Feb 23, 2021 Marty and Wendy are here for all our laundering needs! They even sing a lively tune to tell us all is clean. If you need me, I’ll be doing laundry for the next week straight. Fact: There is no man or beast alive that moves faster than one who thinks he sees the internet truck pull up after not having internet for almost 3 weeks. Spoiler alert: it was the power guy checking to see how bad our “tree to power line contact” was before deciding whether we were on the top or the bottom of the list to

Feb 15, 2021 Preparing over here for the winter storm to hit. Yep, Vermont is about to get it too! (I know this surprises you all ) I shoveled the deck because the snow didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. Which is a first for me but I began to worry that the foot of snow sitting on it is probably not good for the wood. So I shoveled. And while I shoveled, the birds greeted me from above. Although after awhile I began to worry that they were actually yelling at me because the previous owner kept them well

Feb 13, 2021 I have achieved my lifelong (aka a few years) dream of color coding my books, complete with hidden fairies and some of my miniature book nook rooms I’ve built. I may never be able to find a book again and I’m sure my library mentors are screaming.  but I don’t care because it looks amazeballs! (Bottom shelves saved for series that can’t manage to have matching books because my brain will explode if I don’t keep a series together) Note to self. If I ever move again, do not label 15 boxes as “hodge podge” and expect

Feb 9, 2021 February in Vermont is definitely bringing the cold and snow that everyone talks about. Snow falls well before much can melt, we haven’t seen above freezing in weeks, and nights often see negative temperatures. I wonder how long it will take for the snow to melt. I explored my brook a couple times by bringing out my new snowshoes I got for Christmas. It’s not a long path but a decent hill in a lot of snow so it’s a good mini workout. We have an excellent sledding hill next to the house that the boys are eager

Jan 30, 2021 I’ve been reading a lot about wabi sabi lately. It’s the Japanese practice of discovering tranquility in simplicity, finding beauty in age and wearing, and seeing the perfection in imperfection. This morning I woke to the sun streaming into the room and I wandered into the sun room to watch the sun finish rising. And I found myself wondering what stories this house could tell. In one of my favorite book series’, Anne of Green Gables, Anne says a house isn’t a home until it has seen birth, marriage and death. And I love that thought. You

Jan 29, 2021 Didn’t take too many pics because today has been a whirlwind. But we are officially in the house. The Babbling Brook Farmhouse is ours!  The previous owners put out flowers and sparkling grape juice for us which was very sweet. Although it is empty, it is exciting. I’ll be eager to get my stuff in here so it starts feeling like “mine”. But we are on our way. It is very peaceful out here. You can see the brook from the sun room. And you can hear it no matter where you are outside even above the sound

Jan 24, 2021 Exciting news over here! We got the okay to enroll the kids in school early so yesterday we drove to royalton and registered them. We had gotten a huge snow dump and the drive over was a picture postcard of amazing beauty. I still can’t believe a state this gorgeous everywhere exists. So the kids are registered for school. Not actually IN school yet, but hey, baby steps towards progress! They will be doing the virtual option until next year or if numbers slow down. Which I expect once travel season is over. And also our appraisal is

Jan 14, 2021 Apparently my pioneer adventure will not end without a tragic casualty. I don’t recall “Instant pot spoon suffered violent dishwasher torture” in my Oregon trail game so I was not warned of the possibility. So this isn’t going to go easy for us any step of the way. I think it was because I said I was bored. I take that back. But the good news is, we are in the home stretch. Tyler, mr. handyman, sufficiently fixed the RV toilet pipe like a boss. However, we discovered that there is yet another issue with the toilet,

Jan 9, 2021 Shortly before Christmas, we had a small snowstorm that produced a few inches of snow. Later that evening, a man came out and proceeded to work into the night building a snowman. We could see it from our window and watched the full construction and it was fun to watch. The cold didn’t last, however, and the snowman was nothing but a pile in the next day or two, and as we walked past the remains, we said our respects to frosty. Fast forward to a week ago when we had yet another snowstorm. This time bringing

Jan 7, 2021 After a decent snowstorm, we took the new snow tubes gifted us for Christmas. The kids had a blast and more than a few close calls. Side note: sledding through the trees was entirelyTyle’s idea and I was fully against it. We also found a secret star we a QR code on it but the video the code linked to was broken. So, we are still in the hotel. Why? Well, if you remember, we couldn’t get our RV to the repair guy because of the snowstorm. He has limited space in his barn for RV’s and