Misra Family Hebdomadal: Dancing to Idaho

This week Amit took Luke to the community center to see the Reptile Man. A guy (or man, as it were), brought a few snakes, a turtle, an iguana, and an alligator. Luke was fearless in the face of danger - a snake was literally hung right in Luke's face and nearly touched him with his tongue, and Luke barely even noticed. Luke also really liked the turtle. It was the same turtle he rode on last year, but this year Luke could chase after the turtle, which was fun until all the big kids saw that the turtle was moving and came over and scared Luke.

On Thursday we flew to Utah for our yearly family reunion on Bear Lake in Idaho (note to all burglars: we have friends who live right below us. They'll hear you if you break in, and also, a lot of our friends are from Utah and Idaho, so they are strongly supportive of the Second Amendment...)

Anyways, we took a detour down to Provo to watch Marinda's brother Ben compete in a ballroom dancing competition. He did amazing, and even got second place in Gold West Coast swing! Go Ben! Ben also paid a little extra for our tickets and we got seats at the tables around the surrounding the dance floor, and it was so worth it! We felt like we were judges during the Olympics or something! It was a little confusing at times though because the dancers would make eye contact with us as they went by and we weren't quite sure how we were suppose to react. Luke, however, LOVED watching the dancers and we actually had a hard time getting him to look away long enough to eat. I guess we have a future little dancer on our hands!

Our first night in Provo, Amit took Marinda on a fancy date
to watch Ben's dance team dance for the high school dance camp.
There was also the second best smooth dance couple in America there,
and having to sit through the camp's slide show was SO WORTH IT!

Ben and his pretty standard dance partner!

EXTEND!
hee hee, we get this joke now...

Luke LOVED watching the dancing!

Meanwhile, we had a chance to try some authentic Utah cuisine. We went to a shaved ice shack because Marinda's dad is a connoisseur of shaved ice. We got smalls, which were literally a foot tall. Interestingly, the tables outside the shaved ice shack had holes in them that were perfectly shaped for the shaved ice cones. What a neat idea!

Our next stop was J dawgs. Everyone we know in Seattle who went to BYU raves about J dawgs, so we had to go try it for ourselves. We even got Luke a beef dog with a little bit of the special sauce. Yup, we're great parents. What did you feed your kid for dinner? J dwags. Anyways, at J dawgs we also got to meet one of Ben's dance partners and very close friends, Lexi. She made a good first impression, but that may have been clouded by the fact that we were eating delicious hot dogs while meeting her.

We made it to the legendary J Dawgs!

Oh yeah, we are awesome parents.
J Dawgs for dinner!

Yesterday we got to the cabin on Bear Lake. Luke had a lot of fun playing at the cabin when he wasn't so tired. He even made a new friend - Jana's dog Yumi. Luke showed no fear in playing with Yumi, and chasing after her and in general tormenting her. Yumi barked and nipped at him, but all Luke did was laugh. Amit was torn by this development. "I'm happy that Luke is happy," Amit said. "But I'm skeptical that he actually likes playing with Yumi. He must be laughing because he's exacting revenge on my mortal enemy."

Luke playing with Uncle Wade's two dogs.

Luke and his new best friend - YUMI!

Luke was really tired though, so there were times when he stopped being so resilient. While Amit was being super awesome out on the Jet Ski, Marinda took Luke down to the beach. When asked if she would like to go on the sailboat, she said "Of course!" But Luke had to stay on shore, which he was not okay with. But then Uncle Wade took him on a tractor ride, and life was okay again (wish we had a picture!). In case you didn't know, Luke loves stereotypical boy things, like big cars, tractors, and construction equipment. So he was okay...until he saw daddy coming back from the water. Then the waterworks started. Millenia from now, they will tell the tale of how Bear Lake came to be, and the tale will be this: there was a little boy who was perfectly okay, then he saw his daddy and realized he wasn't with his parents and started crying hysterically. In fact, he cried so much that he filled the hole in the ground with water. From that day they called the lake Bear Lake, because the little boy just couldn't bear it anymore.