Over the holiday weekend, my mom, the kids and I took a little drive up to my sister's new lake cabin for the day. The kids seemed to enjoy being there, especially Little Blue Eyes, and I especially enjoyed that I had him in a smaller area for awhile where I could pretty much have a visual on him from anywhere in the room.

It was mostly business as usual for me... Cutting snacks and lunch into a million little pieces, wiping various body parts, following Little Blue Eyes around, entertaining Miss Peaches with random bits and baubles.

I did, however, find a little something else to tickle my fancy while we were there. It was a one-year-old and a two-year-old, but of a different variety than my bunch.

Meet my nephews' two Labrador Retrievers, Dolly and Sage...

"Hi girls. Would you like to run and leap off the dock after your ball so that I can get some mid-air pictures of you and practice my action photography skills?"

"Hleh, hleh, hleh, hleh, hleh..." (That's how you spell out the sound of dog panting, just in case you didn't know.) "Um... YES. We would LOVE to do that."

When someone says, "Jump," these girls respond with, "How high?"

Dolly was sort of the superstar of the two (sorry, Sage... you did good too). She had no qualms about flying across the dock and leaping into the air at full speed without hesitation... 

Gosh darned if she wasn't going to do her best to land right on top of that ball.

Here's an action sequence... 

Wait for it...

Wait for it.

Here she comes... 

Leap!

(Cringe) There's something unnatural about that whole bodily contortion. Good thing she's young and resilient. If I did that I would feel like I'd just given birth in a gunny sack.

I don't know what that means. But I know that it conveys that pain I envision in my head. 

Splash! 

"Hey, Dolly, that was great. I got some really great shots!"

 "Yeah, yeah. Good for you. I've got more balls to fetch."

She's all business, that one.

Sage was in on the action too, but in a slighly less graceful fashion...

I don't care who ya' are... That's funny.

 It's o.k., girl. You still did good, and you're still the best dog a boy could ever want. Some of us get by a little more on our character and a little less on our gracefulness.

My sister and I decided to take the paddleboat out on the lake so that we could get some shots head on...

As if all that weren't enough, she's also a tennis pro...

Now she's just showing off.

In closing and on a slightly different note, all I'm going to say is that if you take a farm kid to the lake, he maybe might go swimming in his t-shirt and Wranglers because he didn't bring his swimming trunks with. And then he may just go swimming in only his Wranglers and lose the t-shirt. And eventually he may lose the Wranglers and go swimming in his underwear.

Maybe. Maybe that might happen.

p.s. If you still haven't seen enough diving dog pictures, there's one more here.