Hi Friends! How’s your summer going? We just got back from a week at a lake house with my whole family. Let me tell you all about it.
My grandparents used to own a cottage in New Hampshire, and despite selling it in the early 70s, summers spent at the cabin are still some of the most popular topics of conversation in the Colbath family. So, this year, which happens to be my grandparents’ 70th anniversary year, one of my aunts rented a big house on a lake in Alton, New Hampshire, about a 15-minute drive from the old cabin. 
We didn’t really do much at the lakehouse, and that was the beauty of it. Every day we would all get up, eat breakfast together, and spend a few hours talking. Most mornings I’d make myself a cup of coffee and walk down the path to the lake so I could sit on the dock and enjoy the stillness of the morning. 
At some point everyone would begin to get dressed and start their days. I went for a few walks/runs in the mornings, and usually we’d all end up in the lake sometime before lunch. The afternoons were spent swimming, canoeing, snacking, and playing games around the house. Eventually someone would bring up dinner, and a few people would cook for the whole house. We’d sit outside after dinner and talk, watch the sunset, and I even convinced my 12-year old cousin to come swimming after dark one night. I may or may not have swam over to the neighbor’s giant inflatable raft and jumped off under the cover of darkness. Shh, don’t tell anyone.
I brought a bag full of baking supplies with me just in case anyone had a dessert emergency, and, as predicted, we did. I made chocolate chip cookies Monday night, and a strawberry-peach crisp Wednesday night. I also baked a batch of banana bread into muffins one morning, and ended up making burrito bowls for everyone Thursday night after posting them on Instagram and sending my sister Sarah into a burrito bowl craze. Really, she might be my blog’s number 1 fan. 
My dad took me on a tour of Alton Bay to show me all the places he loved going to as a kid (spoiler alert: most of them have since burned down), and despite searching for the elusive “blueberry mountain” they climbed as kids, we didn’t come across any hills covered in blueberries. To make up for it, we went blueberry picking the next day at Norland Farm. Ten of us packed into two cars and rode over to the farm, and we picked a ton of blueberries. I took home a big bag full and added them to my collection from Quonquont Farm in the chest freezer. We also found a spot full of wild blackberries, and loaded up on them, too. 
Spending the week with my family was absolutely wonderful. At our height, there were about 20 people in the house. Different groups of people came and went, so there was usually more like 15 at any given time. When the week was over, I didn’t want to leave. There’s something about spending time with my family that lifts the burdens of adulthood from my shoulders; wherever they are, I’m home.
I hope your summer has been full of slow days, soul-satisfying moments and time with the people you love. I’ll be posting plenty of back-to-school snacks and lunches soon, but for now, enjoy the rest of your summer!
