Belly Laughs and Beeping

I love the sound of children belly laughing. It is one of the greatest sounds I know. Tonight I heard a lot of that from my three.

We went on our typical after dinner golf cart ride. We went the usual places. There is this turtle hole that we have been checking on every night and it is the latest highlight. I don't know much about turtles but I guess they must have laid eggs because they are there every single time we go there.

There is a nature trail that goes through our neighborhood. We have heard about it. Ben and Karen took a run on it one time during a visit and told us about the awesome fishing dock at the end of the trail. Because it is not intended for motor vehicles, we have never explored it in over two years of living here. We tried it on the golf cart once before and not even 100ft. in we realized there was too much brush blocking the path.

For some reason, Jason decided that tonight we were going to try it again. I must admit, the path seemed much clearer than our last attempt. After about 20 minutes of going farther and farther down this path, we jokingly asked ourselves questions like, "What if the golf cart runs out of batteries? What if it starts pouring? What if it gets dark before we find our way out of here?" We weren't really worried. We were just what-if-ing.

There were times when the path did get narrow and branches would brush up against the kids and scrape across the roof of the golf cart. For some unexplainable reason, this was hysterical to the kids. Owen would start the belly laughing. Then the other kids would join in. I'm not sure if they were laughing about the branches or just because they'd never heard Owen laugh that hard. This went on for quite some time. It was music to my ears. I wish I could record it and play it back when I'm in a bad mood or when the kids are grown.

We did finally reach the fishing dock. It was very excluded and pretty. But also anticlimactic.

About five minutes into our return trip, our golf cart started beeping at us without ceasing. We still do not know exactly what this meant. But at that point, the stress became real. We are out here, thirty minutes from dusk, we'd just moments before ran off a wild hog, we are far from home-however long 20 minutes is on a golf cart- with all three children. I just kept thinking, what exactly are we going to do if our golf cart dies? What will our game plan be? I have never been so happy to see the Riverhouse in our neighborhood. Safety.

We still aren't sure what the beeping was. It stopped shortly after we got on level ground. I guess it had something to do with the rough terrain we were exploring? I don't know. Dad, you can clear that one up for us.