It is much prettier than I remembered

Five weeks away from the lake, and I guess that’s what happens. You forget things.

Yet, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, sweaty and in a slight state of panic, and wonder what in heaven’s name are we going to do with a lake house. Isn’t one house enough to manage? Four boys do keep us busy enough; why add this? And, then I start to think about the three hours of heavy driving just to get there; one way. What were we thinking? I wonder.

We knew the weather was going to be cold; there wouldn’t be much to do. But it’s our lake house, and we need to explore what it’s like to be there in the colder months. Maybe it would be nice to spend Christmas here. People around the lake tell me that winter is just as much fun as summer. Ice skating, sledding, cross-country skiing. And of course, leaf raking.
We arrived after the sun had already went down. The wind was brisk. Ovaltine and cheese quesdaillas and edamame by an outdoor bonfire brought no complaints from my picky eaters. And, of course, we just had to get out the marshmallows; even though it was too late, they were fussy, and their hands, mouths and clothes were soon all covered in sticky goo.

Finally, time for bed. But, to them, I guess that’s the beginning of a 24 hour sleepover; lots of chatter, laughter, one-upping, and singing coming from their bunk beds. They started to bicker, and that was the last sound I heard at night.

But this weekend, we got a surprise. On Friday, it was warm. Upper 70s, sunny, and a gorgeous day for a canoe ride, fishing, football. The two little boys, always in costume. We squeezed as much fun as you can possible get out of every inch of sunlight, in these days when the sunset comes earlier and earlier.

But, my ironman husband did decide it was tooooo cold for a swim. The entire day we did not see one single person outside of our family. The lake was desolated. Wait, let me take that back. We saw the guy who lives there all year; and he told us how much he hates the winter at the lake. Nobody is around.

Rain threatened our fun on Saturday. It wasn’t just any rain; more like pelting stabs of cold. The rain hurt my face. So we left. Two hours of packing, cleaning (the floor still isn’t as clean as I’d like) carrying the boats in, and locking up. Remembering to take this, and leave that… it went on for hours.

As we drove, the rain gave way to sunshine, and we wondered if maybe we left too soon. Then, the clouds would come back. And, the we saw the most incredible sky. Sometimes we would drive through plains of dark gray, and see an entire farm with silos and barns completely lit up by the sun’s bright rays that filled an opening in the clouds.

On our way home, we were greeted by this little black creature that came running down the very same road where the teen on the dirt bike crossed the road in front of us without stopping. Just like, where I am from, the cows were out.

All the commotion from the lack of farm hands available to get the cows back in, (where are those teenagers on the dirt bikes when you need them?), woke my little guy from his nap. He only kept saying, “I want him to be our pet,” about 5,000 times.

More about the lake.