BANANAS & BEES: Tenkiller 2013: Days 3 &4

Have you been wondering where Lake Tenkiller got its strange name? Well, I am here to give you the answer today. According to www.laketenkiller.com, "The lake was named after the Tenkillers (a prominent Cherokee family who owned land and worked a ferry service near the site where the dam is now located. The Legend states that during the “Trail of Tears” era, the Cherokee warrior received his name by the soldiers and pioneers at Fort Gibson because of the ten notches in his bow."

An additional interesting fact about the lake is that when it was being created back in 1947, part of the town of Cookson, OK couldn't be moved, so it ended up getting flooded and still stands on the bottom of the lake. It's a popular place for scuba divers to explore. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, enough history (I'm a sucker for fun historical facts). On to days three and four. Saturday morning followed suit with all the other mornings-- large breakfast, playtime and decktime. Amen. Then we geared up for a big football game. You see, down here college football is huge. The biggest rivalry around is the "Red River Shootout" between the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas. The Red River forms the border between our two states and the feud is quite heated. OU has won the last three years, and Texas is terrible this year, so we were expecting a cakewalk. Uh, didn't happen. Texas won, unfortunately, but we enjoyed the game and the game time snacks of artichoke dip, pumpkin bread and jalapeno poppers-- all homemade. Did I mention we did a lot of eating on this little vacation? I'm not ashamed to admit that. While the game was on, we set up some stations for the kids. They rotated between a mini-pumpkin painting station, a few game stations (Guess Who?, Memory and Spot It) and a "salon station" where Nikki was painting all the kids' fingernails and toenails (Eli opted out of this one, but Lucas wanted his toenails painted clear. Ha!).

Once the football game was over, and our stations cleaned up, the dads took all of the kids fishing while the three ladies got to relax in a quiet house. It was heavenly. We talked. We painted our own toenails. We sat on the deck and listened to the wind in the trees. We talked some more. Two lovely hours passed before they returned with the report of no catches at all. Not even a bite. Oh well!

Next up was a family pumpkin carving contest. Each family huddled up and planned, sketched and carved their own pumpkin. Hannah and Leah were totally into it and went into top secret mode making sure no other kids in any near vicinity even glanced our way as we were executing our plan. Eventually we had the following.......

Pumpkins #1, 2, and 3 from left to right.

We texted pictures of the pumpkins to various non-biased folks with just their numbers so no one would know who carved which one. And guess which jack-o-lantern won? #2. And guess who carved pumpkin #2? That's right. Mike Galloway. We decided to go with a pumpkin sneezing a great glob of snot. Yes, we're classy. The teeth were all Mike's creation and that's what ended up winning it for us. Nice try, guys. Bring your A game next year. (I'm kidding! Everyone did a great job. The teacher in me can't let a chance for encouragement slide.)

Day three ended with another delicious dinner, and then game night ensued. The adults battled it out in a rousing game of Farkle followed by a noisy game of Pit. Mike won both games. I'm telling you, he was on a roll this weekend. After that, we were too tired for another movie, so it was off to bed for everyone.

Day four was really just a half day. And in that half day, we just cleaned up and washed all the towels and sheets. The kids were sent outside to play so the adults could get all that cleaning done and eventually we were ready to load up. But not without our annual tradition of family photos. We had to take approximately 1,287 pictures before we got one that was decent.