August 18 - 23, 2024 - Lafe and Faith's Odyssey

Paddle Boarding and Board Gaming

The next morning, I got up and worked for a bit before everyone else awoke and started moving for the day. We spent the morning hanging out and making a lovely breakfast before heading over to the local fishing supply store to get licenses and some wax worms for bait. We spent the rest of the afternoon fishing and swimming in the Minnesota sun. Our paddle boards worked well as there was no wind to blow us around the lake. Before evening came, we caught a few animals: Gideon a nice Northern and Faith a garter snake which bit her. She was fortunately fine and helped us put up decorations. Since Faith and I will be with her family for Christmas, my parents decided that we should celebrate Christmas while on vacation together. So, we had all brought Christmas gifts and decor to put up around the house. The next day was “Christmas”, so we did our normal tradition of watching a movie on Christmas Eve. We watched a movie starring Eddie Murphy, and I couldn’t help but picture him as Donkey from Shrek the entire time which resulted in me bursting out laughing at various points throughout the film. We all went to sleep to get some good rest and let my mom hide our gifts throughout the house, another tradition we grew up with.

The next morning came, and I got up early to get some work in but refrained from searching for gifts yet. As everyone else got up, we were given the rules: we had to find one of each person’s gifts and collectively figure out whose was whose. Each gift had one of four numbers on it, one for Gideon, J, Faith, and myself. We took the next 15 or 20 minutes to decrypt the code but only after a hint or two from my parents. Faith had the eureka moment that freed us from never being able to open our gifts. Once the code was broken, we searched throughout the house to collect our gifts before sitting down to read the Christmas story, pray, then alternate opening presents. I got socks, a watch, coffee beans and press, snacks, and a few other things. Faith got a pair of shoes, socks, snacks, bead storage, and a few other things. We loved our gifts and enjoyed giving gifts to the rest of our family. After gifts, we hung out for a little while before starting our next activity: taste testing. Mom had gotten 12 flavors of Pringles that we each tried and guessed in turn with and without knowledge of the flavors we had tried. By some miracle I guessed the most correctly and won a gift card. We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the nice weather out on the lake. As evening came, we had a superb charcuterie spread for dinner before playing cards for a while before heading off to bed.

The next day was once again beautiful. I got up and worked a bit before doing some fishing and catching a lovely largemouth bass before heading back to play a few board games with Gideon and my dad. The ladies went into town in the to explore and get some earthworms and leeches for bait before spending their afternoon out in the sun. Faith caught a few nice panfish that I filleted along with the bass that evening. Jeralyn and Gideon made some excellent steak tacos for dinner as a part of a friendly competition on who could cook better tacos. Faith and I were planning on making fish tacos but needed a few more days of fishing to have enough for a meal. After dinner, the boys played another board game while girls did their nails and watched a show.

The next day started out about the same for me: get up and work and have a cup (or two) of coffee. The day was pretty windy, so we didn’t spend much time out on the lake fishing. Gideon went along with the wind a bit too much and had to get retrieved by car from the other end of the lake by J and my mom. Since we didn’t really want to be out on the lake, we made a trip to the nearest disc golf course to play a round then play around with some toys we found. That evening we had a nice dinner together before playing a game of Shanghai, a card game popular with Faith’s family. The boys had a steady stream of luck that allowed us to win the game quite handily.

The next day I worked in the morning and did some fishing in the afternoon along with Gideon and Faith. The day wasn’t as windy as the previous day, but it still wasn’t great, so we decided to figure out how to use the sauna. It took a few tries and a lot of misplaced smoke, but we soon got the sauna up to the 120s and humid as heck. We spend the next few hours going back and forth between the cool lake water and steamy sauna. It was very enjoyable and fairly exhausting: I’m hoping because it leached all the toxins out of me. That night we had another dinner of charcuterie and played a board game that ended early enough in the night we opted to watch a movie together. Against all odds, Faith and Jeralyn stayed up through the whole movie as it was apparently far more interesting than your average entertainment.

The next day was Friday, our last full day at the house. Per usual, I got up and worked before hanging out with the rest of the gang. Faith and I were on the docket to make fish tacos, so we spent a good portion of the day fishing. I didn’t do so well, but Faith caught 11 nice-sized panfish. Gideon also contributed with another Northern, his third of the trip. After having gotten enough fish, Gideon, my dad, and I played a board game that my dad barely won. Dinner time had arrived, so I filleted the day’s catch and helped Faith make an excellent dinner. The fish tacos were very good, almost as good as the steak tacos J and Gideon had made. We spent the rest of the evening packing up and hanging out before heading to bed to get some sleep for the next day’s adventures.