A Week at the Cottage

We couldn’t decide what to do this year for our summer vacation. We debated road trips, using our airmiles to fly somewhere, camping, hotel stays, renting a cottage… Once we factored in price of gas, the fact that none of us are “campers”, our new family member (who happens to take up more space in the van than an adult) and that Scott and I wanted to just RELAX… we decided that a cottage would be the best choice. We had never rented a cottage before and didn’t really know where to look, so we went to google. I pulled up a cottage rental website and we ended up renting the very first one we looked at. I’m a shopper… I would have spent days looking around, searching for the perfect place – but not Scott… he’s a self-proclaimed buyer. I’m so thankful that I trusted him and went with this place! We ended up getting an amazing deal, and it was the ideal place for our rather large family!

After cramming everyone and everything into the van for a week away – we were off!

Lily fell asleep 10 minutes before we left our house. She was not impressed when we woke her up to put her back into her car seat. She may have cried half the way there…

The cottage had three bedrooms upstairs with three queen size beds. There was another bedroom in the basement, two more single beds, and couches in both the main floor living room and the basement.

From the day that we booked the cottage, the kids and I began praying every night that we would have good weather for the week that we were there. Up until the day that we left it was forecasted to thunderstorm the entire week. I’m not going to lie… I was checking the weather forecast several times a day hoping to see it change… While we were driving up to the cottage we drove through a storm system and that was the last drop of rain that we saw all week. Praise God for hearing out children’s prayers! They never once worried about the weather…

No joke… this was our view out the back window all. week. long.

We had a private beach and shallow water for about 100 feet out. The kids had a blast catching tadpoles, minnows, crayfish, clams, and even fireflies!

Scott built his very first campfire. Thankfully Jessica was there to give us some guidance. :)

We spent many hours rowing around with the kids. After Scott had been fishing for several hours and nothing to show for it, he took me out with Prayer. We watched him fish. I fought the wind to try and keep the canoe form blowing into the rocks. Finally, I convinced him to let me try. Two minutes later, I caught my very first fish EVER! I may have screamed the entire time I was reeling it in. Scott was kind enough to hold my fish for a picture… ;)

The kids kept trying to fish off the dock and I just kind of laughed thinking that it was way too shallow to catch anything there. Sure enough, Keona caught a sunfish. She was quite proud of herself!

The dog was terrified of the water. If we even called him down to the beach, he would run to the house and try to get into his crate.

Eventually Scott gave up trying to reason with him and threw him in! He stayed in with the kids for a few minutes, but that was the end of it.

We pretty much lived off of fruit, PB & J sandwiches and BBQ’d food. Lily was always my lunchtime helper. The bigger kids weren’t interested in leaving the beach until the very last moment.

We had a deer walk down the road in front of the cottage. We watched it graze in the field across the street every day. This was a big deal to us city folk!

We drove into town one day to grab some extra fruit and we drove through a very Amish area. The kids were in awe watching the horse-drawn carts and ladies in long dresses and bonnets. We went out again later in the week and I brought my camera. Scott asked why I was bringing it and I said, “In case we see deer, or moose…” and Prayer pipes up, “Or Amish people!” I explained that it wouldn’t be polite to take pictures of them. The triplets understood, as they’ve had people ask to take pictures of them on several occasions!

We played board games when the sun was high. Scott was pretty sun burnt after the first few days.

Lily loved the beach and water. She sat in the sand for hours just filling a bucket with sand and then dumping it out, over and over again.

Scott started to get sick in the middle of the week. By Wednesday night we knew he had a sinus infection. We spent Thursday morning driving around to find a walk-in clinic. We made the best of it and found a really fun park for the kids to play in while we killed time. He was able to get some antibiotics and we headed back to the cottage just after lunchtime. We were supposed to leave on Friday morning, but decided it might be better to leave really late on Thursday night and drive while the kids could sleep. As we were packing the van to go, it started to thunder. The boys were out on the canoe and we quickly called them in because it looked like the storm was coming in quickly. I think it just appeared that way because we could see so far off because it didn’t rain at all until we were driving home.

I didn’t take as many pictures as I had planned because I was so busy having fun with the kids. My iPhone definitely came in handy down on the beach.

From waking up to gorgeous sunrises on the lake, watching deer graze in front of the house, the beautiful humidity-free weather, the perfect beach for kids, catching fish, roasting marshmallows, seeing fireflies for the first time, and watching the sunset on the other side of the lake every night… We just felt so spoiled. God went above and beyond what we had asked or hoped for.

I think the pop may be kicking in…