Fill my cup let it overflow...

So I enjoyed high school and college youth group way too much but today I'm overflowing with love.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the Fourth of July Weekend. We started on the Fourth with a fish fry cooking all the fish we caught during the last flood and some striped bass that were caught more recently. We have a freezer full of fish and produce from the garden. I love our garden (have I posted pictures of it yet?). All our neighbors and a few more came to our house (a rarity) to enjoy the beach. We had a blast.
The kids were in the river from 3 p.m. until nearly 8 p.m. We ate fried fish, hush puppies, grits and lima beans. It's was a feast fit for a king.

But you don't want a play by play of our day you want the good stuff, right? Here's the good part:

We had my three sons, S, M and L in the river. There was D and Mc and A. Let's also remember Little A and Little Red. That's 8 under aged kids frolicking in the rivers edge, splashing, jumping and diving all according to their ability. Then the head count of adults was 8 at the river sometime more sometimes less watching those kids. We had been watching the clouds filled with rain passing us by with all their thunderous noise. The breezes cooled the beach just a little (that's right, a beach on the river!). It was nearly 7:00 when the kids were winding down from their play and had apparently worn out their welcome in the river. Two of them (the oldest I might add) were scanning the water (while 8 adults chatted and yet were vigilant) when what to their wondering eyes should appear... A Gator!. That would be all caps instead of small caps letters if it had been bigger than his 4 feet (or so). At first it didn't seem possible, 16 people on a beach and a gator wants to lurk around us?

Owner of house make decision: Get the kids out of the water!

Done. Now, explore. All the kids up the beach about 100 yards to be across the river from where he is in it.

Hey, oldest eagle eyed kids, stop throwing things at the gator. Don't train him to know that we can't really hurt him. Uh oh. He's gone under. Now we don't know where he is. Oh there he his. Whew.

Next. Evaluate exactly what he's doing. Oh. He's just cruising the strip. It's only about 50 yards wide. Well, then, everyone, back down the beach and to your playing.

Self evaluation. I'll not loose sight of him now.

15 minutes later. OK everyone, I'm calling it. Everyone out of the water. He's wandering too close to us for my comfort. I'd love some gator tail, but not while at the ER. As we calmly cleared the beach (all kids obedient!) the gator did wander even closer to us than before.

So, what did we learn from this experience? If you see the gator, just call it quits. He's been spying on you all day waiting to get hungry so he can nibble some tasty morsels (AKA, gator bait). Do you think he just swam in from some distant beach? No, silly. You really do swim with the gators.

What did we really realize? They feed at night, just like 'skeeters so there'll be no night time swimming for me!

So, wanna come for a swim?