Making Memories

I just hung up the phone with my Mom and she told me that my Papa has just accepted an offer on the family cottage that we all adore. This place holds so many precious childhood moments for me and I can't believe that it will no longer be in our family. Soon after my Nana & Papa came to Canada from Scotland, they had a dream to one day have a cottage on a lake that would be a place for their children, and one day grandchildren, etc to come together. They saved and saved and one day purchased land just outside of Muskoka and began to build our cottage. As a child I remember being so excited to go there in the summers and would happily endure the painful 3 hr drive in an un-air conditioned, tiny hatchback sedan [may I also include, a vehicle that had some sort of plastic material for the back seat that your sweaty leg would stick to it and since I shared the back seat with my 2 brothers [Dave and Andrew], we were basically semi-attached together, in a Siamese-triplet sort of way, for the duration of the road trip AND I should also mention that my parents would bring an incredible amount of stuff so we would have things stacked on the floor by our feet which meant our knees would be at eye level the whole time] but the cottage was well worth it. It was nestled in between beautiful tall evergreen trees and white birch situated on the bay of a medium sized lake that housed so many different types of wildlife. We would catch minnows, swim in the lake, read old books that were left behind by my older cousins, go for boat rides, BBQ every night on our large patio and roast marsh mellows by the fire pit. It was stellar. I LOVED our cottage. I loved the smell of the coffee brewing in the morning and the breakfast my Nana would be cooking and the way that she would pull open the blinds to see what kind of beautiful day was in store for us. We would run around all day long and be so tired at night but we always mustered up some energy to sneak out of our rooms at night and watch my parents and GrandParents play their regular games of Euchre and hoped they would ask us to join in one day when we were older. Needless to say, I have many, many amazing memories of this magical place and although I know a new family is excited to create their own memories there and I'm sure will enjoy it very much, I can't help but feel sad.

I am also thinking of my own family and what kind of traditions and memories we will create. I want our girls to know what it's like to spend summers on the lake and all the joys that come with cottage living. Being in LA now, is so different than being in the small town in Ontario where I grew up that I am trying to think of ways that I can bring a little bit of there, here. I love that Mikaella has spent the first 1.5 years [and counting] growing up by the ocean, I love that she learned to walk in the sand and that she has been hearing the sound of the ocean since she was a tiny little peanut in my tummy. Yet, I still want to include the aspect of "Muskoka Living" for her and her soon-to-be-born sister, Isla. I don't underestimate the importance of creating traditions for your children and am excited to think of ways to bring not only my immediate family but also my brothers, parents and in-laws to them as well.