One man's trash is another man's treasure!

Another reason to love the dump/transfer station.  People get rid of the BEST stuff.  Ben had a great find this week and found a complete game set of  Heroscape.  He has spent the week setting it up and learning to play (they even had the instruction book included!)  Ben is trying very hard when he takes something at the dump to "repay it" by taking something from our house that we don't play with anymore to leave for someone else.  This is a lot harder than it sounds!

Oh Rats!

Yup.  Need we say more?

Sweet Maple Alpaca Farm

Fun Fun Fun!

When the Deans and the Morgans came for a visit we went to Sweet Maple Alpaca Farm.  We found out that llamas and alpacas are not the same animal and we decided we liked the alpaca much better than llamas.  They were not pushy and they really were quite sweet.  

We went in the sugaring shack to watch the sap get boiled down and made into syrup.  We all had little cups of hot syrup and agreed it was delicious! 

The farm was fun but sharing it with our friends from back home made it even better!

A view from above

A few pics from Ben's favorite spot - the top of the Pine Tree in our front yard

1 Van + 2 Adults + 4 kids + 900 miles = FUN!!!!!

Really, it was fun.  But then again, we didn't do the driving, Afarine and Babs did.  We were lucky enough for them to give up 4 days of their lives to drive out to visit us with their kids.  We had a great time together despite the rainy cold weather.  We spent time hiking in the woods with the kids, knitting, doing crafts, chatting, and just laughing.  It was what we Zinks needed!  Babs brought the stuff to color eggs and the kids had fun coloring them while John and Sam have had fun EATING them.  Here is just a snippet of what was going on.....

The River

Melting snow and spring rains have really brought the river up - it is beautiful to watch.   We are truly loving no longer living in a flood plain.  We can almost sleep through rain now.

Sammy's First Ski Race!

Today Sammy was lucky enough to go to Grafton Ponds for a Ski Race with her friend Lia and her family. Here is what Sammy had to say about the whole thing....

The first race was for kids and Lia and I got prizes.  It was an obstacle race you had to go through and over tubes, climb on top of giant haystacks, then take your skis off and go down the tubing hill in a blowup tube.  From there you raced back to the ski lodge for more prizes.  I liked it a lot and I am so grateful for Lia and her family inviting me to go with them. We had a delicious lunch of Brownies and BBQ chicken! Afterwords we used some 2 man skies but the 2 man ski race was canceled. We had a wonderful time at the 3rd annual ski race at Grafton Ponds!