Best Kind of Lake House? A Friend's Lake House!

View of Beth and Jon's Lake House From Their Dock

 One of my wife Tammy and my motto's over the years has been:

"The best kind of lake house? A friend's lake house!"

You can insert boat, beach condo, time-share into the sentence above.

In all seriousness, we have been very fortunate to have some great friends, Beth and Jon McIntyre (see my post "A Great Weekend" from November 2010), who have invited us to their lake house every summer for the past 25 years plus.

My wife Tammy, daughter Mallory and her friend Katie just got back from spending the weekend with Beth, Jon, two of their kids, Duncan and Annie and Jon's Mother Nancy at their lake house on Crooked Lake in Angola, Indiana. Beth and Jon were great hosts, cooking dinner every night, providing the beer, Crown Royal and Maker's Mark and generally just showing us a wonderful time.

View From Back of Cottage to the Lake

We really don't get together enough anymore with the McIntyre's. We are all in our mid to late 40's now, with kids who have graduated college, or are in college, high school or living out their dreams in New York City. We live too far apart from one-another (The McIntyre's in Connecticut, us in Cincinnati, Ohio) so when we do get together it's fun to relive old stories, challenge each other with movie quotes, eat, drink and just talk about where we are in our lives.

This Fall, we are both celebrating our 25th wedding anniversaries, and while we were together we made plans to celebrate this October in Charleston, South Carolina.

So thank you Beth and Jon for a great weekend, and see you in Charleston this Fall!

A Great Weekend!

What a great weekend! My wife and I were able to go to Columbus and meet our great friends Beth and Jon McIntyre for the Ohio State/Penn State football game.

A little background. Jon and I graduated from Lakota High School in West Chester Ohio in 1981. Tammy, my wife, and Beth graduated from the same High School in 1982. Tammy and Beth graduated from Ohio State together, while Jon and I went to different schools.

Both of us got married in 1986. We have stayed friends ever since! It's hard to get together as much as we used to, with all of our kids being older (we each have three). In addition, we live in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, while Jon and Beth have recently moved to Connecticut.

Living so far apart is what made getting together this weekend so special! We all arrived Friday afternoon, had dinner at Haiku (in the Short North area of Columbus) and then went to the Big Bang Piano Bar and Gordon Biersch (where my daughter, Mallory, a senior at Ohio State met up with us and brought along her friends).

Saturday was breakfast and off to campus to check out ESPN Gameday and then to the game.

Of course, Ohio State won (not without a battle in the first half from Penn State). After the game we went to Rubino's Pizza in Bexley, and had a little carry out desert from Mitchell's Steakhouse.

It was such a nice weekend. We were able to catch up on our kids, our jobs, quotes from our favorite movies ("that's a YP, not an MP" guess the movie), and our families.

It is great to have friends like Beth and Jon! Just wish we could get together more often!

Go Bucks!