We did it. We spent one last weekend at our beautiful new lake spot before heading home for the winter. We arrived on a hot day. We had Cher join us for our cold day, and we worked on the last day to winterize and pack up!
Here’s a quick breakdown of the weekend 🙂
While we unpacked, four of the kids ran to took over the playground. This kid snuggled up on our little chair and read. Because he fell in love with reading in the last year! I love that.
Once everything was set up, we hit the water. Or, rather, the beach, because it wasn’t warm enough to actually be in the water. But my goodness its gorgeous either way.
That first day was SO sunny and hot and easy! Everyone was happy!
Brady went forward with chopping a small tree down to make our site bigger…
And we ate spaghetti! Thank you, mom, for sending it! It went over beautifully, and was a really lovely gift not to have to worry about a meal!
We didn’t sleep great at night, but the few weekends we’ve enjoyed there, the first night is always a bit of a mess. You know, settling in and the like. They actually went down easier than I expected, but they tend to wake up pretty disoriented in the night and need help getting their heads back on straight. As the night wore on, with every wakeup, it was getting noticeably colder!
Still, we rolled on! Cher came to join us for the day, and she can vouch that it was cold.
We made the day great, though! We played at all the playgrounds! This one we lovingly call Tetanus Park 😳But look how strong Wavy is!!!
Laela managed to walk square into a tree at one point and almost got her eye stabbed out.
Ok not really but it was close enough.
And we took Cher around to the challenge course! We definitely took a couple of wrong turns and only found a few of the games, but it was still fun 🙂
Cher had to leave before supper, which was sad, but we understood. I think we showed her a good enough time that she’ll come again 💜
Hot dogs for supper!
And then a walk to the water to keep us from freezing!
It kinda worked, haha! A couple of us were colder than others…
It was worth it, though.
This morning, we woke up chilly, but ready to take on the day! We gave the kids an easy breakfast, and sat with them and the fire until it was time to get moving!
I got to work inside the camper, rolling up sleeping bags, digging things out of cupboards, and packing up everything that needed packing. Being that its our first year and we’re next to terrified of a mouse issue, we brought most of everything home :/ We just don’t know. I’m sure in the years to come, we’ll leave more there, but this year, just about everything came home.
Brady worked HARD on pretty much everything else. He blasted out the waterlines and filled them with antifreeze. He closed up a bigger vent that we don’t need but had left open for the season. He did further mouse proofing and hole filling.
The kids helped here and there, too, where they could 🙂 Solly collapsed all the lawn chairs and brought them to the van. It was cute. They’re about the same size as he is.
When I was at a standstill for what I could do, I took the kids to a different playground so Brady could just do his thing without anyone asking a billion questions. Lol! Rowan dug for treasure. He was specifically in search of gold necklaces for me. He did not find any. Maybe next time.
We did eventually get out of there in one piece, around 2:00pm. It took a LOT of work, but I imagine it’ll get smoother every year 🙂 This was just out first round. It wasn’t bad, just a bit of a mishmash of forgetting things and needing to run back for this or that. It did get done, however, and Brady and I had yet to even have lunch! So we treated ourselves to some crappy fast food, as you do when you have to move quickly…
Aaaaand we drove home. This kid has all the right vibes.
It was SUCH a beautiful, albeit short, season of camping. It has been such a happy time. We’ve learned a lot, pushed the kids and ourselves a lot, and we’ve truly enjoyed the change of life. I hope we always do this. I hope we always have our spot. God brought it to us, so clearly. We’ll keep it as long as He’ll let us!