doing the lakey weekend thing

We went to Cooperstown a few weekends ago.  My mom has a place on the lake, so Ali and I went up with our families and met up with Mom and Steve for some fun. 

It's so nice and relaxing there... we spent tons of time on the lake - we don't usually go into town at all.  In fact, I have never even been to the Hall of Fame!  Not that it's really on my to-do list.  No offense to all of the people that have it on their to-do lists or anything, it's just not really too interesting to me.

The town is pretty neat though.  I like a place with a cool main street, neat little shops and a five and dime type of store or two.  The one time we did go into town, Alex and I walked along the main drag and grabbed some yummy ice cream cones for a minute. 

The lake is gorgeous, and there are so many nice houses and little cottages to look at.  In fact, we're strongly considering a great deal on a little lake cottage fixer-upper there, and we got a chance to walk through it and check it out. 

I love little lake cottages.

Fishing cousins. 

Brooke's first catch of the summer!

My big catch.  Yuck.

Anyway, there was fishing - tons of fishing.  There was marshmallow roasting and speed boating and slow boating and lake swimming and tubing.

Brooke had her first tubing encounter, and loved it.  After lots of "slow down!" signals, she started getting braver and turned into a little daredevil.  Alex could not be dumped - he was quite the champ. 

The "slow down" signal

Woohoo!

There was eating and barbecuing and coffee drinking and yapping.  The kids used the paddle boat to paddle around, and they did tons of happy running dock leaps. 

Such a great way to spend a few beautiful days.

friday

Been trying to write a Friday five minute purge all day.  Like, the whole point is to only spend five minutes writing, and I can't seem to get five minutes to sit down and focus here for even a minute!

It's the beginning of a nice long weekend.  Alex the birthday boy took the day off (absolutely shocking), so we kind of have a good four days to do stuff, anything really.  It would have been a great week for camping actually, my camper is all serviced and ready to roll, just don't exactly have a vehicle that can pull it with anymore.  Hm.  So that means we either need to trade it in for a driving camper (wooHOO!  I'm in!), trade my momivan in for like, a vehicle with a hitch (this will do), or just get a hitch put on the van.   I guess the most logical option would be to get a hitch put on the van.  Darn it. 

So anyway, we're going to my mom's camp in Cooperstown.  It's supposed to be a gorgeous weekend, which will be great for boating and water stuff.  The kids love that.  Megan went early with Mom this morning, and we'll go tomorrow.  At least one of my sisters will be there too, so it should be a good, fun, relaxing time. 

Thursday the kids start their new school year!  They are actually looking forward to it, so that's good.  We're finally pretty much finished with back to school shopping stuff, thank Cod - just need a few little things and some haircuts.  So there you have it.  Five minutes are up.

Happy Friday guys!  Hope you all have a nice holiday weekend.