Festivities

I felt like a kid on my 40th birthday (last week). My dad came over in the morning with a gift that couldn't wait until we had dinner together that night. It was a wakeboard to go with our boat! You can see me trying it on, while trying not to damage any furniture with it's fins, or vice versa.
Well, we had to go out and try it so Dad, Val, Tim and I went down to the boat and gave it a try. I don't have any pictures to prove that I actually was wake boarding (for the second time in my life -the first was ~10 years ago), you'll just have to believe me on that. The wake board is totally girlie, as you can see from the photo below:

We have had friends in town visiting for the 4th and related festivities, so we've been busy. There were fireworks on the West Shore on the 5th, and we had an excellent view right from our deck!

Once again, the Lake Tahoe basin is filled with smoke from a wildfire. This time it is the Plumas County Fire up north towards Susanville. It isn't so unusual to get smoke from wild fires sitting in the basin, but it is unusual to have them so frequent. Hopefully the whole summer won't be like this! My eyes sting a wee bit from the smoke, and I just kind of prefer the nice fresh mountain air that we usually have.