Why canoeing with children isn't as fun as it looks...

 My aunt let us use her families canoes for a ride down the Big Springs river. Jared really didn't want to ever go canoeing again, he went for a high adventure scout thing when he was 16 and almost drown several times during the adventure. So you really can't blame him for not wanting to relive the experience that happened almost 20 years ago. But I thought lets get rid of that bad memory and replace it with a fun family canoeing trip... ya that didn't happen.

 See what Beckam is doing in this photo? ya he doesn't like to be confined to my arms especially when we are outdoors and near water. SO we let him ride with us on a canoe in a river.

 We originally thought we would have our whole family on a canoe, but makayla ended up riding with her aunt and uncles instead. She was lucky, and it was the only smart move we made at the beginning of the trip.

 We headed off on our adventure with some snacks to keep Konnor and Beckam happy.

 After about a half hour Beckam was not happy with his life jacket, or sitting on his mommy's lap while I helped row the canoe.

 Aunt Marijka's self portrait...

 Konnor on the other hand wanted to help row and often, shortly after starting we became the slowest moving canoe on the river. It was a special sort of hell, one kid was crying because he wanted to crawl into the water, the other kid was crying because he wanted to row the canoe, and we were going no where fast.

 Then if being dry riding on the longest canoe ride ever (at least two hours) wasn't the best we could do, it started to rain. AND we still couldn't see the end.

 It was so bad, it just kinda got funny. We would pass other people on rafts and say "how are you?" and they would say "were doing better than you are", and we would smile and say "yes you are".

 It turned out that we were on the river a whole hour longer than the three other canoes that were with us. I tried nursing Beckam to make him happy and then I would have to stop to help row because I just wanted to be done.

 Because we took so long we did get to see a baby moose and her mama grazing next to the river. I would have taken more photos but shortly after seeing them it started to rain, and Jared wasn't in the mood to watch wildlife any longer.

Lesson to be learned is nursing babies and 3 year olds are not good shipmates on long canoe adventures, just go with your spouse and no children if you want to enjoy it, or make sure the ride is a really short river.