Fully immersed in our summer of fun, we picked up the kids from their Winshape Camp on Thursday and drove the four hours down to Lake Oconee in Georgia to settle into a family weekend of lake fun with Nana, Uncle Stat, Aunt Cara, Kyla, and Lacey. We arrived late and chatted for a bit before hitting the hay so we’d be ready for a fun and full day on Friday.

And fun and full it was! Nana has accumulated a plethora of lake toys and with the girls at ages 10, 9, 8, and 6 now, they wake up ready for a full day of fun. We started the mornings off before they woke up though we coffee on the porch and a 3 miles walk with Finley. Mom, David and I took her on a loop each morning where she could run off leash and it worked wonders for taking the energetic edge off of her for the day.

After breakfast we headed out for boating and knee boarding, which everyone had a blast with (except for the waiting for their turns part…).

The lake slowly filled up with more boats and we took that as our cue to head back to the house. The kids couldn’t get enough of the water though, so they stayed in, kayaking and playing “queen of the mat” until we had lunch ready and dragged them in.

After fueling up they were ready to head back out for kayaking, tubing, and more swimming off the dock. Now that they are all out of needing naps or quiet time to get through a day, it’s amazing to see just how much go go go energy they have. Us adults did our best to keep up! After dinner the kids snuggled into watch Swiss Family Robinson (as part of our “movies we must watch before our Orlando Disney trip” initiative). I don’t think I’ve actually seen it, but they really enjoyed it.

We thought that perhaps Friday’s fun would leave them waterlogged, but alas they bounced up the stairs the next morning requesting more tubing and jet skis. We obliged until, again, the lake started getting full midday and I wasn’t as comfortable trying to sling them off the jet ski with so many additional motors nearby.

Instead we packed things up and headed to the pool for the afternoon. You knew it was warm because Nana hopped right in, meaning the pool was on the same temperature level as bath water. 🙂

We played a marathon game of monkey in the middle then tossed coins into the pool for the kids to search for, and subsequently divide evenly so they all made out with a treasure of $0.62.

Back at home we showered off, made a fajita bar, and Kris made us martinis that would make Dad proud. We settled into an evening of chatting and porch guitar playing (Cara and David providing the excellent guitar playing while Kris and I belted out the words in our terribly off tune way and Mom did her best to convince us we weren’t as tone deaf as we know we are). While we provided musical entertainment, the kids ran around the backyard collecting frogs until way past their bedtimes.

A predicted, the weekend flew by it a happy, waterlogged whirlwind. I don’t know if my kids realize at this stage how fortunate they are. I’m sure they don’t, because that’s the beauty of childhood, just living in the moment. But I hope when they are older that they might reflect back on these summer days spent playing in the sun with their cousins, surrounded by family that loves them, eating delicious food and lunch dessert, and know just how special these times are, just as I do now.

We took them for one last wild tube ride Sunday morning before packing up and heading back home. It’s so hard to leave family, but just makes me realize how much we love each other.

Now we’re looking forward to the week. We have a championship swim meet for Hailey, but otherwise it’s looking like a rather lowkey week of reading Harry Potter (we are almost done!), actually following a meal plan, trying to troubleshoot my porch plants (or perhaps just redo them all; I don’t know why they are struggling so much this year), and getting the house in order to host friends for 4th of July weekend.

How is summer treating you? Are you enjoying the longer daylight hours and less structure or is it making you feel all thrown off? I hope you have a great week!