Lake House

The only way to describe our life these days is Crazy! When Robb's grandpa Myron passed away, we inherited some farm ground and long story short we sold that and things have gotten crazy around here. I now know the meaning of 1031, and many other official terms that have been tossed around but to make it simple we had to purchase property that we would be using for income. So......Why not a Lake House. This was a dual purchase between Bob and Susie and Robb and I. We are a very small piece of the pie here but this is Robb's dream come true! It all happened pretty fast. Andy found a couple houses on Capital Beach that he wanted to go look at and 48 hours later and many discussions on how exactly this would work we were making an offer on a lake house.

Our plan is to use and enjoy the lake house but to also rent it out on Home Away and Air B&B as a vacation rental. Robb and I will manage it and have it to play at and boat at and Bob and Susie will have somewhere to stay when they come down for the weekends.

It has been a blast this summer! I really feel like I can go on a mini vacation that is 5 minutes from our house. The kids love it and Robb is in 7th heaven having a lake that he can boat on during the week. We have spent 2-3 nights a week this summer at the lake house living it up at the lake. The kids go paddle boarding, swimming, boating, they play in the hot tub and the sauna. Once Robb got a railing put up all along the deck it was much more enjoyable to have Emerson there too.

 

Here is  a picture of the outside of the house.

This is the deck and back of the house.

I have learned how to take care of and balance chemicals in an 8 person hot tub or hot baf (bath), as Emerson calls it. This is her favorite place to swim. We just leave the heater off and the water just stays heated from the sun. It is really enjoyable!

The water at Capital Beach is salty due to the salt deposits in the area and it's a little hard to get used to but it is fun to have somewhere to swim and boat.

We purchased some of the furniture with the house but Susie and I were in charge of furnishing the remainder of the house. I must say that this was a pretty fun chore although it was a lot of work.

Living Room

The master bedroom in this house is amazing! At one point Robb was really contemplating just making this our house.

Second bedroom.

I often find myself feeling guilty for the good fortune that we have had in life. It is not anything that we have asked for and it is not anything that we deserve but I hope that we can make great investment choices and be able to pass this on to our children someday.

Happy Birthday Bryce and Caleb

They wore us down and we finally decided to cave and get a trampoline. Robb has said NO to this request for years now. He had many reasons, almost all of them related to his yard. Now that we have the new house to look forward to we decided to go ahead with it against our better judgement. Since it is impossible to wrap a trampoline we made them stand in the garage facing the other way while we drug it out of the car.

After hours of assembly, it was ready for jumping. They LOVED it!

It is hard to believe that these handsome boys are 9 already.

Grandma and Grandpa Lutz and Andy

Megan and Lain

Mitch and Courtney

Grandma Hansen

Grandma Jody

John

Steph and Draven

Grandpa and Grandma Mattern

Happy Birthday boys!

Happy 9th Birthday Bryce and Caleb

My boys are getting so grown up! They are now into that odd in between age where they aren't little anymore but they aren't really old enough either. They are starting to chose friends over family and there are times when Mom and Dad aren't cool. But on the other hand they still need us and there are times when they still really want to spend time with us. Little things have happened lately that really remind me that they are getting older. I carried Bryce in from the car when he fell asleep the other day and his feet dangled to the floor and I had a hard time picking him up. Caleb came to sit on my lap (which is a rare occurance) and I couldn't see over top of him. He was heavy and he smelled sweaty stinky not little boy stinky. I love these guys! They were our first loves and no matter how tall, heavy or stinky they get they will be our little boys.

Their birthdays fell on a Friday this year so we had their friend party that night. We have had an odd June and the weather has been extremely rainy and cool. We went with a pretty small party so that it wouldn't be a disaster if the weather didn't cooperate. Bryce and Caleb wanted to invite a few neighbor kids and school friends over for some water games and kickball. It was chilly but all the boys ended up getting wet.

They also choose 2 boys to spend the night. Having 4 little boys in our house is always a bit interesting so we don't do sleepovers often but they had fun. Ethan and Kasten ended up spending the night.

Instead of a cutsie cake the boys wanted brownie sundaes. It was much easier for me but I do miss making cute cakes.

Playing a game of basketball.

These boys are great friends and are such a fun group.