Trip stories: Coming Home

We spent our last morning in Vermont packing up and eating a wonderful French toast breakfast.




Kate and I enjoyed the view while Anthony, Sean, and Dylan took one last scenic truck ride.






And then sadly we had to say goodbye and head out on our five-hour drive home.





No drive home from the cabin would be complete without stopping at the Cabot factory.



We woke Dylan up from a deep sleep to buy some cheese so he wasn't a happy camper.



But Kate was very cooperative.



We also stopped off at Ben & Jerrys and devoured some ice cream. Dylan perked up once he saw this bus:




And now it's Friday again. We left for vacation one week ago today. I am always sad to leave Vermont but I'm also happy to be back home with our pups and back on our routines. I became an auntie again to the sweetest little girl on Monday and she has brought infinite sunshine to the dreariness of having to jump back into reality. I love that I get to watch her grow up and to love her indefinitely. She has a full head of dark hair and looks very much like my first niece Ciara.

It's midnight and Dylan has taken my spot in bed so I am hunkered down in his room. It's nights like these that I am glad he has a double bed. I'm going to sleep like a rock until the sun rises.

Trip stories: Day 3

We woke up to glorious weather on Sunday morning. The rest of the house was still asleep so our little family cuddled under blankets for some quiet cuddling until everyone roused.



After breakfast we headed to the Creamery so that I could take our friend's daughter Rachel's senior portraits. She wore several outfits and some of them were straight out of 1980. I loved her fashion, and she was a natural in front of the camera.



We had fun traipsing through the woods for her photos. Hannah watched Katie so that Sean and Dylan could go swimming and exploring while I was taking photos.



And then I took a few of Anthony and Karen.




And Anthony took a few of us.




For lunch we went to the Pine Cone.








We spent the rest of the day back at the cabin.







Dylan enjoyed swimming in the dirt.



And then we played in the backyard.










At night we went to Tim and Jill's cabin--we have five friends with cabins up there so it's sort of a game of whose cabin shall we play at next?--for a lovely dinner and a campfire. Tim and Jill have two little girls so Dylan loved riding bikes, swinging on swings, blowing bubbles and the like with the girls. Plus they had a fleet of HESS trucks so Dylan was in his glory carrying the trucks around all night. I didn't bring my camera because I had my hands full with the kids, but it was a lovely evening.

Stay tuned tomorrow for our last day in the series of the cabin in Vermont posts!

Trip stories: Day 2

Before I overload the universe with more photos of our awesome Vermont trip, let me draw your attention to the comment section of this blog. I think I fixed it so that leaving comments will be much easier. Commenting on blogs is too much work: sign in, verify information, squint to see the word verification, get it wrong several times, lose everything you just wrote... so I installed a more user friendly comment form. So there's that. Fingers crossed that spammers stay away.

Saturday morning in Vermont was quite wet. The weather was a bit bipolar for our trip with a high of 90° and a low of 48°. The rain only lasted a few hours and the rest of the day was sunny and perfect. We spent the morning driving to the more populated town next door and then to Jay Peak.







We did some covered bridge touring, the town has a bunch of them.






And there were lots of beetles "hugging" at the Bridge of Flowers & Lights.



We decided to stop at this cute little general store for some refreshments.



And it was there in the middle of the soda aisle that Dylan peed a huge amount of urine down his legs, into his shoes, and all over that general store floor. Our first accident in public, and probably not our last.

I rushed a wet Dylan to the car to change him as Sean talked to the store owner, apologizing about the pee on her floor. The sweet woman brought out a mop and bucket and smiled at us. No worries at all, she said, I am one of fifteen children. We felt pretty bad about it and therefore spent a whole bunch of money buying stuff we didn't need. Dylan kept saying, "I'm sorry, Mama! I'm sorry!" and I held him close and told him it was an accident and that he shouldn't feel sorry. Memorable.

So then we drove up to Jay.





We went back to the cabin until the sun came out.



There is something about seeing my husband with our babies that makes me melt a thousand times. I am so madly in love with him.




Anthony brought out the ATV for Dylan, but Dylan--lover of all things with wheels--was petrified of the "big machine". So the two of us went for an awesome quad ride through fields, getting wheat spewed hard at our faces and discovering swamps and ponds hidden in the woods. I trust Anthony one thousand percent when he's behind the wheel after traveling hundreds of miles on the back of a motorcycle to Newfoundland with him, and this thing was flying. The speed limit on those dirt roads is incredibly 35MPH and we sure were going just that fast.



When we got back to the cabin, Anthony asked Dylan if he would like to go for a ride in the back of the truck. Dylan lit up like a Christmas tree.








Here is a short video of our ride:



We drove over to our friend Bob's cabin, which is seriously lacking a view.






At night, back at the cabin, our friends came over for pizza and a campfire.







There's nothing better than going to sleep smelling like campfire.