Hello Lake House. We're Home.

When we were little kids, this was our backyard.



This was dinnertime.



And this was how our dad drove to work.



Then when we were a little older, we moved to suburbia, where it's required that your garage is the largest, most protruding feature of your house.

We didn't mind because we liked our Nintendo and our Rollerblades (sidewalks at last!) our new accessibility to McDonald's (fast food at last!) and of course... (cable at last!) our MTV

But our dad... well, he was especially attached to that house on the water, and was never quite the same.



Mom and Dad did things to cope. Like build this pond with working waterfall in the backyard. But no bass to catch in there. Just giant goldfish. I mean, it did come in handy though...



... as a backdrop for Kathleen's risqué homemade (i.e., mom-made) Little Mermaid costume.

On a sidenote, Kathleen wore that costume constantly. However the day she did wear it to school for Halloween she shivered and waddled (no side-slits mom) all the way to the bus-stop. It was a chilly October day but she refused to wear a jacket over her costume. Anyone surprised? Didn't think so.



So flash forward twenty-some years and our parents have just moved into their new lake house. It's still in a suburb of sorts, in a neighborhood in the city closer to us kids. This has been a really big deal, because our parents house is basically the epicenter of all our weekends. That's Kathleen's car on left, mine on right.

Mom and Dad basically bought the place in one afternoon after looking at only one other house. They really weren't even in the market, but Jeremy saw the place on Zillow, my parents got Kathleen and Jeremy's realtor to take them by, my Dad conveniently had his fishing rod (yeah, how convenient) in the back of their tiny Honda Fit, dropped the line into the little lake out back, caught a fish, and yelled out (like screamed really 'cause mom and I were checking out the garden tub in the upstairs bathroom at the time and could hear him)... "SOLD!"

Simon the realtor said it was his easiest sell ever. We told him he should take a fishing rod with him on all his showings.



So hello new backyard, new weekends of hanging out on the back porch, in the hammock, on the water.

And all that's just the normal stuff. Ah.. new neighbors, what you don't know about the clan that just moved in next door could fill a book. Wait 'til we unpack the Halloween decorations (maybe that Little Mermaid costume is still in the bottom of a trunk somewhere, I'm sure Kathleen would love to squeeze back into it.) Wait 'til Donny's burlesque/vaudville troup comes through on tour, resting their road-weary trailer in my parents' drive at Thanksgiving. Wait 'til our entire family is trying to slide around on the frozen lake in our tennis shoes at Christmas, which my husband can't wait to try. They probably won't even realize that only our parents live there.

Hello new views, new nooks, new crannies, new piano room. Our history fits nicely here.

And of course...





Hello new place of honor for the Havalina. We think you'll like it here.



Dad sure does. Of course, he's only been waiting twenty-three years to come home.