i’m back

 

And to be 100% honest, I wish I wasn’t. I love home, but a mere five days at my other favorite place simply isn’t long enough.

The Lake is paradise.

Here, I can let normal life melt away for one seventy-third of the year (0.01369863 is the exact decimal). I don’t have to think about training my horse, getting my lambs up to show level, running three miles a day, moving irrigation sets, or memorizing lines from Twelfth Night. Escaping the grind is wonderful. The Lake is ingrained in the childhoods of myself, my siblings, and my cousins, and I can’t remember a time when this trip wasn’t the highlight of my summer.

We battle to make the biggest splashes. We drink multiple cans of pop every day just for the heck of it. We investigate creepy submerged logs and the three islands. We go canoeing just for the thrill of taking on motorboat waves broadside.



Best of all, so many relatives are together at once! We eat, we laugh, we play, we sleep, we talk, and we marvel that we all survived growing up in such a weird (wonderful!) family.

It’s awesome with the kind of awesomeness that you can see, feel, taste, and breathe.

We maintain a ton of quirky traditions, but it’s never exactly the same from year to year. Sometimes old traditions are broken (like the conspicuous absence of my cousin Aaron) or new ones are born (like eating red licorice by the pound). A few new things made it to the highlights of this year’s trip:

• actually touching the icky crossed logs submerged south of our dock (formerly one of my greatest fears!)
• winning Dominoes :)
• getting rained on for the first time in three years of sleeping under the stars (this was really cool!)
• listening to the three professors (I mean, Dad, Stephen, and Sam) talk Civil War by the fire
• perfecting (or trying to perfect) my diving skills
• taking motorboat waves broadside in the canoe with Ben and Hannah
• playing an insane game of Catan with my brothers.

If you’re lucky enough to be at the Lake, you’re lucky enough.



It’s kinda hard to realize that I won’t go back for another year, but it always surprises me how fast that year passes. Then we’ll be back for more swimming, splashing, eating, laughing, and picture taking.

I can’t wait!