weekend at the Lake House

It was everything that I hoped it would be. See my expectations in my last post to know what we did all weekend. 

Best Moments:

• Having the beach and playground to ourselves on Friday morning and letting the kids run nudie for a moment before putting them in their swimsuits.  I could wax poetry about their adorable baby buns but I won't do that to them on the internet.
• The kids were old enough to semi-successfully share a bedroom (with us) and, most importantly, fall asleep nearly on their own so that we could have an evening with other adults!
• We got to kayak all by ourselves thanks to a little help from our friends. Mike and Tony took Jillian and Inira in their canoe and Jess kept an ear out for napping Cassie back at the house. I had a beer in my kayak instead.
• Jeremiah and I were very fair about taking turns sleeping in and taking turns napping during the day. I think we actually surpassed a usual night (overcompensating for sleep lost from staying up late with friends).
• The "big girls" painted everyone's fingernails and toenails with a wild assortment of polish. I've got orange and black on my left hand, yellow blue and purple with glitter on my right hand. It's very cute.
• The kids all played nicely with their friends and we got to talk and hang out with ours. Perfect.

Worst Moment:

• Traffic on the way home, for sure. 

Thoughts from the weekend:

Sometimes we say that we should just take a vacation at our house. That way there's no rental fees, no gas purchased, no packing, and you have everything you need. We have enough spare beds and sofas that technically, we could house a bunch of friends. Especially if we can eventually toss all the kids outside in tents and let the adults crash in their beds. (mental note: plan to do this)

We could do everything that we did at the Lake House- swimming off the dock, kayaking (ok, we'd need to get kayaks from somewhere but we have the water), playing in the sand, playground, playing in the house and the yard, campfire, and bug hunting.  

But Jeremiah and I reflected that the best part was being far far away from our to-do list. We are slaves to our house. Maintaining it, Cleaning it, and Doing our never-ending construction plan.  We only had to clean the Lake House before leaving it. We didn't have to clean it to make it nice for friends like we would at our house.  And we couldn't possibly use spare time to mow the lawn or anything. We were forced to just lay around. 

Oh, and each kid only had a few favorite toys along. So they had to be creative. They had to play new things like cards and Leap Frog. And we didn't have to pick up toys like we do all the time.

Having wonderful friends with generous parents who let us all crash at their vacation home was really a fabulous gift. We're grateful that this was our 4th year and that we're invited back for next year (fingers crossed).