Mom's first visit.

Mom came in the first week of October to finalize a bunch of cottage plans. It's all happening!!

Sandy Pines!!

We had a pretty big weekend. It was Jodi's birthday on Sunday, her 35th. So Thursday night I had one of the girls from the salon out to the house to give Jodi a massage, which went great. Then Friday we left for Sandy Pines for the weekend!

Sandy Pines (http://www.sandypines.com) is a resort complex on an inland lake near Hamilton. Jodi's family had a cabin there when she was a kid, so she spent her summers there much like I spent mine growing up on Long Island. She hadn't been back since around high school or so, and she's been talking about it as long as I've known her.

Well, our friends the Okmas have access to a really nice trailer out there, one that's on the lake even (it's Tammy's mom's place). So they let us have it for the weekend, and it was just awesome. Friday night we unpacked and rode around in the golf cart some, then Saturday Matt & Tammy and the girls came out. We spent the day outside, pretty much, getting in a round of mini-golf and cruising around on the boat some (and the golf carts). The weather was perfect, which made the weekend even better. Thank you Okmas!

Sunday was gorgeous again, but we were pretty beat from the weekend so in the afternoon we packed up and headed home. At that point, even though it was technically the day of Jodi's birthday, we had really been celebrating it all weekend. Jodi got some cards and some chocolates, but we were pretty beat and spent the afternoon unpacking and getting ready for the work week. Great weekend though!

Side note: I did the photos sorted by day in the previous couple posts.

Saturday at Sandy Pines.

The photo of the blue trailer (on the left) is Jodi's family's place from way back. The trailer on the beach is Tammy's mom's, and it comes with two golf carts which we just loved tooling around in. Also, there's a great deck with a fire pit, a dock for the boat, and all kinds of toys. It's a great spot for people of any age, really!

Thursday Photos.

Just some shots of Connor while Mommy was upstairs getting her massage!

The Knotty Pine

On Saturday my buddy Matt Okma and I spent the day at the cottage, removing what we could salvage of the knotty pine. I'm saving it for when I finish the lower level of our house, which is a daylight basement with four big windows. The idea is that I can use the knotty pine as a half wall (the bottom), then drywall above it.

Of course the project was a little trickier than we hoped, and really it turned into the begining of the demolition of the house. By that I mean it's really no longer liveable out there, now that we're done. I got about 60' of knotty pine though, so that should be enough to finish the media room, if not the play room, which will be the other half of the project when I finally get going on it. Photos? You bet!

The LMBMSMAMFMWMSMLM

What's that you say? The LMBMSM... what? Sure, it's a mouthful, but allow me to explain. The first summer that we had our cottage (1999), my dad's best friend Larry Brosseit (he was like an uncle to my brother and me) came out to the lake with two of his two kids, Aaron and Abram (they are about the same age as Mark and I). Aaron brought this new game "Washers", which we played in the afternoon while we all sought valuable face time with Larry. Washers is played with two wooden boxes 25' apart (at the center of the pipe), 12" square on the inside of the box, and a 4" PVC pipe in the center of the box (about the height of a beer can). Two teams of two throw against each other, with the object of scoring 21 points first. As for scoring: inside the pipe is 5, inside the box but not in the pipe is 3, a leaner is 2, and close to, but outside the box and not touching it is 1. That's just the short story of course, as the nuisances of Washers would take a whole website. Which I am starting soon, but will not unveil just yet...

Well, little did we know that day of the tradition we had begun. Today the LMBMSMAMFMWMSMLM is the biggest post-Labor Day, invitation-only Washers tournament held in all of Idlewood!! Sadly, Larry passed away in the spring after the second year, and thus on year three we offically named the tournament the Larry M. Brosseit Memorial Straight Men's Annual Muster... well, you get the idea. So the tournament was great, but we had this crazy infestation of flies because the wind was out of the east. The flies were seriously something of Biblical proportions (think the plagues of the Old Testament... that darn Pharoh!!), and eventually the flies even got into the house as people were going in and out all day. That said, we still had a great afternoon, and the short story is that Matt Okma and Craig Johnston won. Note that this was the first year we did a draw for partners and seeding.

Grandpa Bast Visit!!

Connor got to see his grandpa Bast Friday night, and he was pretty excited about it. Grandpa was in town for the LMBMSMAMFMWMSMLM (What's that, you ask??? More on that later...), which was of course being held the next day (Saturday) at the cottage. So we talked a little washers strategy, but mostly he hung out with little man Connor. "C to the D", as they say.

Labor Day Weekend (Monday)

Pretty great Monday as well. Our friend Paul came out with his three kids, who are just terrific, and an old friend of my brother's, Blake, came out with his girlfriend and their beautiful little daughter. We spent the day on the beach, and it was a great way to end the summer. The tough part was accepting that it was, in fact, the end of summer. Just a couple beach photos to end the season.

Labor Day Weekend (Sunday)

I had a party planned for Sunday, for lots of good reasons. Do I need a reason to throw a party? Not really. But I had them. Two of my good friends and fraternity brothers from Hope were in town, both from pretty far distances, and both of whom I had not seen in years. Mike Lievense (Sebe) came in from Colorado, and Brett Baer came in from California. Since both have Holland ties (Brett's folks even live in Idlewood), and they wanted to see as many Hope people as they could, I agreed to act as host and have everyone over. The phrase "getting the band back together" comes to mind, to be sure.

So we had a great day again, with plenty of sun, beach, washers, etc. We had some kind of dinner at night, but since it was a while ago as I write this, I don't remember what we had. People didn't stay too late, but as I was getting ready to call it a night Brett stopped back over and we hung out on the deck talking politics for a couple hours. Brett is a big time leftist (although not quite with the 'black helicopter' crowd, thank goodness), but promises me I will be spared when the revolution comes. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

It was a great day with old friends, and we had a riot. Thanks to all.

Labor Day Weekend (Saturday)

We went to Holland Saturday morning, but decided to spend some time downtown before going to the cottage. We walked 8th street, doing some shopping, then we had lunch at one of my favorite old restaurants from my days at Hope: The Windmill. They are only open for breakfast and lunch, but they have the best home cooked food around.

After that we headed to the lake, and spent most of the afternoon on the beach. My brother and I even walked all the way down to the end of the pier, and even dove in a couple times. We hadn't done that in years, so it was a good way to spend the afternoon. After dinner the sunset was incredible, yet again.

Oh, and the laptop was a big hit, in that our neighbor has wireless internet and doesn't password protect his network. I've missed not having the internet at the cottage since we got it in 1998, so this is a great development! (Thanks Richard!)