Happy Halloween!

Hope the rain stayed away and you had a Happy Halloween!

Grafton Cheese Co

Hiking Day

We decided to take advantage of the sunshine on Sat and went back to Grafton on a hike. This time we did the "little bear" trail. It was much shorter but still very long for our family. We all need to work on our stamina and we also need to work on working together to encourage Maisie instead of screaming at her when she lays on the ground panting saying she can't go another step further (this happens about every quarter of a mile). Sam finally found the way to motivate Maisie - mini marshmallows in her snack bag - too bad we were almost finished with the hike by then! On the way home we stopped in Grafton at the Grafton Cheese Factory. We took full advantage of the free samples!! Ben of course didn't touch the cheese but loved their high end crackers. We bought two new kinds of cheese to try - if we can find a way to ship them to people we will, they were incredible!! One was a maple smoked cheddar and the other was a "duet" it was cheddar with blue cheese on the inside - Sammy loved it! The last group of pictures with the suspension bridge is a bridge over the Saxton River on the way out of town - we've been looking at it from the road and wanted to see what it was like. Maisie was a little worried there would be crocodiles underneath and was pleased to see there wasn't :-) After looking at the signage we are guessing the bridge is part of the VAST trails - a series of trails all over VT.

Maisie the FireFighter

October is Fire Safety Month so the local volunteer fire department came to Maisie's school. Well besides the usual stuff there was something special this time.... A LADY FIREFIGHTER and SHE WORE A DRESS. Can you guess what Maisie now wants to be when she grows up? That is of course if the dolphin trainer modeling thing doesn't work out for her.

School Wide Hike

Today I spent the day with Ben and Sam on a school wide hike. It is an annual tradition at the school - all grades go together (K-5 about 140 kids). The younger kids do a shorter hike and everyone meets at the lake for lunch afterwords. The hike for the 2-5 graders was a little over 2.5 miles. It was amazing. Some kids did it without problem but some kids struggled. What was amazing was that no one quit. Parents and the teachers encouraged each and every kid to do it and they all did. What a day!

*As you can see the kids are making friends.

It does my heart good!

Next town over

People are realizing we aren't from around here and it's not just because they don't recognize us - we can't stop ohhing and aahing everytime we go somewhere it's so beautiful. This is today at the bank. There is a fish ladder that Maisie and I have been dying to check out. It was disappointing, the ladder is closed. We are hoping to see it in action in the spring. Maisie thinks that the fish will wave as they are on their way up the ladder.
Should I tell her now or let her figure it out later that this isn't going to happen????

Ben's Room

Ben's new room has three closets and each one is full of his stuff. Two of the closets have secret doors in them that lead to the attic. He has some more pictures that he would like me to add but the digital camera was running out of batteries. We'll update those tomorrow.

Maisie's Room

Here is Maise's room - it is VERY messy every day all the time

She has some really cool things in this new room like Ben's old bunk beds, a closet with a shelf that she uses like a bunk bed, a closet with a secret door to the attic, a window seat that fits all of her stuffed animals including the giant bunny Dr Lee and a second door that leads to Ben's room.

The kids' space

Here we go, it's the unofficial "tour" - here is where all the fun happens at our house....

The upstairs is the kids space - at the top of the stairs is the book nook

Sam's room is finally unpacked

And even messy