A Summer of Visitors

The best part about having a house on a lake is that everyone is always excited to come visit in the summer! One of the main reasons for moving back to the east coast was to be closer to family so we were happy to be able to spend plenty of time with everyone in our immediate family within just a few months of relocating.

Preparation

One pressing item on our move-in todo list was repainting all of the bathrooms, and we wanted to finish before the first guests arrived. Emily did most of the brushing and all of the rolling, but Andrew helped out by mounting all of the fixtures. After adding a few extra touches like shower curtains and bathmats the two guest bathrooms were ready for action!

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We also needed to make sure there was plenty of beer for our guests to drink so we had to break out the brewing equipment for the first time since the move. Fortunately, there is a homebrew store just 20 minutes away so we were able to get all of our ingredients fairly easily. The first beer we made was the “Emarillo IPA”, a session IPA with plenty of Amarillo hops that we’ve made a few times before. The second beer we made was the “Chestnut Point Porter”, a vanilla porter that we tried out for the first time.

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Because we had become addicted to having sparking water on tap from our last months in LA, and we wanted to have both a hoppy beer and a dark beer on tap at the same time, we replaced our broken kegerator with a new three-tap version! It is located in the downstairs area (which will probably get some future upgrades to include cabinets for glasses) but Emily keeps a chalkboard upstairs updated with the tap list. Emily’s sister had made a logo for our ‘brewery’ as part of a Christmas gift and Andrew was able to model the logo into some 3D printed tap handles for the kegerator.

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Emily’s Sister’s Wedding

Emily’s parents and sister came to the lake for a few days before we all drove to Virginia beach for the wedding. It was a relaxing visit with good food and plenty of floating. The bright sun made up for the cooler water temperatures of early June.

There were a few wedding preparation tasks left to do, but the major task we were responsible for was making a driftwood arch to go behind the bride and groom at the beach. We had been collecting driftwood from the lake for about a month and spent one night with Emily’s sister assembling the arch.

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Fourth of July with the Burks

Andrew’s parents drove in from Richmond and his Brother’s family (including the two dogs!) drove down from DC for the fourth of July weekend. The weather was great and everybody got to spend time boating. There was enough wind to take the sailboat out one day, and Ariana was able to get both dogs on her paddleboard to tour the cove!

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Emily’s Niece Visits

In late July Emily’s brother visited with his wife and two year old daughter, Luna. Emily’s mom also visited to help give the parents some time off on their vacation. By this time the water was getting very warm (upper 70’s) and the days were getting very hot (90’s) so the group spent most of each day in the water.

Luna got to enjoy floating, “swimming”, and “kayaking” in the lake. Luna also enjoyed some time at the “beach” at the nearby state park playing in the sand. She even got to meet a sunfish that her dad caught off the dock! But by far one of her favorite activities was swinging in the hammock.

Two of Emily’s cousins and their kids happened to be visiting her aunt (on the other side of the lake) the same week. We all got together for dinner one night and had an excellent visit! It is by far the most people we’ve had in the house so far.

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Looking Forward

We still have at least two more big visits from friends and family to look forward to this summer. We also have weddings in LA and New York to go to, which will give us even more opportunities to see friends. We may even travel to see some friends and be visitors ourselves!

All of these great visits have removed any lingering doubt we had about moving back east. We really got to make the most out of our new home by sharing it with our families. There are definitely plenty of projects we could still do to the house, dock, and outside (maybe over the winter?) but for now we are really happy with our ability to host visitors.