National Lampoon's Keiper Vacation: Part One

Last week I'm sure you were all dying because there were no blog posts to read about the Thornburgs.  Well ol' Morgdorg was on vacation with her family and had absolutely no reception once we got about 30 minutes from Dale Hollow.  Bummer.  But I have to say, not having any connection to the internet or texting or cell phone calls was kinda nice.  Just for a little while.  Don't get me wrong.  My phone was beeping and dinging like crazy once we crossed the "You Ain't Welcome Here, AT&T!!" line.

Moving on... the Keiper family traveled to Dale Hollow Lake on the Kentucky/Tennessee state line.  It is the biggest lake I've ever seen.  I didn't even get to see all that much of it but it is HUGE.

Quite beautiful too.  It is flat as can be and there are hardly any boats on it. But that's only because the lake is so huge that 1000's of boats could be on it and you wouldn't know the difference. It is a great lake for wakeboarding.  Or as my brother referred to it once and only once, "Shredding the Nar."  HAHAHAHA!!!! He should have known better! Of course we were going to make fun of him! :) Poor guy.


Anyway, we had a great time and, between everyone with a camera, we took probably a 1000 pictures.  There were 11 of us staying in our chalet.

The kids slept on air mattresses.

Or in this case "off" the air mattresses.

The entire lake was surrounded by trees like this...

and this.  It was so peaceful.

There was a rope swing for the adults. That's my older bro, Brandon.

There's my younger bro Adam falling into the... BLUE WATER! What??? Blue water??? In a lake? I figured all lakes were brown like Freeman! :)

You can see Jack and Cec in this picture.  Adam is talking to them to see if they want to go on the rope swing.  Luckily they did not.  It was definitely for the best.  That rope swing is dangerous. We were worried about injuries all week, figuring with Adam's injury record that it would be him.  You will find out later it was not.  Stay tuned...

We also spent time at the cliffs where you could jump off cliffs ranging in size from 10 foot to 30 foot. Cec was loving it!

Here is Lilli clownin' before her jump.  (My mom's camera takes MUCH nicer pictures than mine.)

And the jump... Whee!

Pretty much everyone but my mom, dad and I wakeboarded or skied.  Cec was really enjoying it!

Jack preferred skiing over wakeboarding.

Brandon wakeboarded on his first try. 

Adam's girlfriend Steph wakeboarded but she prefers skiing and slalom skiing over wakeboarding.  But look at that "air" she's getting! Adam was proud! :)

Desi wakeboarded.  Adam always says that cheerleaders usually have no problem learning to wakeboard.  Desi was no different! Picked it right up!

Adam and Lilli wakesurfed.  Lilli was so comfortable with Adam on that surfboard that she was...

SURFING!

She also took some time to karate chop the water.  She was in heaven!

But... the deal was if she wakesurfed with Adam then she had to try wakeboarding by herself.

Here's the "Before" picture. 
Feast your eyes on the video below.  Adam is in the water with her at the beginning to make sure she can weigh the board down enough to get up.
Make sure you watch until the end.  The end is the cutest.

She obviously didn't want to do it.  When she got up (well, in the squatting position) she said, "I want to stop now, okay????"  Then after she finally got comfortable, she looked back to make sure Adam could see her wakeboarding. We kept telling her to stand up and she wanted no part of that. Sooooo funny! Then she was on a total adrenaline high afterward for about a half an hour.  She couldn't stop screaming I DID IT!!! It was soooo funny!  Adam was so proud.

He was all smiles when we came back to pick him up!

Here's the "After" picture.  They were both so excited!

So now the story is next summer Adam is going to break the Guinness World Records by having 6 month old Baby T on a wakeboard.  HA!



Now on to the injury report...

Some kind of emergency usually happens when the Keipers go on vacation.  If it's not the pop-up camper top popping off and landing in the middle of the interstate, then it's getting stuck on the top of the highest roller coaster in the park or breaking a bone or some other medical emergency.  All of which have happened to the Keipers.

So we expected this trip to be no different.  But with all of Adam's collarbone issues, we figured he would be the one who hurt himself.  Turns out, not so much.

I took this picture directly before it happened.  We were making our way back to the rope swing when we heard this sound.  It sounded like a siren with a slow build up.
WaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Poor little Isabel had sliced her foot open on a broken bottle on shore.  Brandon ran over to her and picked her up and HOLY CRAP was that a lot of blood.  I mean it was EVERYWHERE.  It was all over her and all over Brandon.  It was CRAZY.   The sight of that much blood freaked us all out. Luckily we had the tube inflated from the kids riding it directly before this.

A quick happy moment during all the blood talk...

This picture makes me laugh too.  I had to include it.  Look at all that water!!!

ANYWAY, sorry, back to the story.

So Isabel is screaming even harder now that she has seen all the blood.  We swim the tube over to Brandon and Isabel and float her back over to the boat.  Dad goes into the "I-have-to-get-my-grandbaby-to-the-hospital" mode. We all jump in the boat and race back to the lodge.  We were about a half an hour boat ride away! Yikes! Luckily before we left, some nice fellow boaters told us what ER to go to in Livingston and how to get there.  That was a lifesaver!

Since we had a half hour drive and the blood stopped gushing once Brandon applied pressure, we felt we could relax a little bit.  So of course I had to take a picture...

Poor poor Isabel!!! It was seriously the widest cut I've ever seen.  It was bad.  In fact, Lilli kept saying, "ISABEL CUT HER FOOT IN HALF!!!!"

Now, if you have a weak stomach, you may not want to look at the next picture.  This is the towel after the emergency.  Yikes!!

Gross!! So Isabel got 6 stitches in her foot and it really changed the way she played in the water.

But it certainly didn't change her attitude!! She was loving this new princess style of living life! :) Peeled grapes please!

Of course I have to post one more picture of her.  She was sitting most of the day on the back of the boat with her foot on a floatie.  Someone's beer was sitting beside her.  When a boat went by, it rocked the boat and knocked the beer over.  We told Isabel to grab it before it fell in the water...

Which of course became a prime picture-taking opportunity.  :)

It was quite the exciting vacation.  We had a great time.  It was a bummer that Andrew couldn't make it but that gives us a whole new reason to go back next year!

Here's the family photo we took after boating all day and then sweating our butts off unloading the boat. 

Just the eleven of us!! :)

I have lots more pictures to post.  This is just the first of many vacation posts.  Stay tuned for more!