Packing List:

One country ham

Corn Meal (Forgot…. throw into car!)

Packs of Starbucks Salted Carmel Hot Chocolate

Pears

Cans of Pineapple and Cherries

Ice Skates (lake is frozen!)

Entire duffel bag  of mittens, snowpants, gloves, scarves

Extra blankets

Hersey Kisses for Peanut Blossoms

Peanut Blossom Cookie Dough (already made)

When we drove to Chicago, my husband and I snuck into the lake house and pulled out the Christmas tree, and decorated it… and left a few presents.

I looked through my camera and found the evidence. This is what those

little boys were busy doing in the house, while we were busy taking taking out the dock.

We needed a place to store the dried snail shells, driftwood that comes in cool shapes, the drawings of snakes and the drawings of the occasional pet dead fish that shows up in my freezer. (I found him, by the way.) And, a lot of rocks. Some of these rocks are purported to be Geodes, and all kinds of rare treasures that are worth upwards of a million dollars.

So, we ate our pickles, washed the jar out, and painted a canning jar lid with chalkboard paint, and labeled the jar. Our treasure chest is really just an old pickle jar.  

The kid’s busy sports calendar left the coldest weekend this fall as the only spot on the calendar to take the dock out.

This wasn’t the windiest weekend this fall, but it was close. We were wearing our winter coats

while my husband stood in the water to take out the poles. Luckily, the water temperature was still hovering in the 60s.

The docks were heavy and awkward to lift out over the rocks, onto their resting space. The little boys were mysteriously absent during the whole process… they could have fetched hammers, wrenches, WD40 — anything to help shorten the job.

They didn’t show up again until the docks were stacked up on the beach, and they climbed up to do a celebratory dance, and then, took it upon themselves to take what we needed; a much needed rest.

Interesting how time heals. As the original wake-boarding video reveals, there were no jumps, no celebration of skills, and no mention of how far he has come since that fateful day when the water split his tibia and ankle. In honor of the pain, the surgery and healing, I have appended this video with some of his jumps.

Those boys of mine are always trying to copy me and my friends.

You remember the tree house, right?

This year was billed to be one of the brightest Perseids meteor showers in decades, but a full moon kept even the dark sky hovering over the water too bright to see all that action in the sky. Out on the water, the stars light up the night like a disco ball. But that’s only if the clouds are gone… and the moon is absent.

Each night, we squinted our eyes, and looked up until our necks hurt, trying to pretend that the moon wasn’t going to stop us from making wishes upon shooting stars. My husband and I even took the Red Canoe out on the water, and paddled to all the corners of the lake, and saw nothing.  Except for the inky black water, fish jumping in front of us, the moon, the moonlight reflecting on the water, and felt ethereal quietness, and spaciousness that comes only at night, and makes you wonder if you are dreaming this. By the way, did you know that there are no mosquitoes on the water… just at the shore.

Here’s what we all missed…

This is what Jeffrey Sullivan captured just a few years ago.

We gave up and sat by the fire instead. The light from the fire outshone the moon, and the crowd grew.

I have no idea where these chairs came from…

One of my favorite things to do is to wake up in the morning, and look at the fire pit and see what trails we left behind that were invisible at night, and are fully illuminated in the morning.

No matter how much you try to turn your head when you see the school supply bins when you walk into the grocery store, you can’t deny that fall is coming.

You can see it in the way the grass is a bit browner than it was in May,  and yes, the air is chillier, but there were some cool nights in June and July like that too. But, this chill is different — winter is behind this chill. A good night’s sleep is simply behind a cold spell in the middle of summer. Yes, we are back and the lake, and I do have more Napa pics and stories, but I thought you might be sick of that by now. Plus, we’re at the lake, and Napa is so “yesterday.” Now that we’re back on the water, we can see so clearly, because of the color of the water,

 how different the light is than it was in June… and it’s precisely because the sun is sitting in a different spot in August than it was in June. I’m not talking about just at sunset… I mean all day long, the water looks different. There is a shadow in the water drops.

The water reflects this light, and now, even the water is a different color. It’s still blue… but it has a orange — something like that — cast to the water.

You could put me to sleep like Rumpelstiltskin, for 100 years, and when I woke up, I could tell you what season it is, just by the color of the water, from the reflection of the sun.

So boys, hurry up and catch your turtles and run free… the classrooms are calling your names.

He hand-caught a Rainbow Darter… it was about 4-6 inches long. A cute, shinny silvery thing. Of course, it was dead. But he wanted to “Plaque” it. We explained that it costs hundreds of dollars to do that to a fish, and it was better reserved for “big” catches. So, he decided to save his money up until he could afford to plaque it.

So, he kept it in a ziplock freeer bag in the freezer. And I let him. Because, you know, he has that face. He would open the freezer every morning to check on it… before going out to play.

This is his artist rendering of the specimen.

Then, in the process of packing to leave the lake, I found it again, among the frozen bread and marshmallows that were tumbling out of their bags. The fish was still encased in his ziplock home. I promised the boy I would pack it in the cooler and bring it home.

He just asked me about it a few days ago… I know it was in the cooler… but I have no idea where it is. Is it in the freezer upstairs, downstairs? Who knows? But someday, I think I might find a surprise waiting for me when I pull out a package of steaks to thaw.

Wreaths have never intrigued me… until I moved here. Wreaths are the unspoken beauty symbol in our neighborhood — and for years, I’ve caught myself taking different routes when I run errands, just to see what new wreaths pop up as the season/holidays change.

Wreaths are expensive… and I’ve noticed that all the good ones are “sold out” before I’ve even had a chance to snag one. Except for this gorgeous feathery-wreath I found at Halloween one year.

This wreath is my claim to “wreath fame”. No one has it in our neighborhood — which is a good thing, because  I can’t really, “copy” everyone in the neighborhood.

Now that I’ve found the wreath page on Pinterest, a whole new world has opened up for me. Sorry — but it came as a big surprise to me that wreaths can be made for very little effort… using stuff you have around your house that you acutally love — which truly gives your wreath the “spirit” I’m looking for.

Here are my first two wreath-making attemps — and because I was at the lake… I did it without a glue gun. Imagine that — I used real school glue.

The first was a simple burlap ruffle wreath, dime store flags that were sitting in a bucket, going unnoticed. My son emblesshed with key tags that say, “Merry Summer.” His idea.

The wreath form was a 5 cent garage sale wreath covered in gold tinsel… it was the ugliest thing  any of us had ever seen.

I simply wrapped the entire gaudy thing in burlap, left over from the curtains, (and these, and these) and then cut a few more 4 inch-wide strips of burlap. Then, I pulled a thread through the burlap (it has lots of loose strings) to make a ruffle…

then I glued each ruffle on, over and over again. OK… so I like wreaths… I enjoyed doing this.

The second wreath involved using an old pair of jeans and burlap a covered with a coat of red spray paint. I used a “lame” Christmas wreath I had — which I thought, in my pre-Pinterest days, was cool, that was covered in red beads. I simply made more ruffles of the strips of denim and burlap, and this time, wrapped them into a circle,

adding a vintage button from Grandma’s button collection on top.

A red burlap circle, on top of a denim burlap circle, or a jeans pocket. I can’t tell you how much I loved using up some of the stuff in my mom’s sewing collection. Because, why save stuff if you aren’t using it, right? And I just can’t justify throwing this stuff away.