When our kids were young we splurged and bought a boat. I had spent summers on Keuka Lake with my dad driving me and my friends around on his boat and Scott and I dreamed of giving our kids the same experience. We’d take our boat from lake to lake each summer, renting houses for a week at a time or putting the boat in the water for a day on summer weekends, all of us lamenting when the sun would start to go down and we’d have to get it back on its trailer to head home. We’d listen to audiobooks together on our often long drives home, sun burned and drowsy but very happy. We always looked around at the beautiful houses on the lake dreaming of a day we could afford to have our own. To spend a day on the lake and dock our boat at our house instead of hauling it back on the trailer to go back to Syracuse. Years later, when we were finally able to put an offer down on an adorable cottage on our favorite lake on the same street where I spent my summers as a kid, we were wildly happy! It was a dream we had worked toward for a long time. We rebuilt the house to make space for all of our friends and family and for several years now we’ve spent Thanksgiving, birthdays, graduations and summers on the lake with them - around the campfire, cooking, skiing, tubing, swimming and making some of our favorite memories as a family.