Yes, yes, I know.

Well with the rain today we were so focused on getting the truck unloaded, we forgot to take much in the way of pictures. We will try again though. Don't lose heart. Or, just come visit.

Apologies

Well, the pictures I took of the house turned out crappy. I will take some more tomorrow.

Finally

As Rachel just so eloquently put it, we are on the verge of being house-poor. Not really, but it will be the biggest check I have ever written, although I did spend a whole lot more in capital expenditures in my first three weeks at work. Remarkably, we are still happy with the house and we are happy with our chosen lender. We were very lucky with the realtor we fell in with as he figured out what we were looking for very quickly and, personality and hobby-wise, he is a good fit for us. We did a heck of a lot of digging through the listings ourselves and completely ignored the house we are buying. But the realtor knew that, despite the list price being above our stated limit, the seller was motivated and there were some hidden advantages to the property.

Last night I walked through the property (house and land) one last time with the sellers. Normally, the realtors would do this with the buyer, but neither realtor could make it and the sellers had wanted to walk through the house with us and show us some of the stuff we might not figure out like where the timers are hidden for the outside lights. Generally, they were nice and helpful and only gave me a little bit of grief for getting the house out of them for a price that they consider a steal. It sounds like they got a pretty sweet deal on some land over on the lake themselves and built a house for themselves on the water.

As I drove up to the property, 15 turkeys crossed the road in front of the car and then while sitting on the porch waiting for Rachel to pick me back up a deer wandered into the yard. The sellers warned me to take the warnings about pulling in bird feeders very seriously when March roles around, otherwise hungry black bears will make quite a nuisance of themselves. I am not sure how to handle compost in this situation.

The wooded part of the land was nicer than I had remembered. The wooded part, 11 acres, will require some work to maintain and improve to bring in more wildlife, although the seller says that he shot a couple of deer off of the land every year and would have had ample opportunity to shoot turkeys if he had had a little more time to get out and do it. Looking at the land, I would think that it would attract more turkeys even than deer.

I am anxious to get moved and get to know our new home. It is far enough from here that we will shop at different places and take a much different path to work than we do now. The drive to Ellis's school and from home to work will be much shorter although the drive from Ellis's school to work (the more frustrating part) will be the same.

Tomorrow after the closing we will go take some pictures finally and you can all see what I am talking about.

The weather is cool and so is my hat...

This weekend we went to the children's second hand store and hauled off about a square bale of kid's clothes, shoes, slippers and outerwear. As more evidence that you can never tell what a kid will latch onto, Ellis has fallen head over heels for this hat that we grabbed to tide us over until we could get him a "real" winter hat.

Apparently, everyone is wearing their hats "over the ear" these days, and Ellis will not consider any other way. He has had a perpetually sweaty head for the last couple of days. Last night it took some convincing to get him to not wear it to bed. In the future, we may have to convince him to wear it to bed, if my coworkers' stories bear any resemblance to the truth.

That strip across the grass is his trail in the warming frost that was on the ground this morning. I am beginning to feel that, much like in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we live in a place with two seasons: Winter Is Coming and Winter Is Here. We are now in the few days where early morning feels like the latter, mid-afternoon feels like the former and it isn't possible to leave the house in clothing that will keep you comfortable until you return home.

Shelburne Farms

On Saturday we went to a big festival at Shelburne Farm. It was a nice mix of the normal farm activities that go on there ranging from animal husbandry to cheese making, a number of exhibitors engaged in period crafts including a couple of guys building a table in the style of a post and beam barn, and a few additional modern exhibitors such as a local co-op that sells kits to convert fuel oil furnaces to wood pellets.

The big building in the back of this picture is the center of a large structure with two wings and a front stone wall that completes a courtyard. The wing to my left is "the barn" and the one to the right is full of classrooms. The tall center portion is where cheese making and other work go on. They served a number of farm produced foods including cheese and sausage.

The grounds are always available for hiking. Here we are heading a little ways up a trail. In the background is the main building again. It appears to be particularly well maintained. The parts that aren't stone construction are covered in cedar shakes that are obviously well cared for and the metal roof is perfect where the gables meet the main lines.

Up in a wooded stand there are these post drums. Some of the heads are a little creepy, but you can grab a stick and smack the drums and it can be heard for at least a few hundred yards.

Here Rachel is showing Ellis how to card wool. This was one of many activities for kids to participate in. Others included making your own twisted rope, making a grape vine wreath (we made a garland for Rachel's head), grind your own cornmeal and make a pancake out of it and so on. There was also a group of teenage players doing short versions of Tom Sawyer and Romeo and Juliet on a wagon-stage.

Ellis greatly enjoyed the tractors. Even though he climbed on several newer tractors that tend to come in a rather unsettling green, he liked this one best. I don't remember for sure, but I think the plaque said it was an IH.

Now you might wonder, "why would he put in a picture of a donkey?" Well it turns out this donkey was the donkey that Eyeore was modeled after. Actually, this is the first donkey I have ever been close to that wasn't a biter. It is a miniature Sicilian donkey named Penelope. They live for 30 years (Penelope is 13). They were soft as a puppy and ate from our hands very gently.

After a long day at the festival, Ellis somehow dug up a stamp with built in ink that I think he got at the festival at school the previous week. In addition to his own face, he stamped his shins and forearms as we drove home. I am ashamed to say we didn't scrub it all of the way off until today. The look he has on his face in this picture pretty much sums up his attitude of late, a sort of energetic mischievousness mixed with being a little fragile from being a little tired.

This kid and cheeseburger

Tonight we wanted to go out to supper and I was lamenting to a coworker that Rachel doesn't get to have sushi anymore because of the time I got so sick after eating it and that I don't get to have things like chicken wings very often because it isn't up Rachel's alley nor is it good food for a kid. So my coworker suggested The Matterhorn up by the Stowe ski slopes, a chicken wing, burger joint with a sushi bar that was family friendly. She was right on all counts. Rachel had her sushi. Ellis had chicken fingers and I had the second burger in the last year that ranks in my top five of all time. Thanks to this blog, I will eventually have a record of my top five (top ten, top 100, one can only hope) burgers of all time, so long as burger technology continues to advance producing yet unheard of ground meat tastiness. I consider the last major advance to be the use of blue cheese. Tonight's was a half-pounder with blue cheese and crispy onions on a very nice bun that was toasted on the griddle with the proper amount of butter. I even surprised myself when I put the lettuce and tomato on there instead of letting it pretty up the plate and return to the kitchen.

Ellis was quite a character throughout the evening. In general we have entered a phase of smart-assedness that I thought might not come for a while yet. As we left the restaurant, Ellis let go of my hand and I said, "remember what we do in a parking lot?" (The correct answer: hold hands.) He stiffened his arms and said, "I don't want to remember." "Nothing" and "nowhere" have also become common answers to questions like, "What did you do at school today?" and "Where in the school do you lie down to take your nap?"

Ellis's memory has been ridiculously sharp lately. For events, songs and also places. Because of much going on we had driven all over the place, stopped for dinner in a strange town and then driven 15 miles home in the dark. As we drove by the dairy farm near our house (I am not even sure that Rachel knew where we were at this point) Ellis hollered, "Hey, where are the cows?"

Where is Maria?

Today we went to a picnic at Ellis's school. For those of you who were wondering what it is like, here are some pictures:

One of the things I really like about the playground is the way they built this play structure around the existing pine trees. It makes the school, which is on a fairly busy road, feel a lot more secluded.

Ellis really enjoys the play ground. That main structure under the trees is shaped like a big boat. Here he is climbing up on the poop deck.

Ellis also enjoys the playhouses. As we walked past this one in the back of the picture he said, "This one should be a chicken house."

The picnic was nice and pretty simple. Among other activities there was a little bouncy house. Perhaps the most popular was a big pile of hay that had hidden toys in it for the kids to find. Even after the toys were gone this remained a phenomenally popular activity. I would say that this further proves that one need not spend any money on entertaining kids, but, from what I hear, hay is gonna be expensive in Vermont this winter.

On the way home Ellis was ridiculously tired. When he yawned and Rachel pointed it out, Ellis said, "I was just stretching my mouth!"

Why we aren't posting more

Ellis is in his first "real" week of school and seems to be enjoying himself immensly. He has reported to us that he isn't taking a rest at school and is remarkably chipper when we pick him up. He seems to like his main teacher, Miss Becky. She has reported that he has been following her around a bit but has also showed a fair bit of empathy when it turned out she had forgotten her towel for putting down on the ground when they eat their lunches outside.

In other news, as has largely gotten around by now, we are attempting to buy a house. Things have gone quite smoothly so far. The one complicating factor is that our landlords on our month-to-month rental have given us notice to get out, by Oct. 6th. As of right now, it seems as though we will be able to close and move before that date, but it seems that there are always surprises to be had in this process. Like why can't anyone actually calculate the total amount of money you need to show up to closing with? I had to disclose everything I have down to the dime to get approved for a mortgage, but they can't tell me how much of it to show up with to close the deal?

After seeing a lot of places we found one we liked, had the majority of what we wanted and had a motivated seller. We had heard a lot of talk out here about the market not really being down as it is everywhere else, but it seems that almost nothing was selling, so how far down it was wasn't really something that was easy to figure out. Based on what is selling as fall approaches and sellers are willing to take less to get it over with, I would say things here about the same as everywhere else, except that prices here started out much higher compared to a lot of other parts of the country.

Hopefully within a couple of weeks we will have pictures and be moving in. I tell people that it has 12 acres and a 3 bay garage. And, the house is pretty good too.

Yes, it is worth it

Well, Ellis seems to really like his school and dropped right back into the culture of a Montessori school. The school is a historic building with a lot of nice learning materials and playground toys. We asked Ellis this week what his favorite things about school are and guess what he picked?

The red plastic cars out on the playground and the red tape X's in the bottom of the toilets to encourage the boys to aim. So I tell you, yes, Montessori is worth every penny.

September, push yourself ahead

Fall is here. Vacation is over. We didn't take many pictures, but as soon as some of my sisters-in-law get their pictures up, I will write a post. The short version is that fishing was fun but lousy, weather was beautiful and we all probably should have slept a bit more.

It has cooled off here tremendously and it felt like fall today. At our elevation we may see a frost before the end of the week. Ellis started school today. This is a painful phase-in week where he is only there for an hour each day and then comes home and gets to relax with Rebecca. He seems to really like the school and was apparently quite impressive in his memory of how one uses the materials in a Monetessori classroom. Rachel was with him today and she is pretty sure that he is indeed left-handed. He is sinister I tell you, sinister.

I have met some real characters lately. My favorite was the one-armed house inspector. As I was talking to him he mentoned owning a gym and building motorcycles in addition to his job as an inspector. I said,"Man, you are one of these Vermont guys like Butch* with a whole bunch of careers going on at once." and he said, "Yeah that is why I only have one arm. I used to also run a business making fresh pasta and I stumbled in the wrong place and lost my arm in one of the big mixers." (If I heard hme right, he still rides his motorcycles, even though he is down an arm.) He also appreciates high quality clothing, covering his stump with a smart wool sock.

*Butch, to my knowledge, has been the skipper of a dive boat in the Caribbean, a building inspector, a realtor, a hunting guide in Wyoming, and a breeder of Morgan horses and was almost a carpenter before any of that other stuff. He's an avid hunter in general and also quite an environmentalist in addition to being a serious shooter and reloader. His other quirks include halting a phone conversation so he can sniff the wild chamomile in the field he is driving by.