Strawberry Festival

 

Strawberry season in Vermont is a little later than we’re used to from the south, so even though we missed it there, we got to enjoy it here! And, we were excited to have an occasion for which to use the strawberries! This year was our church’s first annual Strawberry Festival. The whole community was invited to come out and hear our praise band sing (some patriotic songs, some praise songs) and enjoy strawberry shortcake & ice cream on the lawn. We agreed to get up bright & early to go out with several other people from church to pick the strawberries. Among about the 10 of us, we picked 180 pounds of strawberries!

 

The kids were excited. Abigail, who typically spits strawberries out if I give them to her on her plate, must have eaten at least 15 strawberries in the course of the hour we were there! She was covered from head to toe.

Andrew, who truly does love strawberries, took his job very seriously. He filled this whole basket up himself (although many were very small berries)! He took pride in showing me every so often how many he’d gotten. He spent much of his time talking to his “date” Juliette (who is 20) while he picked. He must have talked her ear off. And he did not want to leave once we were done!

 

Leah got bored after awhile, but she was happy to have her new BFF, Lydia there with her to play. These two became fast friends, and refer to each other as “Princess Leah” or “Princess Lydia” whenever they’re together. They are inseparable at church.

    

After baths and resting at home, we went back out to the church for the Festival that evening. We had a pretty good turnout, although not nearly enough to eat all 180 pounds we picked. I ended up taking a whole flat home with me! Everyone had a great time listening to music, playing games on the lawn, and eating eating eating! We are so happy to be a part of a church who takes every opportunity to share the Gospel with our community and reach out to those in our own neighborhood. Many people worked hard—happily—to make this event a success, and it was a lot of fun!

 

New School Room

 

We are so excited to have enough room in our new home for our very own school “area”! And because we have enough room, Brett spoiled me by ordering us a brand new table (from Ikea, nonetheless!) that’s big enough for all the kids to sit at and grow with. Now I can strap Abigail in her booster seat while we do school work and she will pose less of a distraction! And I can actually sit down at the table next to them. There are also shelves next to each seat so they can have their own school books right next to them. He also ordered a new cabinet with a door for all our supplies, manipulatives, and paper. Now I can put a small white board up on that cabinet door and we put a new larger white board up on the wall. Voila! A real school room. Our old small white table now serves as a little computer table and extra work space (the desktop works, but is very slow so we haven’t really used it much yet for school). We even have a huge bookshelf to keep all our books. And the play area is right next door, along with our office (and my desk) so we have everything in sight. What a huge blessing! I know we will love it even more as the kids get older and become more independent with their work.

Andrew has been joining in more for school work now that he’s almost 4. I’ve started doing some of the same activities with him that I did with Leah when she was 4. And he’s just as smart! He likes to be able to do his worksheets right alongside his sister, although he’s not as much into the coloring as she was! (We had to use our metal folding chairs a couple days before we got our real chairs in.)

 

 

Meanwhile, my littlest learner is just busy getting into mischief. She is so silly these days! She learned how to take her pants off, so she doesn’t wear any half the time. But she loves shoes. She’s also a daredevil. She doesn’t mind falling down once or twice if it means she gets to try something her brother & sister can do.

 

In other news, we found a cool park to play at. It’s at the elementary school in town, less than 1/2 mile from our house. (Of course we probably can’t play there once school starts again, but it will be something different for the summer). They have a fun little playhouse and lots of rocks to dig in. Plus, the kids learned a few things about baseball, soccer, basketball, and even tetherball!

Ice Cream, Rainbows, Pools & Pizzas

 

These are a few of my favorite things…

Though there haven’t been a lot of “photo-worthy” moments lately, we’ve been making plenty of memories, enjoying nice spring weather, and enjoying time together as a family in our new home.

Way back at the end of May, we took a family trip to explore some of Vermont. Apparently, as Vermont residents we are required to visit, at least once, the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream factory :-). It’s about a 2 hour trip from our house, but we had some other stops on the way so we made a day of it. We couldn’t take many pictures inside the factory—it was only a short video and then an overview from a room above the main factory area, but then we got samples! They had mint chocolate chip that day, which none of us were that excited about, so we bought some other flavors before we left.

Brett had a hard time deciding among all their flavors…

 

The kids voted for just plain chocolate…

 

 

We had a lot of fun seeing how the ice cream is made, but mostly we had fun tasting!

 

A couple days later, we enjoyed a huge beautiful rainbow right in our own backyard. We could see both ends! And at one point it was a DOUBLE rainbow! God truly reminds us of his love and blessings upon us each day.

 

We have enjoyed a few pretty hot days, and one day we took advantage of that to get out our kiddie pool. We have a great, private backyard now so they could enjoy plenty of space to run around and get grass all in the water! I made Abigail a separate bucket just because I didn’t think she’d like how deep—or how cold—the bigger pool was and because all she really wanted to do was put water from the pool in her bucket and dump it back out again over and over.

 

And, just another fun time: we made pizzas for lunch. A family affair. And they were tasty!

 

Still a couple more months of summer left to enjoy and we’re excited about all we have to look forward to!

Planting & Playing

We’ve had some great weather here in Vermont the past few days and we try to take the opportunity to enjoy it every chance we can! We decided to plant a garden again this year, although not quite as big as last years’. We were told the best day to plant was June 1st. We took 2 1/2 hours on June 3rd and, with Leah & Andrew’s help, we had everything planted! (Well, Andrew mostly just wanted to use his shovel, but they really did help put some seeds in the ground.) We did onions, potatoes, squash, corn, a few pumpkins, tomatoes, and some herbs. We learned some lessons from the church friend who helped us till the ground about bull thistles (very sharp miniscule thorns that will burn your skin) and poison parsnip—two plants we never dealt with in NC.

As soon as we’d finished planting, the rain came down! And it poured! We should hopefully have a good crop.

The next day we played! And we were silly.

 

 

Our New House

 

Our new place in Vermont has been a HUGE blessing since we arrived. The fact that there was a parsonage already waiting for us gave us so much less stress. And the fact that many, many church members pitched in to make renovations and get it all cleaned up for us made it even more special. It was a labor of love and they showed us even before we arrived that they were willing to put forth an effort to make us feel at home in Vermont. The house seems a lot bigger than our old house and laid out in a much better way. There are two stories, so as we’re settling we’re running into the problem of, “Well, I could put this here, or I could put it here. Or I could really use this piece of furniture…” It’s a good problem to have.

I didn’t get a good picture of the front (except the snow one I took in March) but this is the back. We have loved our view from day 1. It’s nothing but farmland, no people or buildings to obstruct the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont. We sit on about 6 acres. At night you can hear nothing but the wind blowing and the coyotes howling. The grass (right now, in spring) is beautiful and the kids love to run barefoot!

When you come in our side door from the driveway, there is a dining nook. We haven’t done much with it yet but we have a little dining area, and I added a little cart with coloring books & crayons & paper for the kids to play while I’m cooking dinner. They haven’t used it much yet, but I’m sure it will be put to use. We haven’t even really figured out much use for the built-in bookshelf yet, either.

 

The kitchen nook looks into the kitchen and straight into the dining room. The kitchen has plenty of cabinet space and countertops. We even added a little island for more cooking space. We have a brand new refrigerator and gas stove. We may soon get new countertops, although the old ones are just fine for me. I love that it is open to the living room and the kids’ rooms so I can watch TV and see all that’s going on while I’m in the kitchen. Plus, there’s a countertop right next to the dining room table that we use as a sort of pass-through to put dishes both before & after meals to make clean-up easier.

 

  

The dining room also has another built-in bookshelf which we haven’t yet made use of. It’s a bit narrow for a lot of things but we’ve put photos and candles and other decorations. The dining room table we purchased from the previous pastor and it is huge!

We’ve since added some photos to these walls, but this is basically our living room. We were given this beautiful serving table by a church member and it works perfectly right here, although it often ends up being a catch-all for junk. We were also given a beautiful Roland upright piano by the church! It adds such a pretty touch. Of course, we’ve left our view of the mountains untouched and never get tired of looking out these windows!

 

Off the living room is our master bedroom, which heads straight into the sink area of our bathroom & the walk-in closet. The closet is really pretty big, as is the bathroom. With no drawers, we’ve had to do some rearranging, but we do have plenty of space in the bathroom. The shower & toilet have a separate area with a door.

  

  

Leah & Abigail’s room is also off the living room. We were worried at first that the TV would keep them up at night because it’s literally right there next to them, but it hasn’t been a problem at all with their noise machine and heavy sleeping abilities! Their room was the most difficult to fit things in because they have two big beds and a small dresser, but they have a large closet and the way we arranged it they still have plenty floor space to play. Leah’s comforter is a loaner right now until we get her a new one but she loves her big girl twin bed. Leah makes it clear that “No boys” are allowed in her room!

The kids’ bathroom is also the main bathroom in the hall. You can’t see it, but there is a large cabinet to the right of the sink.

Andrew has tons of space in his room! He loves his new fire truck toddler bed and having all that floor space for cars & trains! (We’ve also gotten darkening blinds on the windows since this picture. Much better for waking up in the morning!)

     

At the bottom of the stairs is ONE of our storage rooms. (Yes, we have two. This is the smaller one.) I keep board games & educational tools on the front shelves and store baby clothes on the back shelves. We also have an extra freezer in here. Tons of space!

 

The office is still a work in progress. We have a couple boxes left, and things to find places for, but Brett’s desk is mostly done. There’s a large closet in this room, too, so we have extra space for storage there, as well. My desk is on the opposite wall in this room and space for my scrapbooking things! The middle wall will be our music area—the keyboard & guitar, plus any other art stuff we want to keep out. This room is so versatile!

The living area downstairs has two sections—really one large room but with a little division between. The first area off the hall is our school area. This is also a work in progress, but I LOVE having a designated area for school. You cannot see the TV from this area so it is not a distraction. I can put posters up on the wall and keep all the art supplies where the kids can get to them easily. Eventually there will be a reading area and hopefully a bigger desk space as they grow. The door in the picture goes to the other storage room, where Brett gets to keep all his manly things, including a huge tool table and work area.

 

The other area of the living room is the playroom. The toys are along one wall.

And then the couch and TV are in the other part. We set our TV on the gas fireplace (which is very warm, as well as pretty). This is more of the kids’ living space, although right now they’re not used to being somewhere we’re not. They would rather play upstairs when I’m upstairs so I end up having to watch kids’ shows on “my” TV. They are able to go up and down as they want and sometimes they do (even Abigail figured out quickly how to maneuver the stairs), but really they don’t want to play downstairs unless I am with them.

Of course, the sunsets are the best part of our day. We have experienced every kind of weather since we’ve been here: up in the 80’s, down in the 40’s, high wind (even a tornado), hail, sun, rain… But even on the cloudy, gray days the view is amazing.

 

And a quick shot of our new church. We are already starting to find our place, although there is so much to do and so much to get involved in. We are eager to see all that the Lord has in store for us here!