My father has just sold his lake house, which he bought in 1997. It's on the beautiful (but prosaically named) Blue Lake, surrounded by gorgeous birch and Norway pine trees. This weekend, then, was the last hurrah of many years of visits. It was a poignant weekend, made more unsettling by the removal of most of the furniture on Sunday. (Jeremiah took possession of that to furnish his new house, which he just closed on last month. A sign of the crazy housing market: he bought it for just 47% of the purchase price the previous owners paid in 2006! They had an ARM and the bank foreclosed when the higher rate kicked in. What a great investment now for Jeremiah!)
My father does a great job managing the forest on his tens of acres on the lake, thinning out the problematic trees and turning them into firewood. I conned my sisters into packing their covered trailer full of firewood to haul back to our house to supply our fireplace for the winter. The trailer was overloaded, so we caravaned back just in case the trailer blew a tire because of the extra stress. It was a good thing we took the precaution, because a tire did go flat . . . on Katie's PT Cruiser! It was very helpful to have Missy and Tina's help with that, as we transferred the small amount of wood from the back of the Cruiser (overloading their trailer even more) while I put replaced the fully inflated right rear tire with the miniature spare tire and then replaced the flat front right tire with the fully inflated full-size tire from the right rear. (A call to Dad got the advice to have full size tires on the front, as the Cruiser is front-wheel drive.)
Katie was very nice in letting me play a couple of games with my family. She does not enjoy games like the Andresens do (we're insanely competitive) and was wonderfully patient through two grueling sessions of cards. I actually wish she'd been less patient, though, because I lost both games. I was leading each for a spell, though, so I'll stay content with that. Missy won both, orchestrating an heroic come-from-far-behind victory in the second game.
Here's a family portrait in front of the house taken back in 2002. I was hoping to get a similar photo taken this weekend, but I completely forgot to take any pictures at all!
Is it pretentious to say "an heroic victory" instead of "a heroic victory"? I used to scoff at "an historic event" but now I've made the switch.
My father does a great job managing the forest on his tens of acres on the lake, thinning out the problematic trees and turning them into firewood. I conned my sisters into packing their covered trailer full of firewood to haul back to our house to supply our fireplace for the winter. The trailer was overloaded, so we caravaned back just in case the trailer blew a tire because of the extra stress. It was a good thing we took the precaution, because a tire did go flat . . . on Katie's PT Cruiser! It was very helpful to have Missy and Tina's help with that, as we transferred the small amount of wood from the back of the Cruiser (overloading their trailer even more) while I put replaced the fully inflated right rear tire with the miniature spare tire and then replaced the flat front right tire with the fully inflated full-size tire from the right rear. (A call to Dad got the advice to have full size tires on the front, as the Cruiser is front-wheel drive.)
Katie was very nice in letting me play a couple of games with my family. She does not enjoy games like the Andresens do (we're insanely competitive) and was wonderfully patient through two grueling sessions of cards. I actually wish she'd been less patient, though, because I lost both games. I was leading each for a spell, though, so I'll stay content with that. Missy won both, orchestrating an heroic come-from-far-behind victory in the second game.
Here's a family portrait in front of the house taken back in 2002. I was hoping to get a similar photo taken this weekend, but I completely forgot to take any pictures at all!
Is it pretentious to say "an heroic victory" instead of "a heroic victory"? I used to scoff at "an historic event" but now I've made the switch.
Glad to hear you guys got away and had some fun (even if you lost at cards)!
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