River Rafting

Last weekend we found ourselves in an unusual situation. Aside from Drew's t-ball game, we had a completely free weekend. We had some different ideas about what we could do. We thought about buying tag-along bikes for the kids and going for a bike ride. We thought about going to a park and having a picnic. But what we ended up doing was going river rafting down the American River.

The weather this spring has been very strange, alternating between rainy and overcast days and then warm and sunny days, with no rhyme or reason. So we were very lucky to have a nice warm day on Saturday and nothing to do. So we loaded up the raft, some snacks and drinks and the kids and headed down to the river. It took a little convincing to get Dan on board, but once we were out on the river he was glad that we did it.

The kids had such a great time! We bought them some water blasters and they just spent the whole time squirting the water, each other and occasionally, Daddy. We also had a game of calling any other rafters we saw "pirates." As in, "Here come some more pirates! Paddle Daddy!" Ava wanted to do a little paddling too. We also had great fun going through the "rapids." There is only one area of rapids and I think they are the lowest class possible. But I warned the kids that when we went through them they needed to sit on the bottom of the boat and hold on to the rope. Then every time the water was even slightly wavy they would shout "rapids!" and scramble to hold on to the rope. They were so cute and it was very fun! The water was still pretty cold, but we all hung our legs off the side of the boat from time to time to cool off. When we were done rafting the kids were great helpers and even carried the paddles to the car for us.

Hopefully that is the first of many rafting trips this summer!


This might be my favorite video. They thought this was hilarious!