Our little piece of heaven.

My husband and I in the past 2 years have been tossing different ideas around. Do we want to move? Upgrade our home? We love our house but having a 4th bedroom would be REALLY nice. The boys share a room and their closet space is shrinking as their clothes get bigger each year. And a 3 car garage would be nice. We have a 2.5 car garage and can't even fit .5 cars in it. Sad. But true.

But we love our house. We've been here 10 years now. We love the neighborhood. We love the location of our sub. hubby's job is a 15 minute car drive away. We are less than a mile from major freeways. My parents live just one block away from us. I can see their home from my front porch. Only one side street and three homes separate us. I love that.

Do we really want to give all that up??

No. We don't.

And I won't even bother going into the whole "oh my gosh, we've put alot of money into this house and would probably just barely break even if we sold it right now" issues.

We decided that moving is not an option for us.

So, summer of 2008, we started tossing around the idea of purchasing a vacation home. We started casually looking at up north waterfront vacation homes listed online. And quickly discovered that vacation homes were not coming down in price like they were here in the suburbs. So we gave up on that thought.

Fast forward to August of 2009. We went on our annual 1 week trip to Higgins Lake with 4 families. We rented 2 homes side by side. 4 families, 8 adults, 11 kids. One week spent with our best friends and families. One week of jet skis, skiing, swimming, building sand castles, campfires, roasting marshmallows, telling ghost stories, relaxing, drinking, playing euchre & poker....my kids will be the first to tell you that this is our family's favorite vacation every year. And we take lots of vacations. And this vacation is only 3 hours from our home.

The day after returning from this vacation...totally on a whim because Hubby and I hadn't even revisited the "should we buy a vacation home" conversation....I decided to do a quick google search on waterfront vacation homes for sale in MI. To make a somewhat long story short....I completely fell head over heels in love with the 2nd home I stumbled upon (online). The little yellow house. I spent the next several hours (while hubby was at work) searching. Am I being impulsive? I must have looked at over 100 homes that day. All meeting my search criteria but non of them made my heart go pitter pat the way the little yellow home did. I spent hours that day watching and re-watching the on-line virtual tour.

My husband called to tell me he was on his way home and I could barely get the words out. "Honey, You're not gonna believe the house I just found online". My husband was a little confused because "eh-hem...why are you looking at houses?"

And when he got home? He fell just as hard as I did.

*The covered front porch I've been wanting all my life? It's got it.

*The lined up Crackle Barrel Chairs on the covered porch that I've always wanted? It's got it.

*The price was right.

The house was beautiful.

The house was being sold fully furnished.

5 bedrooms.

5 bathrooms.

SEVENTEEN BEDS!!!

On a gorgeous 2 acre lot.

Almost new pontoon boat included.

On the lake.

It's only a 2.25 hour drive away.

We have friends that live a 5 minute boat ride away right on the lake.

We know the lake as we've gone up there with our friends several times.

And last, but certainly not least, it was the perfect home for our annual vacation with our friends.

And have I ever mentioned that my favorite color is yellow? Yeah, the house is yellow. Such a happy house. =)

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this house was destined to be ours since the day it was built 8 years ago.

The previous owners just walked away from the house leaving it exactly as it was. Every piece of furniture, every wall hanging and decoration left exactly as it was. We walked in and had to do nothing. It was home the second we walked through the door.

The photos below are all from several different sources...hence the different sizes.

Without further ado....

Our new love...

They even left the 6 Cracker Barrel chairs...=)

Check out my new professional grade Viking stove. I'm in love.

The built in griddle on the stove....we can fry 9 eggs or 16 pancakes at once. =)

My boys' ship themed bedroom. Is this the bomb or is this the bomb??.....

My daughter's bedroom has 6 beds (there's another single under another window on the right that you can't see in this photo) and the bunk beds each have a trundle under them...for a grand total of 8 beds!!

We hope to finish the basement one day...

Our best friends came to help us celebrate our first weekend up north.