Found

Here's a comic I've saved, found in the masses of stuff I've accumulated. You'll have to click on it to be able to read it.

This would have been best as a Mother's Day post, but oh well.

I Would Eat Only Bacon.

I give you The Brick Store. We drive all the way here for the bacon. The pepperoni is good, too. They have their own soda, but it's made with corn syrup instead of sugar, so that's disappointing. Still not a bad taste, especially the Sarsaparilla soda.



Mmmmm. Bacon.



At the Hop is a cute ice cream store next door. It's pretty basic in terms of the offerings, but I love the decor and it's a nice treat for the girls who have ridden in the car for an hour plus for...bacon.





She finished before Fiona. Gadzooks!

Some pictures of the inside:









It was a gorgeous day.



So we checked out the covered bridge:










The garage sale we had last weekend went very well (except for someone stealing 3 containers of earrings/rings/bracelets out of our garage while we were in Bath...) and this is my last week of work. We're still trying to pin down a date for the moving people to pack up our stuff and then tote it away. We also need to figure out where exactly we'll be staying on our great road trip to Tejas. We had one more family look at our house yesterday (making the grand number of showings up to...two). My car needs regular tires (goodbye forever, snow tires!) and a tune-up, and hopefully we'll have time to get Doug's car tuned-up. No word yet on when his car will be all fixed up. We're still waiting on money from the first car accident.

I think once we get settled into the new house (hopefully, that will go smoothly), I will sleep for a week.

Live Action Update! Looks like the day we leave Vermont will be the 18th. The movers actually need two days instead of one day to pack, and one day to load. This makes it a little close...it will take us 4 days to get to Texas, and Doug would start the next day (so we drive the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st...and he starts the 22nd). We just have to drive 7-8 hours a day and it should work out. I think we could have them come earlier, but then our stuff would be in storage. I'm not in love with that idea, and really, it will be nice to stay here as long as possible to see everyone we want to see before we leave.

One Quarter, Each Thing

First, a picture of her on her field trip playing an old fashioned game, tossing a wooden ring with wooden sticks (the way she holds them in other pictures makes me think she should be in band later, in the percussion section!) Anyway, they really got into this game. Looks like some sort of dance in the picture.





We had our garage sale today, and it was extremely successful. It goes tomorrow, too, but I imagine it won't be quite as popular as it was today.

It's time for a bath now. One more week of work next week. Then it will be June! Our house is emptying out. It's really happening! If we could only sell our house. The garage sale seemed to generate a bit of interest in the house as well. My fingers are crossed!

In Other News

Well. Now I have nice clean, undented car. The body shop even cleaned the inside of the car. It's honestly like new.

First of all, everyone is totally fine. Okay? Just so you know.

Saturday, Doug took the kids to the co-op for quinoa (which had accidentally gotten thrown out with some older grains and beans in order to get the big chest freezer empty for moving or selling). I wanted quinoa for a salad that I intended to bring over that evening for dinner at Ame's house (which was WONDERFUL). On the way back home, Doug was hit by a girl in her dad's truck. He was in the left turn lane going west (in order to turn on the street to our town) and she pulled out of a Mobil parking lot in a very wide turn, trying to go east. She totally hit the front left of his car and continued her way down the rest of the left side of the car (the side Sophia was on, by the way). Doug could see this about to happen, so he slowed his car down quite a bit. Hopefully, this will all get taken care of smoothly with our insurance companies. The girl (and her dad, who came later) was very nice (and is also fine as well) and the kids have had no nightmares or anything. I'm still amazed this girl was born in 1990 (!!), but that doesn't mean I'm OLD or anything. No, no, no.

It took ME most of the day to recover (and Doug as well, who did not want to drive for a bit), especially as when Doug called, the first thing he said (or maybe the first thing I heard) was "there has been a bad accident". Just waiting for the grey hairs to start appearing now.

So we are out one car again, but the good news is that (hopefully) the repairs should be done by the time we need to drive down to Texas. The cars also need oil changes, etc, so hopefully we can also squeeze that in. Yes, that's really coming up fast now. I think we leave in about 3 1/2 weeks. HOLY SHIT. Sorry, I just realized I should probably stop writing and get back to trying to sell our crap on Craigslist. I want to have a garage sale this weekend, and I need to get ready for that, too. That will be difficult as I'll be spending most of the day Thursday at Fiona's field trip to the Billings Farm and Museum and I work Wednesday and Friday. So that leaves today to do...everything. Which is why I'm writing and drinking coffee.

I took the girls to Lilac Sunday at the Shelburne Museum for one last time.








I've just sent in Sophia's application for a Montessori preschool, so hopefully that will go smoothly. Suddenly I have 30 minutes to do 2 hours worth of work, so more news later! Oh! We finally have a showing this Wednesday at 4 PM. Now if they would only buy the house. At our asking price. That'd be GREAT.

Please remove the maggots, rat carcasses, and corpses of shocked health inspectors and make the place fit for the preparation of sodding food.

Here's the episode I was referring to. If you don't want to watch the whole thing (do try), the salt fun beings at about the 5 minute mark.

And Without Tasting It, You Call for SALT? I Hate You With a Passion You Can Only Dream of.

(The title of this is from the best episode of Chef! One of my most favorite lines ever.)

Okay! Here is a picture Triana took of me outside Hen of the Wood. I finally found the menu, so I can share. For the first time, one of the dishes was slightly disappointing. Triana and I shared two appetizers: the wild leek soup and the Niman Ranch pork cheeks (I thought, "what if I never eat here again?" and promptly decided we must have pork cheeks, especially as Triana has never had them). The pork cheeks were, naturally, most tender and sublime. The wild leek soup? It was perfectly smooth. It had lovely little crisp flavorful croutons. The soup itself was bland. I think it actually needed salt. There are no salt shakers or pepper on the tables here, of course. There is usually no need. So while we had no trouble finishing it (for while it was bland, it also not hard to eat!), I would not order it again, and found myself wishing we had ordered the hen of the woods mushrooms. Or the oysters. Or the calamari.

For entrees we shared the Sheep's Milk Gnocchi. I cannot remember what it was served with (the menu I have is from the previous day, so it is slightly different from what we actually had), but the gnocchi was lightly seared so they were a bit crisp on the outside with a creamy, herby inside. Great texture. I do remember there was lemon and pine nuts. Outstanding. We also ordered the short ribs, which I believe was served with kale (always done perfectly) and more gnocchi--but different gnocchi! Two kinds of gnocchi! It is not on the menu, and as I'm writing about this two weeks later, details escape me. I will say they were a delight to eat and creamy.

We finished with three kinds of local cheese (going to have to hunt down some Vermont cheese sources while I'm in Texas). Oh, the wine! I didn't take a picture. We had the Orogeny Pinot Noir, 2006. It took about 20 minutes to really open up, but it had a great blackberry jam thing going on. Not so great with the soup (also not a surprise), but quite complementary with the other dishes. Even the Sheep's Milk Gnocchi!

For Sale, One Purple House

It's very busy around here with the packing and the cleaning. Today the house finally went on the market and our realtor took some indoor pictures.



We had a great visit with Kendra, and she took this very cute photo of Fiona and Sophia.



Here's us!

So we found a house in Texas on our last trip. It's in the school district we want and it's a cute house. We haven't closed on the house, though. That we can't do until after we get there. We should get there about mid June. Now we're just waiting for the movers to come look at our stuff to estimate what they'll need to do. Once we know the date they will come move our stuff, we can figure out what day we will actually leave.

Blogging will be quite sporadic (so...nothing new there) in the next 5 weeks and then I imagine it will be a bit dead from mid June for a couple of weeks. I'll try to write as often as possible between now and then. I'm trying to write at the worst possible time right now (4-5 PM is never a good time, and the kids are extremely loud today...full of energy even after waking us up at 5:30 AM. Happy Mother's Day!).

Oh, and I just remembered!



I got rear-ended a while ago! No kids were in the car and no one was hurt. I was making a left turn (I saw that Dog River Farm had the first fresh eggs of the season!) and the woman behind me put on her breaks, but they didn't catch. They caught the second time, which is good, because the speed limit on this road is 50 MPH. She was very nice and GEICO, her insurance company, is so far being fabulous. An insurance company being fabulous. Yes, I said that. The car is all fixed now. I believe this is my first accident as the driver. Hopefully, my last.