What a weekend!

We headed to Edisto River for the weekend. The family and friends always get together for July 4th and have a huge cookout. I convinced the husband to go with us this time and it turns out it's really good he came.

We got there Friday night and it was quiet. Mom and dad were there and me and Joe and all out kiddos. Saturday morning everyone else started to arrive. We had bikers and family and friends. We had a great cookout with delicious food. The kids all swam and had a ball. Then we saw some great fireworks on Saturday night. LJ was a little frightened all over again. I'm not sure he'll ever get used to the fireworks. At least he'll sit outside and watch them now. The first year he cried and we had to stand inside with me covering his ears!

Sunday we ended up all getting in the water. There had been big fun having the older guys throwing the younger kids in the water on Saturday so that started up on Sunday too. Well, Ricky decided to jump in and try to splash the kids sitting on the dock. He jumped a couple times and then as he was sitting on a float in the river he looked down to discover that his wedding band was missing! One of the kids said they remember seeing it on his finger before we all got in the water so we assumed that it had to have come off when he jumped one time or the other. Ricky was devastated. He searched everywhere and didn't find it. And we were banking on the fact that Skyler said she'd seen it on his hand earlier.

Turns out we rounded up some dive equipment and Joe went in looking for it. It was almost dark by the time he got in the water but he got a good 45 minutes in looking for it I think. No luck. He did find a pair of sunglasses that one guy had lost the day before but never found the ring. They decided to give up and they'd try at low tide on Monday. So around noon today Joe got into his borrowed dive gear...set up a plan of action and he dove in again. He searched on the left side of the dock first (where he'd been searching the day before) and found nothing. So, he moved to the right side of the dock. Dad kept saying his gut was telling him that's where they'd find it. He searched for about 10 minutes or so (maybe a little longer) on that side and when Ricky went to tug on the rope (it was there sign that he was at the point he needed to turn and sweep back the opposite direction) Joe tugged back really hard to let him know he's seen something and to wait. He came up out of the water gripping with all his life to the diamond wedding band that Ricky had lost in the Edisto River the day before!!! Now my brother has a huge smile and always has, but I think the corners of his lips ACTUALLY touched his ears when Joe handed him that ring!

I think it's amazing that the ring was found! But Ricky was glad and it made a great show for everyone at the river. A great story too.

Then we went down to the sandbar to celebrate and end our weekend and as we were leaving (had to take 2 trips to get everyone home)Ricky turned the boat around and made the motor do a rooster tail and sprayed me, Joe, LJ, Mama, Kevin and Laura. So Mom said that if he did it when he got back that she was going to make sure he got thrown in the river. And sure enough he did it when he got back. So as Ricky was trying to tie up the boat to the dock, Mom hurried off and pushed him in the river. It was perfect timing. He went in easily. But he got out quickly and chased Mom upstairs. She got in the house and tried to lock the sliding glass door. Ricky was trying to open it as we all watched. All of a sudden we heard the sound of shattering glass. Yep..the glass door had shattered! It was a mess! Luckily everyone found it quite humerous. We got the glass cleaned up as good as we could and duct taped a piece of plywood to the doorframe! Talk about redneck living! That'll be the second time the door to the that house has been shattered. They'll be replacing it with french doors this time!

So, we can't say our weekend was boring at all! It's the most fun I've had at Edisto yet.