Memorial Day Weekend

We spent Memorial Day weekend up at the lake - O'd, Alex & Liam came up for the weekend, as Liz & Wes stayed home to get Wes to a flight for his German class (he is going to Germany for two weeks). We also invited up Erika.

Erika, Seby, Zane & I drove up Friday morning, with Slade, Cody, Graham & Santiago leaving later in the afternoon. It was great to get up there with the sun still high in the sky - and so many of the chores taken care of from last weekend!

Seby & Zane unloaded most of the car. I started to clean the house from the latest house changes up there. We had our built in couch/bench moved down to the basement and fixed the flooring - so there was much construction debris to clean up, along with the usual dust build-up. It was great to clean before everyone got there and that Erika was able to tackle putting all the food away. It was also amazing how much work Seby & Zane were able to do - maybe I need to do this more? Erika got the big cooler up to the landing and they carried two things at a time until it was empty, and emptied most of the car.

It is great having the built-in moved downstairs - the bench seat lifts to storage and now we have a home for all the many shoes in this house! I am trying to get everyone to remove shoes before coming in and I hope this helps.

We were up the previous weekend for just one day and met with our builder to go over some repairs/changes we wanted done (like the built-in bench getting moved ) - and last fall a tree fell on our stairs to the dock/deck and we had that railing fixed, along with having many of the dead trees removed that are closer to the house. It created a nice open space between the house and the trees and we are trying to do some gardening there. Slade handles the vegie garden and I the flowers. We got two apple trees and two lilac bushes planted!



Erika and the kids planted a lot in our now sunny garden spot. Two dead trees were removed from this space and we hope the many plants and seeds planted grow like mad! (Pictured are Cody, Santiago & Zane planting with Erika supervising). Well we told her she should supervise, but I think she did a lot of the work!

It wasn't warm enough for me to go in the water - but Alex got the first plunge! She said it was COLD!

While on a run to the garden store Erika and I were in a wicked storm. We kept hearing the reports on the radio, so we knew we had about 30-40 minutes before it was supposed to hit. The prediction was for large hail, some weird sounding lighting and tree uprooting wind. Writing it now I don't know why we didn't turn around and head back to the house. But we didn't and we almost escaped it. The hail started and was the size of a large gumball - a few larger -- didn't sound too good hitting the car (Slade's Mini). It quickly was pouring hail and we turned off the road and luckily right into the wrong direction of a bank drive up window. I saw there was a car behind me and pulled up enough for his car, then many cars were coming knowing that space was there and moving on to find some other shelter. It was pretty amazing and very fast. The hail quickly turned to pouring rain, which melted the hail. We moved on like the rest of the cars and up the road it looked like it was slush from a winter snow, further up it was flash floods! At the lake house there was light rain and they all were amazed to hear we of our experience. The only evidence of the strong wind was on our drive home seeing one uprooted tree - luckily it didn't do any damage.

It was great to hang out with O'd and the cousins - the previous weekend we all saw each other for Wes's graduation, but it was fast and with many people. It was a bummer not to be able to have that quiet time with Liz & Wes - but I guess that is what will be happening now with these kids growing up and doing other things! We will also miss Wes during our Winchester family time at the lake house - he will be in Korea for the month of July!

Here are Zane and Alex cuddling on the couch - this boy was in heaven being able to have Alex AND Erika eating out of his hands!



The weekend wouldn't be complete without a tournament of Texas Hold-Em - I told Erika she really didn't have a choice in playing. By coming for the weekend she was committed to the whole lake house experience! She even went ATVing!.



Here is Zane "resting" on the couch while we played poker.





At one point his whole body was under the cushions and I had to make a verbal announcement for us all to remember he was there and take him up to bed! (Slade did carry him up)

I don't know why we didn't take more pictures - just wasn't thinking of it!