3 weeks ago? Yes. Yes it was.
I enjoy being fashionably late.
Although in my defense, Memorial Day Weekend was set smack dab in the middle of finals AND I forgot my camera so I had to wait for my cousins to upload pictures.
But enough with my excuses. Late or not, this trip deserves to make its' online debut since so much went into it.
Every summer, and multiple longer-than-normal weekends, since I can remember, I have gone up to Shasta Lake with my family where my grandmother owns a houseboat. The boat is like a second home to me. Seriously. I absolutely LOVE Shasta Lake and if it were legal and I were rich, I would totally build a home and live there. As it is, my grandma has always let us use the boat for vacations and such throughout the years. We are very, VERY lucky to have this luxury, and I have only been able to appreciate it more and more the older I get. So while I may have complained when I was younger that my friends were all going to different states or even different countries for their summer vacation, I am very fortunate to have always had the lake to come back to like a tradition, especially since moving to LA where my life is so completely different than the one I had lived for 16 years in San Francisco. When you move out and your parents change your room and you live in a tiny little apartment that you have to cook in and clean and pay bills for and all those other scary things about being an adult, it's hard to hold on to things that keep you grounded and prevent you from feeling too homesick. I even get anxious every time we drive up to Shasta, thinking that somehow, this time, things aren't going to be the same, just like everything else in my life.
But then we drive down the winding road, over the bridge and the shining water and finally step off the dock onto the houseboat, my houseboat, and it's like a breath of fresh air. I'm 10-years-old again and I'm ready to go swimming and take the ski-boat with my dad to the harbor to go get ice cream. It's such a nice thing to still have to come back to.
Which is why after maybe 20 hours of sleep that week, coming home after failing my math final I had studied my brains out for that Friday, we drove 7 hours to SF, checking in at 4:00am, got up at 9:00am on Saturday and drove another 4 hours up to the boat only to be there until Monday afternoon.
And it was so worth it.
:)
My sister, Grace, and my brother, Derek.
Me and my cousin Jason getting gas (you don't even wanna know what the prices are like up there!)
The boys pushing off. Jason was having a little too much fun with his new fish-eye camera attachment for his iphone.
My beautiful lake!
Their relationship in a nutshell.
