Christmas Break is for kayaking.

Today, I went on an adventure.

So, my house backs up to a creek that's pretty shallow and with a mud-bottom...meaning that it is straight up nasty. Like, the huge catfish that live in it survive off of the trash that gets in there. But, while gross, it also holds much potential to have adventure.

And because my dad likes to think our family is adventurous, he bought two kayaks shortly after we moved into our house...which was seven years ago. Those two kayaks have been used only a handful of times, including today.

So here's what happened.

My friend Tannah and I have been planning a kayak adventure since this summer but whenever she was available, I wasn't, and vice versa. We could never find an available time to go kayaking. But today was the day. She was home from Baylor and I was out of school for two weeks and it was a balmy 61 degrees outside. We wore shorts, t-shirts, old tennis shoes, and ill-fitting life jackets as to not drown in the five foot deep waters.

We decided to go upstream, which wasn't overly difficult in general. Really, the only hard part of our epic journey was trying to maneuver around the logs that had fallen across the creek. And the first of those came about a hundred yards from where we departed.

Basically, a couple months ago, a tree fell during a storm and stretched over the width of the creek. A bunch of trash had built up on the side of it but there was a space just big enough for a kayak and a few passengers to squeeze through. We had to duck and still got tree bark in our hair and on our shirts. Then we got stuck the first time going under and had to reverse and duck again. Then we got it.

Since we were going upstream, the current wouldn't exactly let us go straight, so we had to turn the kayak multiple times and we got very, very wet. We went around a couple of bends and we felt like Pocahontas, so of course we had to sing "Just Around the Riverbend". Then we ran into another log that I almost singlehandedly got us over. It was pro maneuvering skills, I assure you.

Tannah kept making bird noises and I thought a bird was just following us around (she didn't confess until the next day). We encountered some more logs and laughed and splashed each other. Then we had to get out in the mud because we didn't think we could get through and we had some extreme troubles getting back in the creek.

But it's hard to push into the water when you're laughing so hard.

Then we encountered the "rapids". Someone had dumped a bajillion rocks into the creek and it was super shallow, probably only a foot of water. Tannah and I were having issues. Then there was this tree that jutted out into the middle of the creek that we spent five minutes wrestling and booked it when we finally escaped. We made it past the rapids after three attempts, but we were so tired we just drifted right back down...going backwards.

Soon we approached the part where we had to get out the last time and we discovered a small passage to get through. But we still got out and climbed over a log and almost fell in. In fact, Tannah climbed a tree (pretty much if it's climbable, Tannah will climb it) and misjudged her step and her foot plunged into the creek. Her face was priceless. Then I got out and just had to hold onto the kayak while Tannah got in and then I got back in and off we went.

Though our arms were tired and we didn't ever want to wiggle under a tree again while in any sort of boat, that might have been one of the best experiences of my life. It was full of laughter and adventure and rarely do I feel that...free. Nothing was holding me back and being surrounded by God's glory was the best possible start to my Christmas break.

"God of wonders beyond our galaxy, You are holy." --God of Wonders