Memorial Day Weekend

Had a nice long weekend with the family. The kids are officially done with school and summer can start!

Papa T's Ice Cream time!

Me and the lil ones

Last weekend I went up to the island with Sophie and lil Neil, since Bonnie and Anna went to Cedar Point on Saturday with her school group.

The goal of this weekend, was all electronics...

Friday night, I installed and mounted a new flat panel SmartTV in our bedroom.

New mounted TV in bedroom - no wires!

Saturday, we ran a buried cat5 cable connected from Chris's cottage router into our crawlspace and up behind the main room console. Then, I terminated the signal with a new Netgear - Dual Band - Wireless Access Point. So far, so good. We should have super reliable internet/wifi now. The rest of the weekend it worked great, so fingers crossed!

The kids played all weekend. Here is a photo of them on the beach, early Saturday evening.
 

Kids on the beach

Sunday, I attempted to mount the main room tv on the wall. The photo looks better than the results. I need to fix this install since it was so close to the wall that it pinched all of the wires and many don't work. More to come on this...

Work in progress

The whole crew

Last weekend we packed up the truck tight and managed to bring the entire crew (all five of us) and all of our stuff, plus like 8 bags of mulch and 6 bags of stone. We were in a mad rush to make the last ferry at 6:00 pm. Good news, we made it to the ferry by 5:55 pm but the line was so long, they had to send another boat to pick us up at 7:00, argh!

Here are some photos from Saturday night. The little kids had a riot and played all weekend.

My boy

Nothing like roasting hotdogs over an open fire

Sun-setting in the west behind the cottage

Sunday afternoon we had a long hike over on the north shore. Love being back on the island!

I got several cool projects done including...

• Installed the new speakers
• Mulched the flower beds
• Added new stone around the firepit
• Started on the "portal" (this is a path thru the woods to connect to the Loop)

Pre-Easter family weekend

We went up to the island with the whole crew, minus Anna who was staying with Lily. Friday night, Captain Ron had us over for a fish fry. Bonnie started her new job at the Captain's Corner.

It was a short weekend since we had to leave on Saturday night to be home for Easter Sunday.

First family weekend

It was officially Early Bird Weekend and time for the whole family to come up to the island. Bon, Soph and lil Neil headed up on Friday after school and Anna and me went later on Saturday morning since she was just coming back from her 8th grade Washington DC trip.

Anna on the ferry

Saturday, was the annual Early Bird party at the Village Pump. We had a great table right by the live entertainment. Good times.

Bon and lil man dancing

Sunday, we went fishing at the State Park pier. It was a beautiful day but very windy. No bites!

lil man

Soph

Ready to start enjoying the season!

Opening Weekend 2017

Welcome to the 2017 season! We went up last weekend to open up. You never know what you're going to find, so I was happy everything worked except the outdoor spigots. I need to spend some time trying to figure out the issue, but everything else plumbing related is working fine. This is a bit of a mystery...

2017 - Let's roll!

Justin can up with me on Friday night and then Brad joined us on Saturday afternoon. The weather was decent for mid March. We hung outside playing guitar for hours.

Justin and Brad

Later that evening, we went to the Village Pump for dinner and then back to the cottage to re-engage the fire. Chris and Winston joined in the festivities.

Good times

 Glad to be back on the island

2016 year end wrap-up!

Bonnie and me were able to have another weekend together to close-up the cottage for the season. This is starting to be a tradition, nice!

Friday night we hung out with the neighbors downtown. The weather was unseasonably beautiful on Friday with a high of 75 deg!

Casino Marina - absolute weather perfection for Nov 18th!

The island is still full of changing leaves. Bonnie took this amazing photo from Titus road heading east.

Titus road - Photo by Bonnie

Saturday afternoon, we watched the Buckeyes game in Captain Ron's barn. This is also becoming a fall tradition. Funny, the weather turned on us from being so nice on Friday to cold and windy for Saturday and Sunday.

On Sunday morning, we winterized our cottage for season. Around 2:00 pm, we were done!

2016 was another great year for the cottage. Major project accomplishments included:

• Staining the deck, retaining wall, cistern, catch-basin and picnic table
• Hanging the great-room ceiling trim
• Installing the washer/dryer back
• Extending the drain pipe in the back lot to fix the yardscape

I seriously think the only thing left on the original big list is to paint some interior doors and a little trim paint.

This year, I finally got to spend some time with family on the island instead of working on the cottage 24/7.

Summer 2016 - Happy Family

Already looking forward to 2017...