Something Fishy...

Now for the Fun!

Ok, got the downer posts out of the way. Here are the pics of the fun, by theme. I will start with the theme that takes the MOST of my photos. The Birds. This year, we were visited, not only by the regular Loons, but also by a baby Loon. I have never seen a baby in person...so fun! The baby even hobbled on to our beach to use the "bathroom" one afternoon! She was clearly out of Mom and Dad's reach at that point and they quickly called her back out to the lake! (This is only a SMALL fraction of the pictures of Loons we took this week!)

 Open Beak, Insert Fish

 Grab a Drink

 Swallow

 The Whole Fish Down the Hatch

 Expand Neck

 And Done.

 Hello!

 Preening

 This close!

 Baby Baldy

 Big Blue

And one more baby...a HUGE baby Bald Eagle...flew in on us while we were waiting for dinner at Ernie's!

The Big Blue (Blue Heron) was at Maddens, hanging out on a downed tree.

The Itch

Ok, I have a picture of the the three worst cases, but it's on my phone so I will add in a minute...(Ok, my phone is not talking to my computer...still working on it...)

The first day we got there, we unloaded all the cars, and since the kids were really helpful this year, they got to go swimming in the evening. Then all the next morning they were in the water until lunch...when they all started itching...badly! For the first few hours, there was no rash, so we thought maybe it was a new sunscreen they had all used. But by bed time this rash appeared (which is actually "better" in this picture than it was). First we thought it was chiggers, but by morning it was pretty clear it was more likely swimmers itch. We took the three worst cases to Urgent Care for some meds and spent the rest of the week fighting Riley to take them! Turns out, each person has a different sensitivity to this and so some of them were fine after just some Benadryl, but I would say Riley has very little pain tolerance and she maybe got it the worst! (Although Kiley's tummy was a MESS of polka dots!) The rest of the week, we had to put a special sunscreen that was a barrier to protect from swimmers itch. It was kinda stinky, but it worked! We didn't have to stay out of the water!