River Livin'

There's a lifestyle that comes along with living on a river.  A way of life that makes you pause and take it all in.  The crickets chirping outside the window.  The turtles that sun themselves on the driveway.  The way the wind reveals itself as it blows across the tall grass.  It constantly is changing outside, and our favorite place to be is watching it all happen.

So when you accept this type of lifestyle, you have to know that it's going to start affecting your priorities and ways you make decisions.

For instance: You might say, "who needs a new bed when you can buy a couple of kayaks!"

My mom called me out on it.  Last week when she was reading the blog post about how we are still sleeping in a full size bed, she said "you won't buy yourselves a larger bed because of more important expenses?  More important expenses, like kayaks!?"

Short answer:  "Well... yeah!"

This has been the first summer where Michael and I have been able to enjoy living in our home.  Last summer was all about the renovation.  We were here as many nights as we could manage, demo-ing, cleaning, sanding, painting, all of it.  So one year later, now that we are living here, we are getting a glimpse of why we went to all that work for this home.

And the answer might look something like this.

This summer we are discovering what river livin' is all about.  And we are soaking it in.

Ever since we bought our home, we had talked about buying kayaks.  Knowing you can spend a boat-load (pun intended) of money on fancy kayaks, we weren't committing to a plan for when that purchase would happen.  What we did decide on was about how much we were willing to spend.  And this last 4th of July, the price looked right and so did the kayaks.  Menards had a great rebate on some recreational kayaks that we just couldn't pass up.

We were very excited to take the plunge especially since some of our best friends already own a pair of kayaks and knew there would be fun times ahead with them.

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And fun times ahead there were.

One Sunday, we kayaked down to the Dam, then down the Mill Race, and made our way downtown to our favorite ice cream place.

.... once we made it past a very low bridge.

 But we made it under (just barely) and were pretty thrilled about it!

Chief Ice Cream ahead!!

But this summer hasn't just been about the kayaks.  Its also been about the bonfires.  If you needed just one reason to live out in the country, I think bonfires would be that reason.

  And if that's not enough of a reason...  here's s'mores. 

We've had countless bonfires this summer and I'm sure there are more to come.  It really doesn't matter the occasion - time with our small group, the 4th of July, time with friends from out of town.  If we have the wood, the time, the weather, the people, and some Woodchuck Hard Cider, we've got ourselves a party!

Oh and sparklers are fun too.

A couple weekends ago we made another river livin' decision that contradicted our need for a new bed.

We bought a canoe.

 We're out of control.  But its so much fun!

We decided that we wanted to have the ability to be able to take friends and family out with us on the river and in order to do that we thought a canoe would be a great option.  Compared to kayaks, canoes are a bit easier to paddle, ours can fit 3 people, and it has room for a cooler or a dog or whatever else we'd like to hall around.

Our friends Bekah and Karl came to visit and got to enjoy the river livin' lifestyle first hand. 

So much fun.

Wanna go too?  Come on over friends! And lets head to the river. 

Linked up to: Amaze Me Monday,

Don't miss a beat.  

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