We just returned from our annual “Week at the Beach”. We had a wonderful time as a family, meeting Logan’s friend Becca (she loved her Wilkes Survival Kit) and we had our neighbors join us to celebrate the Fourth! Our annual “Week at the Beach” is really a dream come true, let me tell you about it –
One of my favorite childhood memories is the time we spent at Silver Lake Resort in Wild Rose, Wisconsin. We rented a cute little cottage – Doll House Cottage. To a young girl it was a magical place. We played for hours on the shores of the lake and enjoyed escaping from the world. I’ll never forget the time my mom stepped on a live frog as we walked through the woods! (Well, at least it was alive before she stepped on it!)
I also grew up hearing my dad tell us stories of the summers he spent with his family in the little cottage they owned on Victoria Beach on the shores of Lake Winnipeg. There was the summer we got to go to Victoria Beach. I’ll never forget the sight of my Grandpa Best floating on his back out on the lake with his pipe sticking out of his mouth!
I fell in love with and became enchanted with the idea of a cottage on a lake.
For most of my life, whenever I would attend a conference or a meeting where they would ask you to write down your top goals one of mine was always…
Own a cottage on a lake.
When Jim and I moved to Oregon as a young married couple I discovered that Oregon doesn’t have too many lakes but it does have an amazing coast line. so the goal was revised…
Own a beach house
I didn’t know how or when I would get that beach house but I did know that my beach house had to be within a two hour drive of Portland. It needed to be a “family” house – big enough that we could gather as an extended family, a house big enough for when my kids would come home with their kids and that it needed to be in the quaint little beach town of Manzanita, Oregon.
But that’s as far as I took the dream/goal until…
…one evening Jim and I were out to dinner with some friends and somehow the topic of a beach house came us. I told them that I had always wanted a beach house and that I knew exactly where I wanted it. They too expressed that they had always wanted a beach house – end of conversation.
Well, about one week later we got a phone call from our friends. They had gone to the beach for the weekend and had looked at houses for sale. Our friends then went on to tell us that they had found one they liked and even put an offer on it, pending our approval of course.
The house was one and a half hours from Portland, it was in the town of Manzanita and it was big – 3,000 square feet and the bonus – it had a 180 degree view of the ocean!
Guess what – we bought a beach house! Finally, my dream had come true.
View from our side deck…
Lesson Learned: Open your mouth and share your dreams with others – they can help make them come true! Be specific about your goals. – within two hours of Portland, town of Manzanita, big house.
How many times when asked to write down our goals do we keep our hand over the top of our paper so no one close to us sees what we are writing down!?
How often do we write them down in our journal and then leave them there on the page? And then leave that journal on the shelf.
I have learned that one of the fastest ways to make your dreams come true is to share them with others.
I am not saying that every time you vocalize a dream or a goal that someone will magically appear and make that dream come true but it can’t hurt, can it?
You never know when someone you know may know someone who knows someone…..
So what is one of your goals or dreams that you haven’t said out loud or vocalized? How about putting it out there, right now! I’d love for you to share it with me via the comment box below – you never know who may read it and be able to help!
I’ll start by sharing one of my top goals/dreams with you – I want to live in England for a month each year. Know anyone with a house for rent in the English countryside????
Just so you know, I haven’t given up on the cottage on the lake though – on my dream board in my office I have a picture of a quaint little cottage on the shores of a lake. You never know when Oregon may grow a new lake or two!
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I look forward to reading about your goals and dreams!
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