I thought, "Great! He has to work on Saturday!"
I reminded him about Haylie's surgery the next day and that we had a Ward Activity on Saturday night but that was it.
Buzz, "Would you like to spend the weekend on a houseboat......for free!"
Me, "Yes please!"
Turns out the owner of the houseboat needed the it moved up river and didn't have time to do it himself. Buzz has been doing some work for him on the houseboat and we had previously used one of his houseboats so he asked Buzz if he would like to use it for the weekend and move it for him.
After a very hectic Friday of packing, taking Haylie to the Hospital for her surgery, taking Caitlyn to swimming lessons and working we managed to head off about 6:30pm to the houseboat.
The next morning this was our view over the river. Perfect! It was totally worth the crazy day the day before to wake up to that view.
Before leaving Mannum on Saturday morning we saw these ducklings on the shore. I ran inside to get some bread to see if we could get them to come closer. They ended up right next to the houseboat! They were so cute and fluffy.....and hungry! They could get enough of the the bread. It was funny because everywhere we stopped along the way if you went outside you would get all these ducks coming over to you looking for a feed.
After re-learning how to drive the houseboat we were off up river. The place we had to take it was about 8 hours by river but only 15 minutes by car. The weather wasn't too cold so we sat out the front and on the top deck a bit, watching the world go by as we putted up the river. Just after lunch we reached the midway point on our journey so we decided to stop for the night and get out a canoe to do some exploring. On the map we could see a little side creek that opened up into a large lake. I took Lachlan for a ride first and we set out to have a look at the lake. He did try and help and paddle occasionally but it was easier to do it myself. About halfway through our ride it got really windy, which made the water really choppy and, of course, we had to paddle into the wind to get back to the houseboat. We figured out afterwards that we had gone about 4kms. After that I let Buzz take the girls for some short rides!
(The view of the lake from the top of the houseboat)
(The girls chillin' on their bed watching a movie. I think this was after they had used the spa on the top deck. Poor Haylie was so upset because she wasn't aloud in because of her surgery.)
(The view out the back of the houseboat from the girls bedroom.)
On Saturday night the weather got a little bit wild. It was really windy and it rained quite a bit but when we woke in the morning the sun was shinning again. The wind stuck around all day though. As we made our way up the river again there would be times when we would look out the side window and see a tree, look forward, then look back out the side window and see the same tree! The wind was blowing so hard that we weren't moving forward! We had to turn the boat a little bit to keep moving forward. Then sometimes we would be going along straight and all of a sudden the wind would blow and start turning the boat. It was a bit of a battle but we finally made it to the owners dock late in the afternoon.
(Lachlan in his PJ's with Teddy)
(This is Seth. We invited our friends Casey and Nicola to come with us. It was very last minute but we had a great time together. Bytheway, this picture was taken by Haylie)
All in all it was a very nice, relaxing, fun weekend!
