It was a beautiful day, and there was hardly anyone at the lake. Seemed perfect. We got the canoe loaded up with the boys. Jason suggested that we just take Jonah in his carseat. This didn't seem like the best idea, but he was so chill in his chair that I went with it. Jason sat at the front of the canoe to paddle/steer, I sat in the middle with Jonah, and Jackson sat at the other tip.
Jason pushed us off the dock and as soon as we had cleared land, our yellow canoe became a yellow submarine. "Arr, we be ship wrecked. Marooned!" OK, it didn't actually sink. It just dumped us all overboard. One of those moments where a fraction of a second seems to take an eternity and yet you are powerless to do anything to help yourself in that eternity. I fixed my eyes on Jonah who was dumped upside down in the lake, still strapped to his chair. I quickly grabbed him and stood knee deep in the lake watching Jason pick up Jack and carry him to shore. Seeing that we were all safe, I laughed. Guess it was too soon, and Jason let me know just how funny it was NOT. He went back in the water to rescue our stuff including our camera and his blackberry.
We hauled everything on shore, dried off the kids, endured humiliation from the 4 groups of cars we saw, and decided to get the little ones home and come back for the canoe. Jason made all sorts of threats about how he was taking his shotgun out to take care of the canoe. We've never liked that boat. It was supposedly a racing canoe, and always felt unsteady. I'm surprised it had never dumped us out before, but it is a canoe and supposedly its hard to capsize those, right?
It was about 2 in the afternoon when we came home, and Jason went back for the canoe around 4. He came home empty handed. Someone had stollen our canoe in the middle of the afternoon in our quiet neighborhood. Acts of piracy committed against us! I drove by the lake in the morning to see if it was returned. Maybe some kids had just taken it out for a ride and left it on shore. Nope, it was definitely stolen.
