A House with a Heart (and a View!)

My husband and I took a road trip north this past Monday to check on our Oyster Haven VRBO lake house in Upstate NY. He put in the dock and the boats (we have four kayaks and a canoe available to renters, along with a couple of stand-up paddle boards).  He also got our pontoon boat out of winter storage at the marina and anchored it in front of his childhood home by the lake, which is where we spend our summers. Oyster Haven is only about 3.5 miles down the road, so it's easy for us to go back and forth.

We bought this incredible house (built circa 1830, with a later addition) in the fall of 2015 and opened it up for rentals the summer of 2016, originally thinking that we might eventually retire there and have it be our home base for traveling to see our far-flung offspring.  But when it became obvious that three of our five boys were settling down for the foreseeable future not far from each other in VA, we moved south to be near them in 2017, but continued to spend our summers up north by the lake.

We were encouraged by the real estate agent who worked with us on the purchase of Oyster Haven to make sure that it had some personal touches.  A VRBO owner himself, he said that it seemed that renters were more likely to treat a house with respect when they remembered that it actually belonged to someone.  If it was too sterile and impersonal, like a hotel, they might feel comfortable leaving it a mess.  We took that advice to heart, and I made sure to decorate the walls with some personal items so that it would look like a family home.

One of my favorite gallery walls is in the large eat-in kitchen.

The great thing about giving our rental those personal touches is that when we DO get to spend our week there with our kids and grandkids, it feels like HOME.  Oyster Haven is anything but cold and sterile; truly, it's a house with a heart.

Along with all the family pictures on that kitchen wall, I hung a vintage print by Jesse Willkox Smith, one of my favorite artists.  I thought the image of a curly-headed little girl eating a slice of watermelon was adorable, and that it just screamed "summertime!"

Years later, when I had a little granddaughter with similar blond curls, I made her pose for me with a slice of watermelon so that I could hang her picture next to that sweet drawing.  Unfortunately, this little gal hates watermelon.  So this was as close as I could get to having her look like she was eating it!

Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent--now back to the reason for our trip north: our first renters of the 2024 summer season will arrive in the coming weeks, and we wanted everything to be ready for them. Fortunately, all was well with the house and we didn't find any problems that needed taking care of.  We got everything on our to-do lists done and still had enough free time to enjoy an evening visiting with two of my husband's sisters who live up there.  My 88-year-old mother was also having same-day surgery across the lake in VT during our stay, and I was able to be with her and my sister (the one with whom she lives) during her time at the hospital.  So all in all, it was a good trip.

Before we left yesterday morning to head back to VA, we stopped at Oyster Haven one last time to drop off some freshly-laundered linens and organize them in the locked storage closets, so they'll be there for the cleaners to use on turnover day.  (We have a cleaning service, and they take care of everything when we're down in VA; but when we're living up there during the summer, my husband and I handle the laundry and bed-making.) The sun was just beginning to rise, and when I looked out the kitchen window I realized that I needed to take some pictures, pronto.  I grabbed my phone and ran outside.   

This was the backyard view from our deck that morning.

I couldn't decide which photo one was the most spectacular, so I decided to show you all of them.  Isn't that the most glorious view?!

I can hardly wait for the first week in July, when our entire family--five sons, five daughters-in-law, and 22 grandchildren!--will be there with us.  My whole heart will be in that house.  Enjoying that view.

The View from Up Here

We have been in Upstate NY for almost a week.  Ever since we moved from NH to VA in 2017, our routine has been to spend every summer up here in our old hometown, living in my husband's childhood home on the lake and attending Mass at the church where we were married in 1980.  We own a lake house just three or so miles down the road, which is mostly a VRBO rental, and we manage that property (which we named Oyster Haven) during the busy summer season.  (We have cleaners; but we take care of the laundry and making the beds on turnover days.)

I do love it here, even though I dearly miss what we have to leave behind in VA.  We get to visit with extended family (my husband and I both have sisters who still live here, and my 86-year-old mom lives with one of mine); we get to spend lots of time out on our boat; it's like being on a two-month-long date, in a way.

When we're in VA, we divide our time between the families of three of our five sons who live close by.  Their growing tribes keep us very busy. We are so incredibly lucky to have so many of our precious grandchildren (13 of 19) living nearby in the place where we spend most of the year.

I mean, look at this beautiful view!

I miss being in my own house, because I'm a homebody/nester/introvert; but it's really nice being here in NY, too. My husband and I started dating at 15, so in the almost-fifty years since, I've spent a lot of time in this wonderful house.  It’s like a second home.

Still...I miss my cozy cottage in VA, where the grandkids gather so often.

But as much as I miss those VA views, I must admit the the view from up here is not too shabby.

Oyster Haven's back yard.

And next weekend our VA gang plus our youngest son and his wife will be joining us for a Pearl family wedding, followed by almost a week together, staying at our Oyster Haven house (which we've blocked off for our own use).

So life is good, my friends.  I hope you're having an excellent summer so far.

Views

About a week ago, my husband and I returned from a week-long trip to Upstate New York, where we went to get our VRBO house on Lake Champlain ready for our busy summer rental season.

We bought this one-of-a-kind former farmhouse, which was originally built in 1830 with some later additions in the 1940's, when we were still living in our New Hampshire "forever home."  At the time, we thought we might rent it out until my husband was ready to retire, and then we'd sell our NH house and move into it, using it as our home base and traveling from there to visit our far-flung grown children.

But with three of our five sons living in the same area of Virginia and looking like they were settling down for the foreseeable future, we decided to keep the NY house as a rental property, sell our NH house, and move closer to them.  When we made our life-changing move south in 2017, sons number two, three, and four were already VA neighbors; then shortly after we became Virginians, son number one moved here, too.  What are the odds?! I can't believe God arranged it so that those four boys would roam far from their NH roots and serendipitously end up in the same place, giving us the opportunity to have all 17 of our grandchildren living less than an hour away from us.  (We just have to get our baby and his wife to move here—that's still a WIP.)

Our Colonial beauty in NY (which we've dubbed "Oyster Haven") sits on a gorgeous piece of property that includes a football field-sized back yard and boasts 250 feet of lakefront, which essentially gives us our own private beach.  There are spectacular views of historic Valcour Island and its little brother, Carleton's Prize (nicknamed "Gunboat Island"), as well as the outlines of the mountains of Vermont on the other side of the lake.  It is about as idyllic and heavenly a setting as you could ever imagine.

We try to block off a week or so each summer so that our kids and grandkids can spend some time there with us, but otherwise we keep the NY house available for guests.  We spend the summer months staying at my husband's childhood home just a few miles down the road, managing our VRBO property and enjoying boating on the lake.  But the rest of the year is spent in our adopted state of VA, living in a house that has become the perfect meeting place for all the little Pearl cousins.

There is no doubt that the glorious panoramic view from the back yard patio at our house in NY handily beats the nothing-to-see-here view from our tiny side yard patio in VA.  Our modest house in a cookie cutter neighborhood on a postage stamp-sized plot of land has nothing on our spread in NY when it comes to views. Surely, it is not the most impressive place by the world's standards; but as a central location where our gang can gather easily, it really couldn't be more perfect for us.

More on our garden Sasquatch in a future post!

My husband has set up an outdoor video camera at his childhood home, so that when we're in VA we can look at the real time lake view on the big screen TV in our family room. 

And here's my usual view from my overstuffed arm chair in said cozy family room: my husband in his recliner chair over on the other side of the couch, with his nightly glass of scotch on the table beside him; me relaxing with my feet up on my ottoman, wearing my sensible shoes (the ones that navigated miles of cobblestoned streets in Rome with ease), enjoying the company of my favorite human and the peaceful aura of our home sweet home. 

Sometimes views that seem like nothing special are actually the best views of all.

The Little Oar House at Oyster Haven

That sounds almost like the title of a really cool mystery novel or something, doesn't it?  The Little Oar House at Oyster Haven.  And the above photo would make the perfect book cover for it!

Well, it's not a book title--at least that I know of.  If it is, I can tell you that I didn't write it.  And if I ever do get around to dipping my toes into the world of fiction writing again, it will be to produce a very long-overdue sequel to Erin's Ring, with a focus on a true story about Our Blessed Mother and Her miraculous help.  (I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that one, though; because for now, life seems just a tad too busy for writing a novel.  I've got all I can manage trying to find time to finish an illustrated ABC Book for my grandchildren.)

There might be some toe-dipping going on, however; but it will not be metaphorical in nature.  It will be actual toe-dipping in an actual lake, because this week my husband and I have been working hard to get our Oyster Haven house on the shore of Lake Champlain ready for its first VRBO renters of the season.

Boo-yah!  How's that for a segue?

(Full disclosure: my delicate toes will probably not get anywhere near that icy cold lake.  Not until at least July!)

Anyway, we've been busy getting the place looking ship-shape.  We had it professionally cleaned and prepared for the next renters back in February, after our last guests departed.  But it's been sitting empty through the winter months, and the inside needed a bit of a spring cleaning to get it up to snuff (think dust bunnies, cobwebs, and dead bugs!).  The outside needed some TLC, too, including adding a new railing to the new Trex deck we had built over the winter.  (More on that in a future post, methinks.)  We also had to haul out, wipe down, and set up all the deck and patio furniture as well as the boating equipment and the gas grill.

While my husband was working on building the deck railing (the parts that didn't require a second set of hands to help him), I decided to spring clean an ancient little outbuilding that we like to call the "oar house."  This is where we keep the oars for our canoe, kayaks, and paddle boards, as well as various and sundry other items such as boogie boards, beach chairs, water shoes, and outdoor toys.  I love, love, love this little building!  It is one of the things that made me fall in love with the property the first time we toured it with the real estate agent.

Isn't that just the sweetest little building?

The inside of the oar house is always a mess in the spring, because mounds of dead leaves blow in through the open doorway.  Also, all sorts of critters make nests there in the winter.  The bird droppings I found yesterday didn't bother me too much.  The family of dead mice in a plastic bin in the corner, on the other hand...yikes, that was a different story.  I couldn't even get myself to pick up the bin once I knew they were in there, and had to call my hero over to throw the pathetic little carcasses into the woods--while I shivered and gagged.

So how do you like this post so far?  I hope I didn't lose you with all that talk about dead mice.  Try to forget about them and take a look at how sweet this little oar house looks once it's been cleaned up.

Those three colorful  boogie boards were once used by my boys, to ride the waves at

York Beach in ME during the years they were growing up in NH.

We only had one paddleboard the past two summers, but decided to add another this year.

(You're welcome, renters!)  The shark kite hanging on the wall behind the two boards
was left by the previous owners--and we think it gives this little building character.

The striped chairs hanging on the wall have spent many a summer day planted in the sand at
York Beach, as well as other beaches on the NH Seacoast.  And the pair of indestructible
Little Tykes trucks were favorite Christmas gifts of sons #3 and #4, way back in the 90's.

The two nautical-themed  paintings-on-wood were childhood works of art created by my hubby (and passed on to me by

his mom many years ago).  I thought this was the perfect setting for them.

Last night, when we'd punched the clock at the end of our work day, we spent a little time enjoying the fruits of our labor.  We pulled two Adirondack chairs up to the edge of our lawn and had a cocktail while we enjoyed this glorious view.

It's hard sometimes, putting so much effort into making this lake house so perfect, and then giving it over to other people to enjoy.  Hopefully, as the years go on, we'll be able to block off bigger and bigger chunks of time to spend in it with our family.  We have so many great memories of the week we had at Oyster Haven with everyone two years ago.  (Yes, we had everyone!  All of our boys, all of their wives, and all 7 of the grandchildren that had been born at that time!)

We do have a week in August blocked off this summer; but we won't be able to have everyone together this time, because our youngest son is stationed overseas and can't get home that week, and our oldest son's wife will be giving birth to baby #5 (which is grandchild #13 for us) just a few weeks before the planned get-together.

But we're hoping for an updated Team Pearl picture in August 2019--and by that time there will be 7 more little players added to the line-up!

Which reminds me: just next to the oar house, you can see the remnants of a cinder block foundation, partially hidden and overgrown with weeds and grass.  Talking with one of the neighbors (who used to play at this house when she was a little girl), we learned that some former owners who lived here for many years once had a sleep cabin on that spot.  At the rate our family is expanding, I'm thinking we may have to erect a new sleep cabin for our grandkids.  We are quickly outgrowing this house!

Hmmm...I guess you should stay tuned for a future post title with a similar mystery novel vibe: The Little Sleep Cabin at Oyster Haven.

I'm So NOT Melania!

My mother has taken to calling my husband and me "the Trumps."  (If I wanted to be at all political on this blog, which I DON'T, I would tell you that that is not nearly as much of an insult to me as so many of my close friends and family members think it should be).  Mom does this because we now own two homes--which makes us proverbial real estate magnates, I suppose.

Our lake house, which we bought about two years ago and dubbed "Oyster Haven," sits on a parcel of land that is probably more priceless and more idyllic (more heaven-on-earth-spectacular) than anything the Trumps own.  I may be biased, but I'm serious, I really am; I mean, look at this view from the deck of our circa 1830's farm house-cum-VRBO vacation rental.

Not too shabby, eh?  And hopefully someday, once we've whittled down the mortgage with rental income, we'll be able to spend whole summers there and provide our kids and grandkids with a yearly vacation getaway courtesy of Papa and Grammy.

But just because we've taken our first tentative steps into the vacation rental business, you can hardly compare us to POTUS and his glamorous (and Catholic! Yes, Catholic!) wife, Melania.  As I remind my mother every time she calls us "the Trumps," I doubt that Melania does as much cleaning as I do.  I sincerely doubt that FLOTUS scrubs as many tubs and toilets.

And that, my friends, is what I've been doing every weekend this summer.

My husband and I are the cleaning/maintenance/hospitality crew that gets our place ready between the 10:00 a.m. check-out time of one set of renters on Saturday or Sunday morning and the 4:00 p.m. arrival of the next group of guests the same day.  It's a grueling six-hour process that involves vacuuming and dusting and making up all the beds; scrubbing the bathrooms and kitchen until every surface gleams; restocking the towels, toiletries, K-cups, and the gifts of chocolates and wine; making sure the grill, boats, and outdoor furniture are clean and stored appropriately; trimming away the overgrowth on the bank by the beach; hauling away the garbage and recycling...It's a lot of work, and I am always bone-tired at the end of cleaning day. 

We have a great routine, though; we make a good team.  My husband and I usually make up all the beds together.  Then he drops off the dirty linens at the laundry service while I get to work cleaning the interiors.  If we need anything, he picks it up at the store on his way back from the laundromat, and then he gets to work on the exteriors.

No matter how respectful our renters have been or how relatively tidy things appear when we start out, the process rarely takes less than the full six hours to achieve the kind of quality we both want.  Sooner rather than later, we will have to hire a professional cleaning service to do this for us--especially now that we live in VA and not NH, and the drive to Upstate NY takes almost twice as long.  We can't just "pop up" here anymore to take care of Oyster Haven.  Luckily, we are able to spend the summer months (peak time) at my husband's childhood home on the lake, just 3.5 miles away from our property.

But until we can find a reputable cleaning service to get the job done, it's up to us to do it.  I am the maid, the help, whatever you want to call me (and so as you see, Mom, I am so NOT Melania!).

That's me (on the right--ha ha!); so, so NOT Melania--and that was

about four years and several pounds ago!

I'm not going to show you the Oyster Haven bathrooms, no matter how proud I am of the sparkling sinks and toilets.  But would you like to see the bedrooms?

The Norman Rockwell Room.

The Little Cherubs Room.

The Aviation Room.

The Master Suite.

I guess that last picture doesn't really show what the whole master bedroom looks like (there's a twin bed in there as well).  But isn't this queen bed pretty?  I like the hotel look we've given to all the beds in the house, using mostly crisp white linens with touches of color thrown in via the bed scarves and decorative pillows.  In fact, our beds look an awful lot like the ones in the hotel where my husband and I have a room booked for tonight.

The reason we're staying at a hotel is that my mom is in a hospital across the lake in VT, and we're going to visit her there tonight before flying to the Midwest tomorrow out of the airport just a few  miles down the road from the hospital.  Mom was supposed to have surgery early tomorrow morning to remove a cancerous kidney, but she has some other health issues right now and the procedure has been postponed.  Please keep her in your prayers, because she needs to get well enough to have this kidney removed ASAP.

Also, please keep my husband and me in your prayers, as we will be transporting some very precious cargo over the next few days, all the way from Chicago, IL to Pensacola, FL: our oldest son's wife and four young daughters, who have been separated from him for the past month while he's been in flight training and are joining him for the rest of the summer.  (They have an adventure planned that includes spending the next few months living together in a furnished Airbnb house.)

I don't know how much blogging I'll be able to do in the coming week, because I can't bring my laptop along (the minivan will be bursting at the seams, so I can only pack a small carry-on bag for our flight out to Chicago).  But when I get back, I'll fill you in on our cross-country road trip with our girls, I'll update you on my mother's health, and maybe I'll even continue with the VA house tour that I started but never finished.

Our new southern home is very nice, but I'd be willing to bet that it's not nearly as sumptuous as any of the lavish abodes the Trumps own.  Just one other way that I'm NOT Melania!

Hope you're having a good summer, dear readers!

7QT: Family Reunion at Oyster Haven (#lakesidepearls)

I've gotten so rusty when it comes to blogging this summer, I might have to oil up my fingers with some WD-40 so I can work the keys on this here old laptop of mine!

But I have good excuses, readers, I do--16 of them, to be exact: 5 sons, 4 daughters-in-law, and 7 grandchildren, who came and spent the first week in August with us at our Oyster Haven home on Lake Champlain.  (That doesn't explain the rest of my lazy, hooky-playing summer, though, does it?  But I digress.)

You know what?  I think I'm going to find 7 pictures that I'd like to share with you from our too-good-to-be-true week, amongst the many winners we had taken by an old friend who is also a professional photographer.  So this has now become a 7QT post!

Huzzah!  Blogging AND linking up...it's a banner day here at String of Pearls!

Well, you know how when you build an upcoming event up in your mind ahead of time, and then you worry that it can't help but fall short of your heightened expectations?  That did not happen.  My husband and I have been eagerly anticipating our vacation week with the kids and grandkids for almost a year now, imagining how wonderful it was going to be...and then it ended up being even better than we'd hoped.  I mean, by a mile.

QT #1: A Little Slice of Heaven
The setting helped, of course.  At our Oyster Haven retreat, there is a deck and a large patio out back, and best of all, an expanse of lawn that resembles a football field leading down to a private beach.

And this is the spectacular view from the back yard.

QT #2: Our Boys
We had our whole team together for the week--even our youngest son, who flew home from Germany.  He almost didn't make it, and it was a bit of a "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" sort of disastrous trip for him.  He arrived a few days later than expected, but still was able to spend 4-plus solid quality days with his brothers and their families.  He deemed it worth all the hassles he encountered to get stateside.

So we had our 5 boys with us (they are in birth order here from R to L).

QT #3: Our Girls

And we had our 4 girls with us, too (4 lovely dark-eyed brunettes--because apparently, as was noted in one of our humorous discussions during the week, our sons have a "type"!).

I'd like to show you our beautiful grandchildren as well; but I am trying to respect our oldest son's wish to keep his precious girls' faces off the Internet as much as possible.  Just know that there was cuteness times 7 at Oyster Haven, and that's no exaggeration!  And the little cousins really seemed to enjoy being together for the week.

QT #4: The Team Captain and His Co-Captain

My husband and I are as proud as can be of our team of Pearls.  We had our daughter-in-law Preciosa, a talented t-shirt designer, make up team shirts for the whole family.  Here's the captain, the #1 guy, and the second member who joined his team when we got married in 1980.

Together...we're Tom Brady.  ;)

QT #5: The Original Team of 7

And here's the original team of 7, with our boys wearing numbers assigned according to when they joined Team Pearl by birth.  I love the old-school look of these team baseball jerseys.

QT #6: We'll Have These Numbers for Life
The adults will be able to use their shirts for years to come--because we are definitely going to make this Oyster Haven week an annual tradition in our family.

QT #7: The Gang's All Here (All 18 of Us!)

The little ones will have new shirts made as they outgrow their infant onesies and toddler-sized t-shirts.  But everyone will keep their same number, assigned to show the order of when each teammate joined the family (whether by marriage or birth) for life.  (Thank you, Pinterest, for this genius idea that we unabashedly copied for our own use!)

It has been a tough summer for our family, with the untimely death of my dear brother-in-law.  It has also been a tiring summer for my husband and me, cleaning and managing our VRBO house and making sure it's ready for the next renters (they've been back-to-back most of the summer, a good "problem" to have!).  But this week we had with our gang left us with beautiful memories that will last a lifetime.  I'm so glad we captured some of those memories with this photo shoot.

Here's one more picture (I know it's not 8QT, but this is just too cute not to share).  When the photographer was trying to get some decent shots of Papa and Grammy with all 7 grandkids, the grown-up kids were standing behind him, jumping up and down and pulling out all the stops trying to get the little ones to smile.  It was so hilarious that the photographer snapped one of them, too.

[Sigh]..I love my family.  And.as you can imagine, I can hardly wait for next summer!

Now head on over to Kelly's for more 7QT fun.

Testing, Testing, 1,2,3...Is This Thing Still On?

Well, I've been gone so long that I just had to make sure blogging was still a thing.  You know, that it's still being done.

I mean, technology and social media seem to be evolving at warp speed these days, so you never know what might have become obsolete overnight.  You could go to sleep and wake up in a Brave New World-ish place, feeling like you're trapped in an episode of "The Jetsons."  (Now that TV show reference doesn't date me at all, does it?  Just a few days ago, I celebrated my 58th birthday, and it shows.  Oh, does it ever show!)

But getting back to the idea that it's hard to keep up with the latest techno-trends: yesterday, I took some pictures of my nieces and their little ones on my iPhone, and I offered to make the girls up some flash drives or CD's of all the shots I got.  That gave everyone a good chuckle.  Why didn't I just go ahead and put them on a 90's-era floppy disc while I was at it?  (The photos got sent via text messages, so I didn't even have to make a trip to Best Buy to hunt down some storage paraphernalia from the Stone Age.  Easy peasy.)

Here are a few of the pictures I took, just to give you an idea of the sort of cuteness by which I found myself surrounded yesterday afternoon, lakeside.

My sister-in-law has four of her five kids staying with her this week, and all four of her grandchildren.  She lives next door to my husband's childhood home, where he and I are staying for the summer so that we keep an eye on nearby Oyster Haven and clean it in between rentals.  (Our fourth set of week-long renters are there as I write this!)  Spending time with her crew, and seeing how much they enjoy the lake, gets me so excited for next week--when all five of our boys, our four daughters-in-law, and all seven of our grandchildren will be with us at Oyster Haven for a big family reunion of our own.

In anticipation of feeding my little army, I have been baking goodies ahead and freezing them.  So far, I've got two coffee cakes made, and two pans of caramel brownies.

Oreo brownies are in the works this morning.  (Those are the roses my hubby sent for my birthday, which he spent flying some lucky folks to Rome.)

My daughter-in-law Preciosa is busy making special "team" shirts for the whole family to wear when we have professional pictures taken together during our vacation week.  The numbers on the backs, 1 through 18, have been assigned according to when each member officially joined the family, whether by marriage or by birth.  Here is my husband's, being held up by son #3.

Anyway, I'm hoping the blog hasn't gone the way of the floppy disc or the dinosaur, at least not yet.  After I finally got around to cracking open my laptop for the first time in ages, I realized that I MIGHT just have more to say, even though you wouldn't know that by the radio silence over here at String of Pearls this summer.

Speaking of the radio...I did recently do a radio interview with Allison Gingras, on her "A Seeking Heart" program (which is a sort of on-air Catholic book club).  Ten days ago I included a link to the program--wherein we discussed Finding Grace, Erin's Ring, and marrying our high school sweethearts, among other things--in a 7QT post; but if you missed that and are interested in listening, here's the archived link to the podcast.  Since I didn't get around to doing a Grace-filled Tuesdays post yesterday (because I've become a bit of a blogging slacker as of late!  I blame the heat and humidity, and the fact that my husband and I are busy managing our VRBO property), this should fill in nicely for my own online book club.

Well, I hope you're having a great summer, dear readers.  Mine has been spent visiting with lots of special relatives on both sides of our family tree and looking forward to having a whole glorious week with my own nuclear family.  And also, I must admit, it's been spent feeling a tad jealous of the renters who are staying at our beloved Oyster Haven!

But truly, my accommodations have been absolutely stellar.  Here's the view from the deck of the Pearl homestead, where I've been privileged to spend my summer.

There's nothing like getting up and having a relaxing cup of coffee, while enjoying a view like that!  (Another fun thing to do with your morning coffee might be to listen to Allison's radio show, if you're so inclined...)

Okay then, until next time...