Lake Days

Our next major construction project is in full swing over here and we have a little time of being "homeless" between the project starting and our move-in to an apartment.  

Luckily, we timed the gap with some wonderful lake trips at friends' homes.  

First up, we went to Cedar Creek where my dear friend Jill's parents have a home just a 5-minute boat ride across the water from our family place.  Jill lives in Boston, but was visiting for a few weeks and we try to annually connect on the lake.

Grace loving lake life...

Girls day on the water...

 Picking fresh tomatoes for lunch...

Meanwhile, Palmer stayed across the way and had some special time with Pops where they enjoyed go-carting and fishing.

Palmer joined us later in the trip and the kids tried out a water skiing trainer tube on the boat.  

Little Grace never wants to miss anything and proved her capabilities on the water skiing tube, too.

When we realized Palmer had a handle on the ski trainer, we moved him to water skis.  With great assistance from Aunt Jill in the water, Palmer got up a few times and was so tickled with himself.

The Hogue family is always such a gracious host with perfect Southern hospitality and food.  Thank you, Hogues!

 

Moving on, we went down to the hill country for another annual trip to the Sarpongs lakehouse.

The week is perfectly relaxing and adventurous.  Amongst five families, we ranged on any given day to have in our possession between 8 and 15 kids who spent their mornings in rock climbing camp or horseback riding camp.

When Grace picked up Palmer from camp, she asked to try to climb the wall.  By golly, she went all the way to the top...she's a spunky little one.

Visiting the horses at horseback riding camp...

The afternoons were filled with lazy summer activities of swimming, games of Marco Polo and Sharks and Minnows, and large games of Base Tag and Sardines in the house.  The land out back is perfect for hiking and mountain biking.  Perfect summer childhood memories.

Between the moms (who we like to reference as "sister wives"), we split up the carpooling duty and kitchen obligations with feeding such a large crew (can you believe they want to eat THREE TIMES a day?)

Sunscreen application fail...

Now, back to reality....where our home has been torn apart upstairs near the kids bedrooms and downstairs in the kitchen.  The roofline is raising as we change the kids "closet bedrooms" to real bedrooms.  We are also gutting the kitchen and adding a mudroom and laundry room.  Super fun progress to show in the future.  We are likely displaced for four months during this project.

 

-Bethany