Tuesday, October 12, 2010

City Boys, Country Boys



The places my boys know best are Brooklyn, New York and Northern Vermont. Their experiences are towards the extremes of population density: super urban or super rural. We need to visit the 'burbs more to round things out a bit. Andrew walked all through my parents' 100+ year old farm house and noticed "there are NO neighbors in this apartment!" Poor boy is still sorting things out.

This last trip was a long weekend that we packed with little visits with friends and family. We covered a lot of ground.



We stayed at my mom and dad's. My mom definitely has an eye for decor...even her porch was decorated for fall! Unfortunately Isaac disagrees with almost all of her design decisions. These pumpkins in the antique, child-sized wheel barrow? It just looks better all dumped in the yard.



We stopped in to visit my friend Loralee. Loralee lives on farm. She and her husband raise chickens and pigs, have a large garden (enough food for year round produce!) and a Christmas Tree plantation! And they've only just begun! She has two boys, Timothy 3 1/2 and Patrick 1 1/2 and Timothy is able to catch the chickens and hold them! He was walking around with a chicken under one arm while explaining to me the chicken's breed, where the chicken sleeps and where to find the eggs! It was adorable!



Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of Farmer Tim holding his chicken. But I did catch Isaac and Patrick trying out their chicken catching.

At one point during our visit, Loralee throws open her front window and yells to Timothy, "TIMOTHY! Be GENTLE with the CHICKENS!" which I can safely say I have never, ever yelled out my front window. Ever.



Dave and the boys stopped in to visit Dave's brother while my mom and I slipped away to do some shopping. Uncle Josh has LOTS of toys, and Andrew's favorite is easily the four-wheeler. When Josh rides him around Andrew stares at all of the gauges and numbers on the dashboard. Josh stopped for a minute and Andrew pointed to the speedometer and said, "Ok! Now I want to go THIS fast, but backwards!"



And on our last day there, we stopped in at the Vermont Corn Maze. It was pretty incredible. Better, dare I say, than the Queens Corn Maze we did last month.




We met our friend Erin and her son, Henry there, and troopers that they are, they braved the maze with us. It was beautiful and lots of fun!





And that was the stories of the weekend.
The end. ;)

13 comments:

Melissa Belmonte said...

Love the stories and the pictures. Now you've been to two corn mazes, and we still haven't gone to the one just down the street from us. Maybe this weekend.

I heart VT.

Dave said...

Melissa, I have a sneaking suspicion that if you were Andrew's mom, you would have been to a million-ba-zillion corn mazes. ;)

Cat said...

I already loved the pumpkins in the first post. Now I am crazy about Isaac and the wheel barrow!
I can't wait to hear about your job.

JIW said...

Robyn, were I to live at your mom's I'm sure I would spend my morning having coffee there and my evening have wine there!
So lovely!

Mama V said...

What fun! And what beauty! I wanna go to Vermont!

Whenever we fly to visit either set of grandparents, Lucas is surprised every time that a single living space would have more than 1 bathroom. He says it's "silly!" And in those places, whenever Jesse gets a peak at someone's backyard jungle gym, he can't figure out why he can't access it in the same way that he can the public playground! I guess we all have our own ways of being sheltered. ;)

Thanks for the 2 posts in 1 day!

Deb @ PaperTurtle said...

An awesome post with adorable pictures, Robyn. Love the one of Isaac and the chicken. And your mom's porch is lovely! I'd spend every available moment in one of those chairs if I lived there!

Sally said...

I like your blog- your stories and scrapping are great. I have 2 young boys too and can relate. Thank you. Looking forward to the alphabet posts.

Ruth said...

You have such a great way with words ~ I've been smiling while reading this and admiring the gorgeous photos.

Rhona said...

I love the photos in this post, especially that first one :) How fantastic that your children are able to experience both city and country life - I bet they love getting out to the farm. I loved your description of Farmer Tim and his chicken, I could just picture him! xx

erin said...

Hey Robyn! We had such a great time with you even though it was way too brief. Seeing you again just makes me miss you more. I think Vermont is especially colorful this year and I'm so glad we were there the same weekend. Thanks for the cute shot of Henry and I. I'm always behind the camera so I have hardly any of us together.

Hugs!

Ladkyis said...

And something else you've never said is
"Michael, MICHAEL! where are you going with that goat?"
We collect good things like that. I have a notebook full of things my children caused and now we have one for my youngest granddaughter.
her best one ever was
"too young me, to ever look after geese."
We were on our way to collect some chickens so who knows what train of thought she was on

Plume said...

Michael, where are you going with that goat?--Too funny!

Love that porch! Ah, to have coffee there every morning. Hope your first day of work went well.

ComfyMom~Stacey said...

We live in a rural area & whenever we visit the suburbs or the city my kids wonder why all the houses & buildings are so close to one another. "Where do all the people come from?" is another good one.