Aaahhhhhh, the Lake House

It was a bit of a last minute weekend for me (I was originally supposed to be in LA), but life's fun like that...and I'm not sure things could have turned out any better! I ended up getting to spend the weekend here:
AK's family has a sweeeeeeet lake house on Lake Wawasee, just outside of Syracuse, Indiana. And I was lucky enough to get to spend the weekend there with him, and then a super fabulous couple, ED and BW. The four of us had a ridiculous amount of fun.

We drove there from Chicago on Friday afternoon (roadtrip!). Pretty smooth drive, not too much traffic, once we got outside of Chicago limits. I played DJ in the front seat, so obviously we had great music to jam to on the way there.

Our first stop upon arriving in Syracuse, was this place:
How great is that?! Beef's Booze Barn?!?! Love it. We had a great little stop there. Everyone was super friendly, they had a giant, fully-stocked "beer cave," and most importantly, they had Firefly sweet tea vodka. Perfection!

Next up? This place:

Bale's Butcher Shop. I almost didn't go in. I wasn't sure I could handle being in a butcher shop. I was a vegetarian for over a year and a half, and just recently started slowly adding small amounts of meat back into my diet. But that has been a BIG deal for me. So when we pulled up here, I wanted to stay in the car. But they wanted me to give it a try...so they yanked me in the place with them. It was actually fairly cool, and they had a lot of great stuff that wasn't meat (i.e sweet horseradish pickles)....in addition to 18 tons of cow, pig, chicken, and a few things I couldn't even identify. I'm pretty sure ED is in love with this place. He talked about it allllll weekend after this stop. He probably wants to have his wedding someday right there in Bale's.

Next, a quick stop at the grocery store, and then it was time to play. We got to the house, and let the fun begin!

The rest of the weekend included:

* Beautiful weather (whew!)

* Boating on the lake (both during the day and also at night)

* Lots of yummy drinks

* Many, many minutes (hours?) spent playing drinking games...the most crazy of which was "Land-mines"...has anyone ever played this game? It's a little ridiculous (but great), and here was the end result:

Each of those empty beer cans represents a land-mine that you can't hit with the quarter or any part of your body. I forget all the rest of the many rules, but we had a freaking blast playing this one. I'd like to play again for sure.

* Swimming in the lake (some people ended up getting pushed right in off the boat...luckily, I was not one of them)

* Playing croquet in the yard (it got pretty heated and competitive, not surprisingly)

* Watching the sunset over the lake (so peaceful)

* Hunting down suncreen from a tiny little boat-up bait shop that sold pretty much everything you could ever imagine

* Sleeping in....and some good naps too (pure bliss)

* Go Fish...which eventually turned into a good game of Go Drink

* A midnight steak dinner

* Fishing for Walter the Walleye off the dock....using brat pieces (my suggestion!)...but to no avail...he out-smarted us

* "Scrambles" for breakfast (including a whole dozen eggs...farm fresh, of course)

* Life vest "diapers"

It was seriously such a fun weekend! I'm so happy I got to go, and so grateful to AK for having us! It was just a taste of the awesomeness of that place, so I'm definitely hoping I'll get to go back again. And maybe, just maybe, we'll meet Walter next time....

Lake houses rule.