10th Anniversary of the Lakehouse

We just got home from the family lakehouse trip. It was our 10th annual trip! And I can say hands-down it was the BEST ONE YET!!

We had so much fun and the kids were great!

Here are a "few" pictures.

I love how in these first pictures of the little girls you can see why this was such a great trip. Aspen and Dillon were fishing. Kylie wanted too, but there weren't any more fishing poles. Watch the progression... LOVE!

1. Kylie watching.

3. Kylie touching the pole.

 4. Aspen moving the pole between them so they can fish together!

Makes me tear up. :)

Now on to the photo overload!

 

I realized that as usual, I was taking all of the pictures and not in any.. so I asked Maddie to take some. Here is her picture of one of my sisters. 

Awesome!!

And the picture of me. thanks. I'm the one under the umbrella. One of my other sisters is laying on the island. Thanks, Maddie. :/  

Guess I should have requested the glamorous shot!

And back to more pictures.... 

My mom on the jet ski.

One night there was an air show. It was really cool to watch it from the dock! 

And I can't finally, the family picture escapade! Don't you just love how I set up my camera!! It only took two cameras on timers and a few tries to get a decent picture.

And that is a quick recap of the lakehouse adventure!

no lakehouse trip for us this year

We are supposed to be at the lakehouse this week. Remember?

My side of the family goes to the lakehouse for a redneck time of it during the week of July 4th. I've blogged about it in 2012, and 2009. The girls and I should have left Wednesday morning... but Maddie woke up Tuesday in a bad asthma attack. She couldn't talk for HOURS because it was so bad.  I am very, very thankful that we have written instructions and specific guidelines for treating an asthma flare. But this meant that we were looking at the next couple of days of breathing treatments every 4 hours and then beginning a taper IF she was better.

So... Tuesday evening I met my sister Libby in a parking lot about an hour away from our house and handed off Lexi so that at least Lexi got to go to the lakehouse. Sending my child to the lakehouse without me was scary.  I'm not good at the letting go part of parenting. But I guess this can count as Lexi's "summer camp" experience!

As of today, Maddie still has a wet cough and needs breathing treatments at least every 4 hours. Thankfully her peak flow is back up, but that's on the every 4 hour treatments. So I guess I'll call the doctor tomorrow.

Obviously the lakehouse is out for us this year. 5 families in a 3 bedroom + bunkroom 2 bath house just doesn't sound like the place Maddie needs to be right now.

I promised her that our little family would do something "lakehouse-ish" this summer.

Great. Do you know how many times I have said we would do something that I never planned to do because I am so sad that Maddie has missed out on yet another event!

Our Annual Lakehouse Adventure

Our annual lakehouse trip with all of my side of the family was a huge success.  I think I enjoyed this year more than any before!

The house we stayed at was wonderful a large kitchen and nice bathrooms. Yes, those are two of the most important parts of a house when you have 20 people. One of best things for me this year was the house was 30 minutes from home, so I only spent one night and was able to come home and sleep in my own bed the rest of the time!

Vacations with lots of kids is work, but so worth it.  I loved watching my children play with my sister's children!  How lucky we are that my kids have playmates in their cousins! Maddie and Abby are the same age and were able to be cool tweens together while Lexi and Dillon, again close in age, played and fished and then we have the 3 musketeers, or maybe 3 adorable monsters... Kylie, Aspen and Hudson.  They are hysterical together. All 3 talk constantly and are bossy!  But soo cute.

And there you have a quick look at our Maxwell Lakehouse Adventure number 8.



Interactive pages and a chance to win a gift!

Don’t you just love looking at scrapbook pages where you know the people had fun.. well, I do :) So creating this scrapbook spread was very enjoyable as I couldn’t help smiling at all of our antics out on the lake!  I have so many pictures that I chose to dedicate one spread to outside adventures and I’ll do another of the inside craziness!

First, once again I have used one of my premade pages as my base.  That just makes all the difference in the world.  Instead of spending time deciding how I am going to make the page, I use the time to do a few “extras” like an accordion card incorporated into the page, a few tags for journaling and I used one of the incredibly handy flip flaps from CTMH!

Here is a close up of the left side of the page with the flap closed.

And here it is open

Here is the right side of the page with the accordion card closed.

And here it is open

Can you believe I got so many pictures on one spread?? Leave me a comment as to the number of pictures I used on the spread and I’ll send a random lucky person a little gift!!

Thankful Thursday

Lake house 2009 has come and gone.  

It is so much fun to play with family, but man am I tired by the time we get home!  With all of the family together, I am reminded how special our family is and how lucky we are that we get along and play and at the end of our vacation we still all like each other!!Isn’t the “island” so cool!! We had a blast playing on our floating island.  It seated 6 adults, had 2 reclining areas, 2 ice chests, a loading dock, an anchor and even a swimming hole in the center!

This year we were back on Cedar Creek Lake and the house was a wonderful size complete with 5 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 2 half baths, 4 dining tables and lots of play space.  That may seem like a lot of space but when you have as much energy and craziness as our brood, that space is engulfed quickly!!

Here a a few pictures from the adventure! See if you can count us all….  I’ll help!

The list includes:

• Mom and Dad
• Oldest daughter Libby and her husband Mike and their kids Carter, Abby and Dillon.
• Second daughter, Me and my husband Doug and our girls Maddie and Lexi.
• Third daughter Melody and her husband Brad and their daughter Sissy.
• Fourth daughter Katy and her husband Kyle and his parents Lonnie and Cindy.

View Full Album

Next year we will add 3 more children to the mix!!