Peechee,
My siblings, cousins and I are the 5th generation at our summer place on the lake. Most of us grew up spending much or all of the summer up there, swimming, picking blueberries, learning to get along with one another and to do without the distractions of home (friends, TV, etc.). Now we are raising the 6th generation (currently between 7 and 17 yrs. old) and cherish the time that our kids spend at the lake. Our kids love it just as much as we do and they truly appreciate the simplicity of their lives when they are there. What pleases me is the range of things that my kids cherish about their summer lives: they love fishing alone on the dock just as much as swimming and playing flashlight tag with the cousins, sitting around a campfire with their parents' generation or playing cards with their grandparents' generation.
Some of my favorite memories of this summer involve sitting in front of the woodstove on these cold August mornings, flanked by my children, each of us engrossed in a book.
School starts in a few days, we're back at our 'real' home and those simple moments will quickly fall away. But we'll be back to recharge next year.
