I've been away

at the family's cabin up in Brainard. Where there is no internet.
I would like to tell you about the time spent there, so, to avoid confusion, let me clear this up:
At the cabin there was Amanda, Mary Amanda, Michael, Jack Michael, Jack, Matt, Kathryn (who goes by Katie), Katelyn (who also goes by Katie) Kathryn (who goes by Katie or Kathryn), Polly Kathryn, Danielle, Becky, Maggie, Marnie, and a bunch of Amanda's other children.
But there is a lot of name repetition in the family. That was the point of that.
So, to avoid confusion, our family has developed nicknames, for example Jack Lindsay is to only be called Little Jack. Jack Froelich must be called Big Jack Froelich.
Not just Big Jack, or Jack Froelich.

One day, as I was lying out on the deck Little Jack came out, and tried to hit me with a bungee cord. After a few minutes, he turned and asked "Becky, do you think that I'm cute?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "I think that you're very handsome." He nodded and looked down at the lake for a bit before I asked, "Do you think I'm cute?"
He nodded, and then said, "I guess that you're a pretty good cousin, too."
That was the day AFTER the entire day during which the children all called me Icky Vicky.

Kathryn my sister crawled into bed with me one morning and snuggled into my chest.
"You smell like a puppy," I said.
"That's because there are baby puppies in my tummy," she said. "And I am a puppy, but a witch put a spell on me. I was a puppy in heaven, but" she claps her hands "when I got to earth, I turned into a human. Someday, I will be kissed on the ear, and be turned back into a puppy."
"Can I try?" I asked. She pointed to her ear. I kissed it and nothing happened.
"Actually," she said, she touched her collar bone. "you have to kiss me here." I kissed her and she clapped her hands.
"In just a few days the spell will start to work!"
She was still a human when I saw her last.

Later we went swimming off the boat, jumping off and swimming under the pontoon. I went under water and when I came up, Kathryn said, "Did you see anything?"
"No," I said. "Just a big fish swimming around your feet."
"OH MY GOSH!" she latched herself around my neck. "Let's get out of here. Are you serious?"

Kathryn and Maggie swam out to the dock while all of us were on it, "we swam here by ourselves" Maggie told me. "Because you are our mommy, and we love you and we hate to swim by the prickly weeds."

I went into the house to find Maggie, Kathryn, and Katie (alternately known as Kaylie) holding hands and jumping. "Becky, Becky. Becky!" they were yelling, "we need to find Becky. Becky Becky!"
"Hi," I said. I reminded them of who I am. "I'm Becky. What's up?"
"Oh," Kaylie/Katie blushed. "We want to play house and you have to be our mom."
"I can't right now," I said.
"Well, then where's our other mom Danielle?"

After several days of my family accusing me of having French sympathies, and pretending to speak French, my sister Kathryn said to my mom, "Becky's going to be pretty mad when she hears that I'm going to France. I see London, I see France!"

I am knitting a scarf which Little Jack seems to think is a pair of pants. We don't know why he thinks that I'm making myself a pair of handmade, knitted orange pants.

My mother excells at diving, and backwards diving, and doing all sorts of flips, jumps, and etc off of the pontoon. She is horrified that none of her children can dive.
Mary tries to dive, but everytime she tries, she jumps, and about a foot above water she screams, throws out all of her limbs and belly flops. Once, for a kick, she decided to try and do a backwards dive.
My mom hung from the bottom of the boat so that if Mary hit her head on the ledge, she would actually hit my mom, and therefore not die. Mary did hit my mom's stomach with her outstretched fingers, and smacked her legs and feet against the boat railing.
We're glad that they're both alive.