Mothers Day

For Mothers Day we headed off to Loch Lomond armed with an extensive picnic. Not the one in Scotland of course, but the one in Santa Cruz mountains that supplies water to the city of the same name. The weather was perfect and Dena, Fiona and Marty relaxed at picnic table while Alexander fished with Bob. I oscillated back and forth taking snaps.

The "loch" is in fact a man made reservoir and because it supplies Santa Cruz with water only human and electric powered boats were allowed on the water. There were several people ploughing up and down on little peddle-powered paddle boats and naturally Alexander was keen to go on the water.

I had serious reservations about peddling out into the middle of lake with young children on what constituted a glorified bike-raft with no seat belts, no sides and seating which put half of the crew behind me. Still Fiona said "Boaaat!" enthusiastically adding to Alexanders pleas and Dena seemed to think it was just what she wanted to do on Mothers Day. What could go wrong?

10 minutes into the paddling, enough to get well away from the dock and my 2 hour rental fee, Alexander had had enough. "I want to go back."
"Well tough sonny! You wanted this so keep paddling."
Eventually after swapping co-drivers between Dena and Alexander, and nearly loosing Fiona over the side several times, we made it to an island in the middle of the lake whereupon everyone got off the little craft.

Letting the children off the boat was the second mistake- 'cause they simply didn't want to get back on board to go back.Fiona had to be dragged screaming hysterically onto the stern and Alexander wouldn't make any effort to share the effort to get back to the dock, which was of course upwind of the island.

I gritted my teeth, muttered some things about family that weren't probably appropriate for Mothers day and wondered if I'd have heart attack on that way back. Luckily I didn't, and the pictures Bob took were far enough away that you can't tell the difference between a smile and a grimace. So unless this blog survives the test of technological time, our children will simply look at the pictures in 30+ years time and coo and chortle at the nice day they had on a lake with their Mom and Dad.

Non Flash using people can click here for the pictures.