


So for my birthday, Jon took us kayaking!  We debated about kayaking vs paddleboarding, but my birthday is in the time of year where it's right on the cusp of cool whether and it could either be super nice or kinda chilly, especially in the water.  And since we had never been paddleboarding before and figured that was the kind of activity where you might possibly end up in the water the first time, and it might be chilly, we decided to stick with the safer option of kayaking, since we didn't want to be wet and chilly and grumpy on my birthday :) We also debated whether or not to bring Gromit.  It seemed sad not to, since he likes doing things, in general, but he's not a fan of water usually.  Especially waves, but we've even taken him kayaking on a super calm lake in Auburn and he still seemed uncomfortable with the whole idea and clung to me the whole time.  But we've heard stories of friends who had dogs who were afraid of water but once they had a life jacket on they did much better.  So we decided to try that.  Between the life jacket and the fact that we kept seeing ducks from the kayak, Gromit quickly got over that fear :)   He was soon so bold he was standing on the edge of the kayak, ready to dive in after those ducks (one of his favorite animals to chase), so I, unfortunately for Jon, couldn't be much help paddling since I spent most of the time making sure Gromit didn't dive it (we thought about it, but weren't sure we wanted a cold wet dog, and also worried him jumping in might tip us over).  It was really cool!  We kayaked about two hours, 6 miles roughly, from a point in the river out to the lake and back.  We saw a crane, some deer, and of course all those ducks.

Afterwards, we came back and had fun with games with Jonny, Heather, Katelyn, and Kim, who made delicious food for us!  We played some great games, including The Grizzled, A Fake Artist Goes to New York, King of Tokyo, and Between Two Cities.  It was a good birthday!