Anybody want to guess what the best part of my last day on the lake was? Well, getting home, yeah, that was good. But I rode about halfway in the backseat of Tammy and David’s van with Kylie sitting next to me. She was a delightful traveling companion. She babbled and gurgled in full sentences that sounded as if she were making up poetry in some alien language. That’s how expressive her nonsense syllables are when she strings them together.

And she played games with me. She had a small empty box in her hand. She was hold it out as if to hand it to me, then snatch it back. Sometimes she would let me take it from her, but she always wanted it back right away. And she played this little game where she would wave it around just out of my reach, so that I had to wave my hand around to try to get it from her. She thought this was just hilarious.

She liked it when I imitated the sounds she made, too. I finally had to knock it off when Tammy told me to, well, knock it off so the baby could go to sleep.

We left the lake around one this afternoon, after a logistical exercise that would have impressed an army strategist in the way we coordinated the getting of boats and jet skis off the water and onto trailers, and moving luggage around so it ended up in the appropriate place, as our little caravan of three vehicles made its way south on I-5, through various obstacles (including a jackknifed big rig that started a fire when it hit a transformer, and wasn’t that fun to try to drive through). But we made it, and it was a great few days, and I’m not telling the Boss I’m back until Tuesday.