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Friday, June 7, 2013

My favorite place to be

I was blessed to be born into a family with a cabin. My great grandpa built it when my grandpa (my moms dad) was just a kid. It's a small cabin on a private lake. There are only two other cabin's on it and we have the only one right on the lake. I don't think it could be any more peaceful!

I was the only child in my family for 9 years so I didn't have any play mates up there. As a kid I loved running around with a butterfly net to catch frogs and toads. I'd collect them all in a bucket and before too long would let them all free. There's a pile of neatly stacked bricks that I would imagine was my castle and there's a tree I could hang out on for hours. I stayed up late with the adults and learned how to play poker at a young age. I never minded getting dirty and I can't remember a time when I wasn't okay with taking my own fish off the hook. Thanks to my time at the cabin I have never been afraid of spiders and (if it isn't huge) would kill one with my bare hand. My grandma would always let me sit on her lap once we got to the private dirt road that leads to our cabin and steer until we got there. Once I was tall enough to reach the pedals I got to switch spots with her and drive it myself. It was hard to hide the smile on my face while I was sitting in the driver seat. It was inevitable that by growing up at the cabin I would be shaped into the person I am.

Now, when I say it's small I mean that it's small! There's a room for a kitchen that can really only comfortably fit one person if they're busy cooking. The bathroom is a decent size (because it used to be a bunk bed room when we were allowed to have a working outhouse on the property) and then the rest of the cabin is one room. A twin bed, love seat, bunk bed and couch with a hideaway bed all sit along 2 walls with a dining room table in the middle. If everyone is seated at the table it's almost impossible to walk around it without someone needing to move to squeeze you through. There's been a trailer up there as long as I can remember for extra sleeping but back when I was a kid the cabin was perfect for fitting everyone. Now that my mom has three more kids, my aunt and uncle have three and we have two (plus my grandparents) it's impossible to fit us all in there at the same time. Someone always needs to pitch a tent and what if there's bad weather? Well, we have to keep an eye on the forecast before heading up there. Bad weather means we don't go.

Our little family (Andy, Levi, Rex and I) really enjoy going up there but we hate pitching a tent and I can never sleep good when I'm so easily accessible to the forest creatures and bad guys in the world. So, we had some money saved up and decided to buy ourselves a used pop up camper a couple days ago. We got the okay from my grandparents to park it somewhere at the cabin and we couldn't be more excited. Now we have our own little space up there and don't have to worry about where we will land when it comes time to sleep. Plus, we have odd weekends so it can be used by other people when we are not there. I plan to go up as much as possible this summer and can't wait!

My hope is that my kids will become shaped from their time at the cabin like I was. I want them to go on adventures in the woods, spend their weekends covered in dirt, sand or wet from the lake, learn how to start a campfire, bait their own hook, take fish off their own hook, catch frogs, learn how to drive a car and a boat and most importantly to unplug from technology and just be a kid.







11 comments:

  1. Soo pretty! I love your little cabin! I remember when Bobbi and I went up with you one time. Boy were we at a rebellious stage! Haha!

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    1. Remember hanging up towels around the pontoon so no one could see us as we tanned topless to not get tan lines? And someone didn't put sunblock on and got blisters on her boobs she burned so bad? Oh man.. I won't get into our other shinanagins! My mom reads my blog ;-)

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  2. I remember jumping off the deck in the middle of the lake and riding in the barbie jeeplake

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    1. Do you remember how it was storming when we got they're and we were locked out of the cabin for a while? The barbie Jeep was the best!

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    2. THERE.. not they're.. Thanks phone!

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  3. I will always remember the time I went up there with you and that stray dog stayed in the outhouse all night. We ended up peeing outside because we didn't want to use the bathroom with the dog. He jumped in your mom's car to try and come home with us too.

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    1. Oh my gosh I had completely forgotten about that! Haha.. Peeing on the hill seemed so challenging to me! We were laughing so hard. Good times! Man do I miss you!

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  4. Hi Emma. I heard about you through Chelsea and wanted to say hi. Love this post. What a fun memory. I always wished we'd had a cabin at a lake. Hopefully our family will in the future! Yay for making lots of fun memories this summer with your kids.

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    1. Thanks, Alyson! I'm glad you checked out my blog! I'm sure we'll be "seeing" each other around :-)

      Take care!

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  5. That is SO GORGEOUS! I too found you through Chelsea and wanted to say hi --and wow, I wish I'd grown up around a cabin/lake like this. Where is it?

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  6. Isn't it great? It's in central Minnesota.

    Thanks for coming to check out my blog!

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