WATCH OUT, HERE WE COME!

Josh and I are not very social people! I aspire to be but since Josh works 80 hours a week it just doesn't leave much time to do anything. Of course like most people, Saturday is the day that we try to do things if he isn't working. My good friend Eden dubbed it "Consumer Saturday", where you just go out and try to keep busy but really all you're doing is spending money on stupid stuff at places like Home Depot, Costco, Target, Sportsman's Warehouse....I could go on and on! Well instead of spending our money on little stupid things, we decided to spend it on one big thing that we hope doesn't turn out to be stupid!! We bought a boat!! Lake Pleasant is about 15 minutes away and we thought "why not" . We're pretty excited about it... we think! It's not a big boat, just enough room for our behemoth family but it totally floated on Saturday when we took it to the lake for the first time, yeah! Yes I was excited that it floated cause we bought it from a lady on Craig's List. Josh and I know nothing about boats. Honestly, this lady could have totally sold us a boat with no engine and I wouldn't have known. I'm too trusting, I don't ever want to hurt peoples feelings which is probably going to get me into trouble someday. Anyways, we get to the lake and we're just laughing cause we literally have no idea how to launch the boat without wrecking or what ever. It was a ten lane boat ramp and every one was just flying through the whole process of launching while we pretended to be launching but we were secretly watching everyone else to see how it's done. I guess we thought what could be so hard, back it into the water, unhook it and you drive away right! If worse comes to worse we abandon ship and go home. Very expensive weekend and we realize that we're not boat people. Lesson learned! Thankfully it didn't turn out that way! We got it in the water, I parked the Tahoe and trailer and ran back to the dock and we were off on our adventure. The day went great!! We did a little swimming, a little tubing and even tried to fish. Josh and I both tried to ski but we were not successful! I think it strained the boat to try and pull us out of the water! (Does anyone notice that I end every sentence with a !, I'm just really excited when I type!!) So our day was wrapping up, kids were tired and our boat was gross. There were soggy, crushed goldfish and pretzels all over, it was pretty gross, time to go home! So how hard was this gonna be, loading the boat? Josh dropped me at the dock and I went and got the car. To my surprise, I am horrible at backing down a boat ramp, huh! I honestly thought I was a pretty good driver no matter which direction I was going but as I was backing up I suddenly realized that I had never backed up any kind of trailer. It is a wonder that I didn't take anyone or anything out. Thank goodness it was a ten lane ramp cause I used 6 of them. I can only imagine what people were saying about me. My poor husband had to sit and watch, I'm sure completely embarrassed at his wife, the obvious drunk driver that was backing down the ramp to position the trail in front of his boat. I did stay in the car for at least a minute so that most of the people who saw me back down had left. When I was able to emerge from our car to see what was taking Josh so long, I found that couldn't get the prop up. He made me sit in the boat and hit the trim button up and down, up, down, up, down, up, down. "Are you pushing the up bottom?" he asks several times, "NO, I'm pushing the down button to see if it will make it go up!!" Not really. So our patience was being tried and we started to get snippy at each other. Literally, it would take other people about 3 minutes to load their boat and head up the ramp, it has now been half an hour that we are sitting there. Every time some one new comes to load their boat, we're like " Hey, are you a boat expert ? We can't get our prop up." No one was able to help and we were at a loss of what to do now. The only thing we could do is pull the boat out with the prop down and let it scratch it's way to the top of the boat ramp. Ooohhhh!! Yeah, this was not embarrassing at all! Every one was like, " Hey, stop, your props down!" We just waved them off, "Yeah...we know." As if we couldn't miss the horrible, nails on chalk board sound we were creating as we slowly proceeded up the ramp. Josh was walking behind the boat and about half way up he just looked at me an said, "Just go" so I hit the gas trying to escape the embarrassing scene. We got to the top and just sat there. Josh was fuming! I was about to cry. We for sure thought the lady who sold us the boat had ripped us off! We realized that there must be a boat mechanic on site here since it was such a big lake. We called the marina and they gave us the number to the mechanic. Josh got a hold of the mechanic and this was the one side of the conversation I heard: Hi, yeah we're out at the 10 lane boat ramp and we can't get our prop up, could you come give it a look... It's a Bayliner Capri... yeah, it will go up a little bit and then back down but just up a little bit... the button's not working, not even a sound when you push it.... where..... let me check... SIR YOU ARE A GENIUS...ok....thank you so much.....OK...... thank you , thank you!!! Yea, so there is a SECRET button that not many people know about. If you push it, it makes the prop go up!! Crisis averted!! Only took us one hour to load out boat but we did it!! Josh and I were happy again. No tears were shed on my part and he wasn't going to have to divorce me for talking him into buying a faulty boat. Over all it was a good weekend!!