"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life." ~ Mark Twain

It's part of the plan: rent a gorgeous lake cabin this summer with some of our closest friends. We spend most summer weekends together anyway - why not share a place we can all boat, grill, party and relax together?

Over the last few days, Andi and I spent our second weekend at the cabin and the first one sharing it with our couple friends. I've talked to quite a few people who were suprised we've entered into such an agreement with our friends, wondering how we'd "tolerate" each other? were we worried it would come between our friendship? I am happy to say cabin life this weekend was easy and fun. Everyone pitched in and helped cook, clean, etc. It was great to have close friends together to hang out on the lake, friends to sit by the fire with and to hit up the local towny bars, too.

Some of the group

Joe's grilling up some lunch

Andi's closest frineds
Brian (L), Joe (R)

Saturday forecasted 85 degrees and sunny and unfortunately it was rainy, windy and cold. Danielle and I made the best of it by grocery shopping for the weekend while the boys put the dock and pontoon in the water. The weather warmed up later in the afternoon so we were able to fish off the pontoon and sit outside, albeit bundled up in pants, hoodies and blankets. It is May in Minnesota after all, can't complain too much.

Andi caught a fish!

Brian did too ...

they were little and plentiful

Andi's friend Brian (one of the cabin renters) just got a new puppy named Indy who he brought to the lake this weekend. Chloe was not Indy's biggest fan - she chased and pounced on Chloe with her big puppy paws which didn't sit well with my little princess. So I spent most of the weekend breaking up the two!

Indy

My Chloe girl catching some rays

Saturday night we tried out Crosslake's bar shuttle. For $5 a head (seriously, $5!!) a shuttle bus picks you up at your house and takes you to the local towny bars. They'll take you from bar to bar if you call and then pick you up at bar close to take you home. Best. Service. Ever. We made good friends with the driver because I'm sure we'll see him plenty this summer.

Our first towny bar experience attributed to the following learnings:

1) Forever 21 must have had a gigantic sale. The amount of plether shirts and pants were endless.

2) It's OK to bring kids - toddlers even - to bars in town. Because why not, right? OMG.

3) Dirty dancing is big here. BIG. This will be a problem since dancing and I don't mix.

We achieved our 80's and sun on Sunday and spent most of the day on the water, soaking up the heat and doing plenty of fishing off the pontoon. The cabin's seriously my favorite place in the world these days. It's our own piece of paradise. A busy week then back to the cabin for Memorial Day where I'm guessing things could get a little crazy ...