Another fun week

Today marks three weeks since Tricia and I pulled into town and 4 weeks since Keith and Parker came to town. We are having a lot of fun livin' the small town life.



As I mentioned in the last post we have been going to a farm to get our veggies. Here is a picture of Tricia and Keith making a cheese and broccoli quiche. The reports were it was fabulous. I'm not able to have broccoli, so I took their word for it.

We are making a habit of taking after dinner walks. Here are some pictures from our neighborhood. Enjoy.






On our walk we headed over the bridge that is right by our house. Here is a little background. I don't like bridges, so as we started over it I decided to stop in the middle and wait for Keith and Tricia to come back. As I was in the middle of the bridge, which I do not like, I leaned on the railing and realized the bridge was infested with spiders. If you don't know, I HATE SPIDERS. While I was freaking out and waiting for Keith and Tricia I took this pictures. Enjoy or be grossed out. You decide.






I've been trying to cook and bake more from scratch. I made Cookies this week and this beautiful chocolate chip banana bread. Everyone loved it.



We headed back to the farm again this week. We got all our veggies for the week. We got to pick green beans again. Enjoy the farm pictures.







After we were at the farm we met Keith at Douglas' Auction house. There are auction houses everywhere here. We ended up getting a few furniture items and a couple rugs. It was fun. I remember going to auctions with my mom when I was very little in Colorado. My one memory is wanting my mom to win me a sit-n-spin and crying when she didn't win it for me.


Today I ran my first 5k here in Massachusetts. It started at the Yankee Candle Flagship store that is right around the corner from our house. There is a part of the store that is Christmas year round and Santa is there, so he was at the race today to see us off and greet us at the finish line. It was a beautiful day and I really enjoyed it.




There were a lot of beautiful flowers outside of the Yankee Candle store.





Here is the goodies I got at the race. I got a Yankee Candle, Yankee Candle Car Air Freshener, trail mix, coupons for the Yankee Candle Store and restaurant, and a t-shirt all for $15. Races are a lot cheaper out here. It was a lot of fun. I also won a David Cook CD from a radio station that was there.


While I was at the race Keith took the kids to a Crew rowing class. Tricia is interested in rowing in High School, so Keith took them to learn the basics. Tricia ended up not being able to do the class because she didn't feel well, so Keith and Parker did it. They liked it, but said it was a lot of work.

After that we met at Lowe's because it was tax free weekend here, so we got a new fridge. Then we went out to lunch.

This has been a great week and I look forward this next week as we have our first guests. My dad and Patty come in on Tuesday. They leave Thursday after lunch and Darlene comes Thursday after lunch for almost a whole week. I can't wait to see them and see what adventures we have in store. Stay tuned and see how we continue to learn to love livin' the small town life.

Our New Start

Keith got a new job in Amherst, Massachusetts. He's been working at his new job since October, traveling between Illinois and Massachusetts. This past July it was time to pack up our bags and hit the road. Keith and Parker left with the moving truck. Tricia and I stayed behind to finish some business. Tricia had summer camp to attend and I had a 1/2 marathon to run for Team Challenge and the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America. We were apart almost 2 weeks.

Two weeks ago tomorrow, Tricia and I pulled into town and our small town livin' started. We moved from a town of approximately 17,000 people to a town of 3,777. We went from a town with lots of stoplights and traffic to a sleepy town with two stop lights and no traffic.

Keith once had a 3 hour commute round trip to work, now it's just 30 minutes round trip. He's home every night by 6pm for dinner and doesn't have to travel as much.

We have been used to a very hectic lifestyle and are looking forward to a more laid back life.

Once we were reunited as a family we took a walk down the street. Here are some pictures of our walk on the way to the Conneticut River.



These two pictures were taken just steps from our house.





About 6 houses down from us is access to the Conneticut River. There is a canoe launch and a Kayak launch. Here we are checking out the river.

Keith and I decided once we moved we were going to start fresh with our family's eating and healthy habits. There are many opportunities to buy locally through farmstands, coops, and buying shares of farms. The kids and I visited a farmstand and bought lots of nice produce.


Here is the first farmstand salad I made for Tricia and Keith. I have a cool carrot cutter that makes the crinkle cut. They really enjoyed it.


Next we headed about 40 minutes away to go to Six Flags New England. It's a lot smaller than Six Flags Great America, but still a lot of fun.








We had a great day at Great America, but we were looking forward to getting back to Sunderland.



One thing that Keith and I have been looking forward is buying into a farm. Today we visited a farm and ended up buying a share in the farm.

Here are the kids waiting outside the barn as Keith and I learned how it all worked. The farm is ours for 13 weeks. Every week on Friday we will go and fill a cloth bag with as much veggies as we can fit in. Some veggies you don't have to put in the bag and then you can go and pick some veggies too that don't count towards your bag. Each week there is a different food you can pick and some of the pick your own foods you can just pick and snack on right there in the field. They will say SNACK ONLY.



Here we are ready to cross the bridge to go to the fields where you are allowed to pick your own produce and flowers.




First we had the opportunity to pick sunflowers. I had never seen purple sunflowers before. Can you see the bee? They were everywhere. The flowers were so pretty.



After picking sunflowers we got to pick Green Beans.

The kids on the farm after picking some goodies. Originally they were very negative about this whole idea, but now they are excited and can't wait to go back next week. We look forward to it to.


Here is everything that we got at the farm today.



After we got home from the farm we headed across the street to the park behind the public library. There we were able to watch the Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees game on a big screen outside. It was a great small town feeling and we all met some new people. Tricia hung out with the little kids and got her first babysitting job. It was really a great day.

We are two weeks into our new journey and we are loving it. We are looking forward to many more new adventures. We are on our way to really livin' and lovin' the small town life.