Big Indian Lake....

Tom and Katie have a wonderful camp on Big Indian Lake in St Albans (St. Albans, for all you Massachusettsans, was on the news a couple of weeks ago because a tornado touched down there a few times...we could still see the damage up there!). It was so amazing of them to let us use the camp last week, and we did a quick overnight trip! A fantastic family retreat......

I love so much about the camp on the lake in St. Albans; in particular, I love the 'master bedroom' where Amanda and I slept, since it has a wonderful skylight and these expansive windows that look out over the lake. Callum loves it too!

And, of course, my other favorite feature is the old Atlantic wood cookstove adorning the kitchen/dining room area; I hope to have one of these someday, somehow. When we go to the Adirondacks, we do ALL our cooking on this. Plus, these old stoves probably heat a home better than our woodstove!

I just love this picture of Maira. I mentioned on facebook that this is the first picture I have taken of her in three and a half years where I can honestly say she looks like ME. Maira is such an interesting little girl, who defies rules of conventionality each and every day. She is a true minimalist; she NEVER wants anything when we were out at a store...even when we ask her if she would like a treat (unlike her brother, who wants anything and everything!). She has never slept with a pillow. And, as much as she loves Lupine lying with her (and as much as she LOVES her baby dolls and her stuffed animals), when it comes time for bed, she shuns all notions of anything else--living or unliving--and wants to lie down completely alone and go to sleep. She wants NOTHING on her bed. She is so good playing by herself, and she can entertain herself with her wonderful imagination and the most sparse of objects, as seen below, when she decided to forgo a paddleboat trip so she could collect 'flowers' for the 'wedding.' As you can see, all she has are green leaves of some sort. She did this for about a half hour without fail....

Mister C, however, was borderline obsessed with the paddleboat (see last summer's blog when he and Jake paddled it!) and wanted to go whenever possible. I think he loved the fact that he could virtually power the thing on his own--he is a strong peddler (from all his bike riding) and the steering stick was simple to work. We spent A LOT of time out there on the windy, wavy lake!!

Jawnny Croquette always is so generous with sending us books, and he recently sent us a new story illustrated by Kevin Hawkes, a Maine writer we put in touch with Jawn...and thus Jawn invited him to be a keynote speaker at a Nevada Library conference (we ran into Mr Hawkes, a wonderful illustrator and writer, at LL Bean one day). Callum and Maira got to share Jake and Megan's room at camp, so they loved that...and we read this story before bed (well...it was too much for Maira, and she picked out one of the kid's Bernstein Bears books instead....)

Even though the weather was wonderful, we still spent some time indoors playing with a) Jake's Playmobil Pirate ship, which Callum has loved all his life and b) this fantastic board game we found in the living room called MAKE OR BREAK where you are up against the clock to build differently shaped configurations of wood blocks. Callum is training early to become a superintendent at Moriarty Construkkkkkshin.....he even looks stressed already.....

And here is my beautiful (yet EXTREMELY fresh and strong willed) little co-captain driving the paddleboat. I just love her.