Lake Livin'

Never been one of those families who "did the lake" every weekend. Patrick was raised in the cool,wet bogs of Kerry and I was a Southside Chicago pavement pounder and we both came from huge families with no financial flexibility!

Fast forward to 2011 and the summer from Hades...literally it has been as hot as ...well you get the idea, right? This week was particularly extreme. We started the week with a trip into the city to meet up with some friends at a Guatemalan restaurant.  

I got the camera out in anticipation of getting pictures of the event but then the conversation took off and the heat crept up and up...

Notice how shiny Julia and little miss D's faces are in this picture? The little window unit over the doorway just could not keep up with the 100+ degree heat!!!

Didn't stop little miss D from teaching Mari how to download "mad chickens" AKA Angry Birds onto my phone though!!

By Tuesday we were so ready to flee the heat! All summer we have been taking Patrick's days off as a chance to head up to Aunt Agnes' lake house in Wisconsin. While it was every bit as hot in the Lake Geneva area where the 'cottage' is located there was....

THE LAKE!!!!!

BFF/Cousin Deirdre was with us, of course! But this week Auntie Peggy and Alyssa decided to join us "at the lake house". Funny thing about traveling with Auntie Peggy...she's a born nurse...I mean she had the nurse's gene from birth and there's a funny thing that happens with nurses....they have this kind of OCD like thing with cleaning!!

She just could NOT help herself !?!? Even Mother Nature has 'issues' she feels the need to correct....

Everything in its place and it seems, in Auntie Peggy's opinion, that aquatic vegetation does not belong in "the swimming hole"! Now looks can be deceiving. She felt the need to clean up these plants not out of a lack of sensibility to the balance of nature but out of a gardener's sense of clearing the the driveway of grass clippings...gathering the pulled weeds...

cleaning up after the water weed wacker thing!!!!! The things a city girl never knew about lake living...like how the lake has to be mowed regularly!?!?