This is the place.

Summer is here. The sun is shining. The days stretch into long dusky evenings.  The hum of cicadas and croaking frogs are all around us. Summer personifies happiness for me.
This summer has been especially warm, but also especially fun. Vacation is over, and now we are past the half way mark, heading over the hill toward autumn.
For now though, I hang on to summer so tightly.
I suck the warmth and smiles out of everyday.
I run with my kids through the grass and pick flowers.
We play in the water and the sand.
Mostly we just live outdoors.

Ah. Summer.

This is the place.

This is the place where nostalgia covers the furniture in a thin layer,
preserving the happiness that lives within the warm cabin walls, the well worn mattresses and fans forever set on high.
This is the place where my children run fleetingly to the water's edge to say hello to the crayfish that meet them as they share the boundaries between their world and ours.
This is the place where technology is left behind, a pile of cell phones nestled like a castle of cards on the mantle, abandoned as obsolete and irrelevant.
This is the place where families find moments to hear the pitter-patter of tiny toes over hardwood floors, where silence is golden and fulfilling, and afternoons are filled with boardgames and literature.
This is the place where family members long past, arrive again, in the laughs and smiles of those of us who are present today, nestled in the comfort of generations of memories.
This is the place where dinners appear in rapid succession, each one brimming with soul-filling and delicious helpings to encourage a hefty and well deserved nap.
This is the place where cheesy spaghetti, horseradish dip, William's cheese and pickled bologna reign supreme as a constant reminder of where we were raised and how our family's recipes of love and happiness are carried on.
This is the place where the lake shore laps at my toes and hums our family to sleep each night with the rhythmic reminder that we are indeed, home.
This is the place where the warm, thick, humid air meets the simple fresh breeze from water's edge as a cocktail of summer essence, ready to drink in, nearly inhaling the sweetness.
This is the place where comfort covers every moment of guilt I have about stepping away from reality, like a cozy and warm fleece blanket, pulled gently up to my chin.
This is the place where the sky colored with crayola cerulean and robin's egg outlines the cover of my most recent novel and I lay under the warm sun to soak in another story.

Yes. This is the place.
Where everything but family and love and laughter, hopes, dreams, memories and moments are left behind to allow a brief, even fleeting moment to connect, to enjoy to be with those we love.
So we kick off our shoes at the door, to be revisited only a week into the trip as we begrudgingly face the moment we must leave this little haven. We rush to feel the sand in our toes, to absorb the sunset's rays, to stretch out across the hammock and release every responsibility, every concern, every deadline to the summer Gods.

We remember how much we love our families, how we cherish these moments, how memories are truly made and we envision them continuing forever so that we may always hold tight to this bit of genuine happiness.


This years vacation was all of those things. Summer in a condensed week or so, filled to the brim with fantastic memories. So, instead of walking through each moment in this post, I'll let the photos do the talking. What fun we had and how quickly my boys are growing. This year baby Agnes-Grace made her first trip to the lake house and Collin got to see his first round of real fireworks. Owen ate his first turkey leg and first corn on the cob and took his first swim in a lake. Both boys had their first jet ski ride and I had my first moments in three years or so to really relax and not worry about either one of them. We are a lucky family.