Weekend Lake House

If you have been following along on Instagram, you’ve probably noticed I’ve unplugged a bit more on the weekends. And that I’ve also been posting quite a few more pictures of our family at the lake on the weekends.

At the beginning of the summer we stumbled upon a darling little lake house for sale in a community that we love. We actually lived in this same community many years ago when we had 4 little ones and my husband was a high-school football coach.

Houses in our area have been going incredibly fast, so we scheduled to see it the next day. We loved everything about it and put in an offer that night.

We closed on our little weekend lake house the last week of June and have spent most of our weekends there throughout the summer. I thought I would share a few answers to questions that I’m sure will pop up. As well as a little story about how the Lord has provided for our family over the past few years.

A Little Story

I know not everyone has been reading the blog since the beginning, so I thought I would share a little recap of our family’s journey since we were first married.

This October marks 15 years of marriage for us. We got married right out of college and moved to Texas where Travis had a job lined up coaching football and teaching. I helped teach middle school choir that first year of marriage before I hung up my “working outside the home” hat to start having babies.

Our first seven years of marriage Travis coached/taught while I stayed home to raise our babies. During those seven years I had many odd jobs to help us make ends meet (living on a single coach/teacher salary was HARD). I did childcare in our home, taught piano lessons, was a church pianist, had a sewing business where I made children’s clothing (Blue Cottage Kids… loved that little shop) and began blogging for an income.

We worked our tails off just to make ends meet. We lived on a very small income, but were so happy. There wasn’t ever any “extra”, but we never went without. During this time we moved to a small community that taught us how to love others well. We have so many sweet memories in this town and also some hard memories.

We were barely getting by financially and when we moved there I was struggling with postpartum depression (I had no clue at the time what it was). We made some hard decisions for our family and made the bittersweet move away from coaching. My husband took a sales job at an amazing company and has been there for over 8 years now (we started when Eloise was a new babe).

Over the past 8 years we have added 3 more babies (with another one due in January) and have worked hard to become debt free. My husband has worked hard at his job and I have worked on diversifying income streams through various online businesses (I’ll share more about this in another upcoming blog post).

I know I don’t have to share all of this, but I always love being encouraged by other family’s stories. We were given nothing and have worked hard to get to where we had the opportunity to buy a small lake home.

Our first home that we bought as newly weds was the exact same size as this little lake home. Just a little over 1,000 square feet. The Lord’s goodness with this gift is not lost on us.

Why did you buy a lake home?

There were several reasons we had begun looking at finding a small lake home.

• Our oldest daughter is in 8th grade this year and we know that our time spent with her in our home is dwindling. These years where all of our kids are under one roof are fleeting and we want to soak up every minute of them all together.
• After last year’s lock downs, quarantines and mask requirements, we knew we wanted to have somewhere to go for our kids where things felt normal. Traveling didn’t happen last year and even this year so many places still have restrictions. This isn’t a political comment, but merely what we felt was a good choice for our family. We wanted a tiny piece of normalcy and fun for our kids.

How big is the house?

It’s a 1,000 sq. ft home that has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It’s the perfect size for a weekend get away!

The boys all share the master bedroom and bathroom (it has a shower). We put up two bunk beds for them all to sleep in.

The girls share a bedroom and then we have Case in a pack-n-play in our bedroom. It’s cozy and has been such a sweet time over the summer.

What do you do while you’re there?

We don’t have a tv at the lake house and hardly any cell reception, which means we spend our time almost 100% technology free. It has been such a sweet time unplugging and enjoying each other’s company.

We have spent the weekends fishing, swimming, going on deer drives in the side-by-side, playing games and being outside.

Other Posts You Might Love

Here are a few other blog posts that I think you might enjoy reading:

• Living Small Series (The Kitchen): if you are in a season of life where you’re living in a small home and learning to find contentment right where you’re at, I think you’ll love this post. I share tips and tricks for living in a small space on a small budget.
• Day in the Life (September Edition): if you are curious what life looks like around here, I have a whole blog post written up about it.

Favorite Recipes

Here are a few of my favorite breakfast recipes that I make on our lake weekends. I think you’ll enjoy them too! All three of these recipes I can make before we leave and simply warm up for easy breakfasts.