The Kerce Family: May 2009

Ashlyn turned 16 yesterday. It's hard to believe that our oldest baby has reached this major milestone. I keep reminding myself that we aren't the first parents to have a child turn 16 and get their driver's license, but it sure is hard to let go and watch her drive off without an adult.

She has been looking at the calendar since last year to make sure she would actually get her license on the big day. So, she went to 1st period and took her math test, then I checked her and Brooklyn out to go pick up her license.

She took the driver's ed course last summer and passed the driving test then, so all we had to do was go to the DMV and pay $5.25 for the beginning of her "freedom" and the end of mine. My mom reminded me yesterday when I called her almost in tears, that God loves her way more than I do, so I'll cling to that... Hopefully this will be easier the next time we go through it.

Yay Ash!! Congratulations!!!

My view from the BACK seat.

The proud 16 year old with her license.

Ashlyn and Brooklyn headed back to school.

Al has been working out of town a lot lately (we're thankful he has a job) so we haven't had a lot of time for "family fun". This past Saturday we decided we would take the girls to the Okefenokee Swamp to fish, look at alligators and just spend time together. So, as always, there's a story...

This is at the entrance of the swamp in Fargo, GA. It's probably about 45 min from our house.

We got to the swamp around 2:00p.m. and were legal with fishing licenses and had the boat rented and ready to go by about 3:00p.m. These are our fearless navigators, even though it took Leah a bit to warm up to the idea because her Pa had her scared to death from his "swamp stories" from when he was younger. She just knew an alligator was going to try to tip our boat over.

Ashlyn and Molly were busy trying to soak up some sunshine (with sunscreen of course).

Leah driving with her sugar daddy in hand. What's fishing without snacks???

Down one of the swamp paths on our way to explore and fish before we broke down...

Being towed back in by a nice couple from Jacksonville. The story goes, we had been on the water for about 30min when the motor just stopped without any warning. Luckily we were in the shade, so we sat and fished for a while with no luck and Al worked on the motor without success. Al said it was the Kerce curse. Several people passed by and offered to help, but we thought if we sat long enough the motor would start back up. Not so...What you can't see in the pictures are all the fishing poles that Al brought along. I think I counted 16 (there were 5 of us), and the rope we used to haul us in several miles was made up of our lifejackets that broke once on the trip back, and I didn't catch how narrow some of the spots were we had to get through cypress trees being pulled behind another boat. I didn't have all of Al's poles tucked in the boat either, so they almost broke one time when we hit a tree. Also, the couple pulling us in were there with their family and when we came around a corner too quickly they rammed their family with their boat for a small pile up. Luckily no one ended up going overboard and we made it back to the dock safely.

This alligator was hanging out at the docks. It really wasn't afraid when you got close to it.

All in all we had a good time. We got our money back for the boat rental, and the lady at the counter told us they needed a new mechanic because he had been working on our boat all morning and said it worked fine....

One day soon we'll go back and try again. Hopefully we can get a little farther and we know what questions to ask before we head out again. The one bright spot after all this time was on the way home. We went a little out of the way to St. George to the Shack by the Track for some yummy barbeque. The ribs were AMAZING!! We'll have to enjoy that more often too.

To offset the bad day fishing, Al took us out to our pond that is only 5 minutes from our house. Here's an example of one of the biggest fish we caught. We were trying to use up the crickets and worms we bought for the trip.

Al decided he was tired of always baiting hooks, so he gave each girl a complimentary bait, then they had to do it themselves. Here's Molly with a cricket.