Tag: lake house

a summer garden and turning 40

MarthaKimballLeave a comment

Well, hello there. Strange to see summer green and barefoot babies in the deep of winter, I would guess. I hope you don’t mind as I catch up on memories and moments from our year. Our garden began this year as it does most years, beautiful and lush before slowly succumbing to weeds and preoccupation. The best of intentions always give way to the busyness and heat.

I celebrated a big birthday this summer, my 40th, with family at our favorite restaurant and my parents spoiled me with diamond earrings! Brandon and I took the kids to our favorite lake nearby for a long weekend getaway to celebrate, which was the only gift I asked for. We rented the sweetest cutest A-frame cottage and enjoyed every minute of being together there.

It was truly the best birthday. Everyone enjoyed being away together at the lake and had endless fun swimming, kayaking, and fishing. As if that wasn’t spoiling enough, Brandon surprised me with a spinning wheel! Truly a dream. It was one of those times when your heart aches a bit with the purity and beauty of it all and you never want it to end, a little foretaste of glory.

I’ll share a bit more from our summer in my next post!

respite

MarthaKimball2 Comments

Ever since we visited this beautiful, quiet lakehouse last year we’ve been anticipating and hoping to return. We saved and planned, then held plans loosely as life came with interruptions and the world faced a pandemic. So we felt especially grateful and blessed to return to this place. This time we knew what to expect, how wonderful it would be. Did I mention how quiet it is? How good it was to ease into a different sort of rhythm, early sunrise mornings on the dock, late starlit evenings there, too. The peaceful sounds of crisp leaves and lapping water. Long stretches of time together without the usual bustle of schoolwork, activities, and work vying for our attention. We savored swimming, playing, fishing, knitting (for me), canoeing, exploring, reading, resting. It was a sweet and needful time of reconnecting with God, with each other, in the beauty of creation. It felt like summer’s last hurrah, the last of the sunscreen slathered on. The water was icy cold and yet it was refreshing when the sun was blazing. One night we had wild winds and freezing temperatures, which gave us the most stunning misty sunrise on the lake the next day. I couldn’t imagine getting back in that freezing mountain lake water then but by mid-morning it was toasty warm again. Such is fall in the mountains. Noah and Philippa fished and fished, and I was so disappointed for them that they never caught anything. Brandon caught the only two fish of the trip.

Still it was a happy time together, many sweet memories made in the sweet month of October with beautiful leaves changing all around. It couldn’t have been more needed after a year like this year, and I know so many of you understand. I hope you have been able to find respite, too. When Brandon and I paddled all around the lake with the children in the canoe it seemed so strange, all of us tucked neatly into this one little boat. All this love and noise and life contained in this one little vessel, so small in the world, Brandon and I carrying us forward, directing, safe-keeping. Their easy trust and childlike dependence, such a precious gift. Brandon and I, too, looking in dependence to our Father as we make our way in this wild world, hoping to do some good for Him in it all, carried by His grace.