Let the Good Times Roll: Part 2

There's more I haven't told you about my summer yet. I will try to be brief.

1. North Carolina

I hitched a ride on standby to North Carolina for a couple days to see Scott, Alexis, and their kids the week before I had to go back to work. One particular plane I rode on was quite lovely - comfy and cozy, if not quite made for tall people (#don'tbitethehandthatfeedsyou). Just a little shout out for regional airlines, y'all.

We did all kinds of fun things, including a little game of one-on-one with Nate. It might look like I should stop trying to actually block the shot of a 10-year-old, but keep in mind that I haven't played basketball since I was, like, 14. I had to play hard against this kid. I mean, he dribbles between his legs. Between his legs, you guys. I can't even dribble without looking at the ball. It was fun until Scott started playing because he is legitimately good and then I start to feel as awkward and incapable as I felt when I was 14.

They are all darling and I love them to pieces.

But Caroline is out-of-control cute. She wears bows everywhere, including the pool, and Alexis wasn't just speaking in self-defense when she said that Caroline actually asks for her bows. I put one in my hair and she ran over and took it from me. That's why she's wearing two here.

2. Camping/Fishing in the Uintas

I always thought of the Uintas as being this gorgeous and heavenly place that I went to a couple times in college but that was far, far away. Apparently an hour and a half is a painful drive when you're in college. ??? They are ridiculously close, so we went camping. The camping part was fairly standard and we are both well-versed in how it's done. I am getting better and better at car camping, since most of my camping experience has been of the backpacking kind. Turns out Ralph is a natural at cooking pancakes on a campstove,

and I am AMAZING at Dutch oven peach cobbler! We downed that baby by ourselves (well. almost). In the dark.

Among our many firsts (as in, doing them by ourselves rather than being assisted by fathers/scout leaders/YW leaders) that weekend was....fishing.

We decided that we wanted to have our hand at it, so we borrowed Ralph's nephew's fishing poles and tackle box (when I told him thanks for letting us use them, he said, "I have a tackle box??") and woke up early Saturday morning with high hopes of bringing home dinner.

The whole thing was hilarious. Read carefully because it kind of just keeps getting better. If you are one who fishes, you will be HIGHLY amused.

About a half hour into it, we finally figured out how to tie the hook on the line. It was a joint effort. One of us would suddenly be stumped, the other would figure out a crucial part, and we would continue plugging along.

We headed down to the lake and tried to tease out some long-forgotten memories of how to actually work a fishing pole. We had two poles of different types, and it took us a while to figure out both - one requires you to push a button, the other needs a little piece flipped. Who knew.

Ralph finally figured them out and we suddenly became FISHING WONDERS. I caught three, the first of which was GIANT. When I caught it I reeled it in whilst very animatedly whispering "RALPH I CAUGHT ONE!!!!! I CAUGHT ONE RALPH!!!!!" And I swung it onto the grass and jumped up and down and clapped and said

"WHAT DO I DO RALPH???" And people near us chuckled.

He hurried over and said, "I don't know. I was kind of worried that one of us might actually catch one."

Because neither of us knew what to do with it once it was caught. Ralph managed to get the hook out (we were using worms...I put an entire worm on the hook, so the fish swallowed the whole worm and the hook was quite a way down it's throat....oops.), and then we sat there and looked at it while it continued to thrash and wiggle all over the place.

I said to Ralph, "I think we're supposed to hit it on the head with a rock." I called over to a kid fishing near us, and he confirmed that he usually just hits it on a rock. So since I had been worming all of Ralph's hooks for him (worms gross him out?), I told him he had to kill it.

I closed my eyes very tightly while he hit it on the head, only then I realized it was simply being beaten.

"Honey, I think you need to hit it a little harder."

Finally it died. It was very sad and I vowed never to do it again. But then I caught another fish and it was all very exciting again it seemed so much smaller than the first, so we threw it back....well, Ralph laughed - hard - when I grabbed it and just chucked it into the water...and of course it just sat there...upside-down...in the water. So he waded in to try and retrieve it because suddenly we had changed our minds and decided to keep it, but then it revived when Ralph flipped it over (which reminded us about that whole "push water through its gills" bit) and it swam away. And then when I caught my third fish we realized that the second one was really quite a decent size and we should have just kept it.

So we brought home two fish, and our friend Deborah taught us how to gut them, and we took them to our house and Ralph chopped off the head and yelled, "VIVE LA FRANCE!"

They were yummy.