The whole family went canoeing at a new reservoir in Herriman today, taking Alyssa and Nic from down the street, and meeting a playgroup there. Dad was excited to get the canoe back out on the water; Alyssa and Nic were anxious to get out of the house and do something entertaining, as their mom was spending the week out of town and their dad was at work that day; Nigel was excited to play, as usual; and Mom was happy to spend some time recreating with the family.
The reservoir turned out to be well suited to the activity: quite small, and with a reasonable beach. There was a lot of plant growth in the wading area, but not unusably so. The size made it quite reasonable to take a small group of kids all the way around on a jaunt, teasing the swimmers (like Alyssa) while out and about. Nigel favored the squirt gun for teasing Alyssa, and she was a good sport about it. Dad tried paddling the canoe with her hanging onto the back, and discovered it was not just a little but enormously harder to make progress that way.
Alyssa spent hours floating and swimming around and playing with the older members of the playgroup or just other kids there, and was hardly seen on the beach. Nic and Nigel played in the sand some, and a bit of frisbee. Dad mostly paddled the canoe around, with Nigel probably the most common occupant, but eventually getting around a dozen different kids turns, which was very satisfying to him.
Mom actually didn't get a turn out in the canoe, disappointingly for her; the family had to leave to get dad to soccer before she had a turn to venture out. She occupied herself mainly with talking with the other moms, and somewhat with playing with Nigel and Nic.
While on the drive down, everyone was awake and talkative, on the way home, people seemed quite drained (expectedly), and Nigel slept for about half the drive. Nic and Alyssa seemed close to falling asleep, too, and Dad would have been glad for a catnap himself.
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