Friday, September 24, 2010

We Had Guests, Guests, and More Guests

That is how Calvin described our time at the cottage when he was asked what we did there this summer. And he's right! I think we had 13 entries in our guest book this summer! We LOVED every minute of it and hope to have everyone back again, and add a few who didn't make it this year. Here is some of the fun we had with all our visitors.

Grandma and Grandpa were our very first guests this year. And were able to make a few return trips after that.
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My sister Brooke came for the 4th of July weekend.
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Then on the 4th my Mom's whole side of the family was able to come up for what was hopefully our first annual family reunion.
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The cousins had to pose for a quick picture before we did our big sychronized dive. HA!
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The next guests were my Friend Sarah and her 3 boys, unfortunately her husband was deployed to Afghanistan and wasn't able to come up. Sarah and I became friends while we were stationed in Illinois together and it was so nice to see her and her boys.
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Our kids enjoyed playing together again as well. Here is Calvin and William being goofy!
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And the 4 big kids enjoying their marshmallows.
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The next guests were Uncle Mike, Aunt Cindy, and baby Jake.
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Mike and Ryan have been friends forever and are really more like brothers.
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Jake had a great time this year and enjoyed the water and loved playing with my kids.
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Mike and Cindy have been coming up north with us for I think 7 years now and we always make sure to get a photo of all of us together. This is the first one at the new cottage!
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The next guests we had were the Storch Seven. We met Steve and Michelle in Turkey when we were all childless, but now we have 2 kids and they have 5! They were only able to stay for one night, but we sure made the most of it and the kids had a blast. Here are the 6 big kids all on our raft.
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(their youngest was under one at the time so she just hung out on shore)
And of course we had to do marshmallows!
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This is what 11 people having fun at the lake looks like at the end of the day.
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Then my girlfriend from High School Erika and her son Zion came. My kids adored Zion.
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And our final visitor was Aunt Keri.
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Unfortunately Uncle Brent couldn't come, but hopefully next year they will visit with new baby Darren.

For some reason I don't have a picture, but Aunt Louise and Great-Grandma Elda also came up for an afternoon.

And I think that is it! To all who came, thank you so much for coming and we hope you will come again soon. And to all those who couldn't make it this year we sure hope to see you next summer!

Play Hard

Oh yes, we definitely played hard! We were in the lake every day but one the whole time we were there,
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and lots of days we were in the lake twice.
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But there are tons of other fun things to do besides swimming. So here is a list of the top ten other things to do at the cottage when we are not swimming in the lake. (in no particular order)

1. Fishing
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2. Tubing
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3. Playing in the sand at the beach
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4. Rowboat rides
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5. Play in the yard and get dirty!
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Check out those dirty feet!
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6. Fly a kite
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7. Fast boat rides
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8. Go get ice cream
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9. Play board games (Calvin became a Monopoly freak this summer)
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10. Hang out by the fire
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and roast marshmallows
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Oh and our other favorite thing to do is have family and friends come to visit us. Just wait till you see all the guests we had this year!

Work Hard.......

During our time at the cottage we worked hard and we played hard. This post is about some of the little projects we did while we were there.

Ryan dug out a LOT of stumps.
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And as you can see the whole family got involved in these projects.

I even enlisted Nana's help with making the curtains.
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Of Course Papa was a TON of help, and had done more work than you can imagine over the past year. Here he is helping Ryan raise the pier up. (the bottom was almost touching the water, so it needed to come up several inches)
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We also cut down a ton of small trees and cut some branches on bigger trees and generally cleaned up the yard.
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Ryan spent a lot of time cleaning out the garage and getting it organized.
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And of course we hung our Bak4More sign!
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This is just some of what we did this summer. We also did a lot of planting, and we hope to see the fruit of that labor next summer. We did A LOT, but it was so enjoyable to work on something as a family and be able to wash the sweat off by jumping in the lake when you were done.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Our Special Place

So I have LOTS of summer fun to share with you. So much fun actually that I don't think I am going to even post it chronologically. I will be posting more categorically I guess. We had a wonderful summer where we worked hard, played hard, and had a TON of guests. We really loved every minute of it and can't wait till we are Bak 4 More.
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I thought for my first post I would try and explain what makes our little place so special. Let's start with the obvious -- It's on the lake and we get to go swimming EVERY day sometimes even twice a day. Right off our very own pier.
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OR if you want you can take a short little walk to the private beach.
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Family - This is a huge one for us since we always live so far from them. It is a place where we get to spend lots of quality time with family.
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As most of you know my parents also have a cottage just a short walk down the gravel road from us so we get to see them lots when we are there. And Ryan's parents just live a couple hours away and can come up whenever they feel like it and stay as long as they want.
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Friends - We were able to have a TON of our friends come and visit up at the cottage this summer and hope to have lots more guests every year. I will devote a whole post to all the guests we had this year, but here I want to talk about "summer friends". To those who get to live in one place for decades at a time it may seem like a small thing, but for my kids to have summer friends that they will see every year it is truly something special. In our nomadic lifestyle they will have to say good-bye to lots of friends and become masters and making new ones, but at the cottage they will have friends that they can grow up with year after year. Our neighbor's grandchildren were some of my kids favorite people this year.
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As well as one of our long time family friend's sons.
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I can already imagine the fun (read trouble) Jake and Calvin are going to have over the years!
This is a place where you know your neighbors and people stop by for a drink while walking around the lake.
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(this is actually Jake's Grandma and Grandpa)
Again, that may be a small thing to lots of people, but when you live places for only a couple years at a time you never seem to know your neighbors and no one ever 'pops in' for a drink or a coffee.

Oh yeah and you can WALK around the lake over this cute little foot bridge that you can see from our pier.
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It is just so peaceful up there with no internet or TV and limited cell phone service, you are truly 'unplugged' up there. It is a nice change of pace from our otherwise very busy life.

Faith - Yes faith is a huge part of our community up there which was formed around a Lutheran Camp that has since closed. The little Chapel in the Pines church is only steps away from our cottage and is only open in summer.
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It is so nice to walk to church every Sunday and sit with family and friends. And as you take that walk around the lake you will also come to "Inspiration Point" where you can sit and enjoy the beauty of God's creation.
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You can even walk to a cute little coffee and ice cream shop that resides in the old Mill.
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And we had the kids save up their money so they could buy their own ice cream. It was pretty cute!
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Just a few steps from the Mill is a cool little bar that even has a train that will bring you your beer!
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It is just a small little town in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, but it is the one place we can call home no matter where the Air Force sends us. We love that our name is on the sign at the end of the road, sort of staking our claim to a little piece of heaven.
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