Pennington Trip

This past weekend, Randy and I headed to Pennington with 3 other couples to spend the weekend with friends. Mark's family has a vacation house on several acres that they let people use for get togethers. Randy, me, Jacob and Laura headed out after work on Friday with the car fully loaded. After a 3+ hour drive, we finally arrived. We of course had to stay up late catching up. The next morning we got up early (way too early for a Saturday morning) and went fishing in one of the ponds. A few fish were caught but the best moment happened after Brian caught a perch. He had reeled it in and we thought we was going to take it off the hook. All of the sudden he started jumping around and swinging his pole wildly in the air. Then he starts swatting at something with a stick. His fish was still on the hook at the end of his line flying around with every swat he took. Poor fish got the bad end of this pole, literally. Finally all the dancing stopped and Brian says, "Um, guys. Not sure what happened, but my fish is dead." Randy responded with, "That's because you slammed him on the ground so many times!" Come to find out, Brian thought a hornet was after him and was trying to get swat it away. It was actually a large bumblebee. Sorry Brian! Randy and I did get a good laugh out of it though.

That afternoon the girls got to be crafty and paint our own aprons. See the month before I had the idea of us making aprons for all us girls and found them on sale super cheap at Hobby Lobby. So I loaded up all my paints, stamps, and brushes and we got busy being creative. The hardest part was deciding what to actually put on our aprons. Janelle got us started with designing the cutest cupcake for hers. I had to copy, because it was just too cute not too! Laura decided to put a crumb monster on hers, and Shonda set out painting plaid on hers. They were beginning to take shape! In the midst of it, we had the ideas to put Jeremiah's (Shonda & Mark's 9 month old) feet and hand prints on Shonda's apron. Thus the collage of pictures below:
This was a 4 person job with little Jeremiah at the center. He was such a good sport!

Here are the finished products. I love them all!

All the girls - Janelle, Me, Shonda, and Laura - unknowingly we lined up by height and by anniversaries. We're geeks! :)

After a great dinner we headed down to the pond for more fishing. The guys did find a "lawn-cycle" that they had fun with while we were painting and Jacob has it documented on his blog here.
Some views of the pond and the Franklin family.

The highlight of my evening happened just at dusk. Mark and Randy had caught some small pan fish to use as bait. Mark had one on his hook and had thrown it out toward the middle of the pond. He decided to head back to the house to let Shonda have a chance to fish since Jeremiah's nap fell during the morning excursion. I ended up holding his pole since he left it in the water. Shonda joined us and we were talking. All of the sudden I felt a tug on my pole and my cork went under. I started reeling it in and then saw the fish jump out of the water. I could tell it was big and Randy kept telling me to hold the tip of the pole up. I kept saying I was trying to, but the fish was pulling against it. I got it up to the dock and Randy pulled it in. Here's proof:
Randy is starting to get jealous of me - it seems that everytime we fish together, I catch the bigger fish. All I can say is thanks for all the fishing lessons Dad!

The whole gang - me and Randy, Laura and Jacob, Janelle Jonathan and Brian, and Shonda Jeremiah and Mark. Thanks for a fun weekend! We need to do it again soon!

-Side note: Randy has been friends with Brian since middle school and Jacob since high school. They are two of his closest friends. I've known Laura & Janelle since Randy & I started dating. We live far apart and lives are crazy busy but whenever we get together we have so much fun. This was really the first time Randy & I had hung out with Mark & Shonda, but I'm looking forward to getting to know them better too!