Canoeing...

...is not for me. At least that´s what I got out of this weekend.
Remember?

I gave my husband a canoe trip for his birthday, one month ago. And, in fact, I was really looking forward to it. I mean, I have a pathetic adoration for rivers, lakes, ponds - water of all sorts. I spend most of my weekends dangling my feet in water, and even if I´m not too crazy about swimming, I don´t mind getting wet.

Plus, I saw this canoe trip as as perfect opportunity to take pictures of my beloved, beautiful river Wupper.

Well...

Tim took this picture. Of our boat, with the instructor behind us. Since I was fully occupied steering the *%&?§!= boat.

I just didn´t get it. Yeah, I´m too dumb to paddle, I admit it.
It took me about 20 minutes to realize that I wouldn´t be able to just sit in my boat and peacefully glide along the river, but that I had to concentrate all my physical and mental strength on keeping pace with the group, plus taking care not to steer us into trees/stones/families of ducklings, plus keeping my kids from sabotizing this by random paddling.

Ah, it was really annoying, and I spend a great deal of the trip swearing. Poor Eva and Mehmet, who had to share the boat with me:

After the break, Eva actually took seat in a boat of another family, who still had a spare seat (yeah, she did), and Mehmet swapped seats with Miro - Mehmet could be in Tim´s boat, happy, and Miro - well, Miro just knows how to handle women.

He sat there, in the boat, calm and all smiles, stroking my hands, and telling me I was doing great and it´s okay everyone else is faster.
Sometimes, he´s a real gentleman, and I never thought I´d say this, since he´s one part of the calamity twin duo, after all, but it´s a real honour raising him.

I think he liked the boat on the playground better than sitting with me in a canoe, but he didn´t show.

Some things you have to try, to know they are not for you - like studying theology, which I found out wasn´t for me after doing an internship with a priest, or smoking pot. Or canoeing. All the same. I tried it, and I don´t like it.

But those two loved canoeing:

And I bet they´ll be doing it again. But... without me :)

Other than canoeing, I had a pretty great weekend, so I don´t want this post to be all moany and grumpy. We had a great guy over from the Netherlands, who came with a super cool bike, which he let all of us try:

He helped me fix some computer issues, and we took a long walk through our dark woods, and he introduced us to some new dutch authors we hadn´t heard of, and we had barbecue in the sunshine, together with Eva´s friend, too:

And I love eating outside with 8 people around one table - though, there would fit some more, and I´d love to have some more :) Oh, and by the way - the meat on the plate? That´s Miro´s plate. Mehmet is still having salad from our garden and wheat burgers - he´s now through his first month as a vegetarian, and he´s still doing it. 

And since it was so hot this weekend, we even went swimming:

So, all together, the weekend was awesome, and I even got some tan.

And now I´m closing this post with some music by the incredible Mr. A-Z:

I love it when I find another song I didn´t know yet, and it sounds like meeting an old friend, and then the chorus hits... ah, he´s such a versatile, interesting artist!