This is the view that you see when you park your car in front of the Lake House. I'm always freshly amazed by how beautiful it is every time we pull up.
When we pull up to the house and see the lake Eli usually says, "Rocks in water", which means he wants to go down to the waterfront and throw rocks in the water. When we were there in April, Uncle Brian and his girlfriend Kathryn were skipping rocks in the water. We have a fairly hard and fast rule with Eli that he can only throw balls, so he was a little confused and intrigued by what they were doing. When I told him that he could throw a few rocks too, he immediately fell in love. In fact, for a while I always had a handful of rocks in my pocket because anywhere we went he would hand me rocks and say "Rocks in water", I had to explain that we're not always around water, but I'd pocket them for the next time we were near any. Since we are surrounded by lakes in Peachtee City we usually get to throw them in at some point. And, we've disappointed many a duck who understandably assume we are throwing bread.
His other favorite activity on the little beach is playing in the sand.
One of the best features of the Lake House is it's giant screened in porch that practically sits on top of the lake. Over Memorial Day weekend we brought up Eli's quike (Scott and my pet name for his four wheeled bike) and he rode it back and forth on the screened in porch. When I've mentioned that we're going back to the Lake House, he already told me that we have to take his bike again. It was a hit.
In May, we took Eli on four boat rides, which were his first successful boat rides on the lake since he was tiny and in the sling. Children have to wear life jackets at all times on the lake and when we tried to put the life jacket on Eli last summer he screamed that wounded wild animal scream the whole time. We even took him for a very short ride on the canoe, figuring he would be distracted once we started moving -- not successful.
In May, however, the life jacket fit him much better and we were able to reason with him. He had a reference point too -- Disney World. We took him on the Jungle Cruise and It's a Small World at Disney World in February and we called them both boat rides. Scott even made up a little jingle while waiting in line for the Jungle Cruise. "Mommy and Daddy and Eli are going, going, going on a boat ride. Boat ride, boat ride, whoo, whoo, whoo!"
It took a little convincing, he still wasn't super fond of the life jacket at first, but we took him on two canoe rides and two motor boat rides. He definitely preferred the motor boat. At the beginning of the first ride he sat huddled on my lap, but within ten minutes or so he was trying to run around the boat, jumping up and down and hurling himself onto the different seats or relatives. We tried to restrict his movement a little, to avoid him getting launched over the side, but it was great to see how happy and confident he had become. By the end of the boat ride he even helped drive.
Our other favorite activity while we are at the Lake House is hiking. The Georgia Mountains (or as Scott likes to call them -- hills) have hands down the best hiking in the state. We usually go on a short, scenic hike every time we are at the lake. It's called the Hemlock Falls hike. Eli is a good sport about hiking, he rides in his back pack, and now occassionally gets out and walks. He thought it was pretty exciting to walk over the bridge over and over again.
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