A Card Laid is a Card Played!

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I don't know if Kambree will appreciate this but I'm posting her school assignment on my blog. I just loved it!

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A Card Laid is a Card Played

There are a few things my whole family does together. We are pretty good at showing up for most birthdays and holidays. However, if you mention Lake Powell vacations aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents make room in their busy schedules to be together. We try to fill each moment with as much fun and laughter as possible. Our favorite things to do are water skiing early in the morning on the glassy lake, reading a good book (mostly my mom, grandma, and myself), cliff jumping, and so much more. However, my very favorite thing to do at Lake Powell with my family is play cards.

The best thing about playing cards with my family is everyone plays even the younger cousins. There are very few things in this world that involve people age five to age sixty. I love seeing the sun burnt happy faces of my family around the card table. You can see in our expressions that we love this time together and we play for hours and late into the night. As time passes one by one the weak will leave the table and go to sleep. Only the true card masters remain diligent enduring to the end of the game. These masters are usually my uncles, my aunt Kammy, my mom, and I. However, there is only one true card master in my family and that’s my uncle Troy.

My uncle Troy has mastered the poker face. Usually you can read peoples expressions and you know what kind of hand they have, but not Troy. When he is dealt a hand he has the same facial expression every time, so don’t even try to read him because you won’t be able to. Troy is also extremely anal about rules. Some of his favorite rules to enforce are you must deal cards and rotate turns in only one certain direction, you must keep cards in order when dealing and drawing, and his favorite saying is “a card laid is a card played”. He isn’t all that bad if little cousins’ mess up, he will let the rules slide. However, if you are twelve or older, then no way, each rule must be followed. I hate to admit it, but he wins most card games that have to do with strategy because he keeps special track of what cards everyone draws and discards. He’s not very good at luck games where it doesn’t matter what you strategy is, but it all depends on which cards you are dealt. Troy makes our card games fun and he keeps the game moving because we usually get side tracked. Getting side tracked isn’t always a bad thing when my family plays cards together. This is the time where we laugh, share stories, and talk extremely loud. There is usually two or more conversations going on at all times, which means we are usually yelling over each other so we can be heard. The funny thing is we tell the same stories every time. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the story about how my brother got his nick name Soggy Augy or when we ran out of gas and had to camp on a random beach. Then we made my brother Austin, and Uncle Arron sleep on the rocky beach and not the boat because they snore like grizzly bears. But no matter how many times we have heard these stories they still make us laugh.

I love playing cards with my family at Lake Powell. You might wonder why playing cards is my favorite thing to do when there are so many more fun things to do at Lake Powell for instance cliff jumping, hiking, tubing, etc. Also, you might think that I can play cards anytime at home with my family. The thing that makes playing cards at Lake Powell so fun is that the whole family is there and no one has to leave early so they can get to work in the morning. We are all stuck together with nothing better to do so we can focus on the family and not the world. Card games bring my family together and I am so excited for our next family vacation.

Hum....anyone have connections for a Lake Powell time share?