Cabin 2009

Around the end of June we spent a week at our family cabin at Hume Lake. This involved a lot of firsts for us: the first time with just us (i.e., just the six of us! - usually Laurie's sister and her family join us), the first time we had to plan all of the meals ourselves, and first time we didn't bring our espresso maker (we're such compromisers!), among others. We had a great time, though. Lots of day hikes, a bit of frisbee golf in the pines, some relaxing time on the deck, BBQ'ing almost every night, cruising around like royalty in the golf cart, and of course corn dogs and milkshakes down at the snack shack.

Danny has an annual tradition of doing a few cabin-improvement projects. This year he and the kids removed a stump, installed a small stone revetment wall along the driveway, and did a good deal of general tidying up. Here he is terracing a level walking path around part of the deck. Little work, big improvement. Jordan is helping with some of the heavy lifting.


One of the favorite activities of all younger kids at the cabin is quality time spent in the dirt. Here, Jordan is involved in some type of dirt reallocation project. At one point, the dirt was reallocated scoop after powdery scoop into her happy mouth.

Prepare yourselves for this: here's Isaiah, a day after he took a spider bite (at least we think that's what it was) to the upper eyelid/brow region. It was really disturbing to look at him for a day or so, but the swelling just went away on its own.

Grandma and Grandpa Frese came to visit us for a day while we were there. Grandma was pretty excited about extracting some happiness from Joel:

Another of Danny's annual traditions at the cabin is trying - and failing - to make fire using the bow/drill method. As in, you start with a pocket knife and a shoelace, you carve some pieces of wood, and make one piece spin against another fast and hard enough to produce a smoldering pile of dust, which you then use to start a fire. Danny thought this was his year, since he learned that Cedar is the only type of wood in the area that will work for this. He had a few nice tries - lots of smoke - but again failed. Danny swears that this is one of the most extraordinarily difficult (and frustrating) things one can ever attempt. The event involved Laurie's encouragement (with a twinkle in her eye that was pure mockery) and videotaping.

Getting ready (with an audience):

Smoke. No spark.

Consolation was found with some hammock time. Ahhhh...

All of our time at Hume, of course, was scheduled around the demands of this little human: