OK, so maybe you didn’t really miss me, but I missed you! Well, a little anyway. Several times during the week I thought about posting a little blurb about the wonderful week I was having with my sisters. Maybe share about our long mornings in front of the fire enjoying our coffee and then how we just moved to the front lawn and sat in the sunshine and tried to identify birds. And then suddenly it was 1 PM! Ah, the excitement of Girls’ Week. I did a terrible job of “documenting” our week – no official Sisters Picture, no picture of our time with Aunt Berta and cousins Dorothy and Catherine, no pictures of the family gathering we had on Saturday. Really, a terrible job. But, since I couldn’t let the entire week go entirely undocumented, here are a couple of random shots that I did manage to take. There were the birds….

(an Eastern Phoebe, I believe)

(and that’s a Yellow-bellied sapsucker, doncha know)
And then the flora -

The beautiful Blue Flags that are starting to ring the pond

and along the edge there are the sundews – an honest to goodness carnivorous plant living right in our little corner of the world. Who knew? (They are pretty small, actually, but pretty darn interesting!) Some of them are even enjoying a meal!
And then there were the sunsets…..


Oh, yeah, the sunsets.
And then there was the precious sister time. As expected, we did lots of laughing. Some down-right-tears-running-down-our cheeks-laughing. We did some serious talking too – sharing how the Lord has been working in our lives this past year. The ups and the downs. The praises and the petitions. We took care of some cabin business (always some of that to do), and were very thankful for Gary who came and mowed the grass when he dropped me off and then mowed again (best he could in the rain) when he came to pick me up. We stayed up late (well, for us anyway), slept in as much as possible with those birds waking up with the sunrise, and took our fair share of naps. We played games in the evenings, sang through our favorite hymns a couple of nights, and ended each night with thankful hearts. We are so blessed to have this treasure we call The Cabin, but more importantly we are blessed to have this treasure called Family.

Oh, and did I mention we ate a fair bit of chocolate, too?
After all, it was Girls’ Week!

Sorry it’s been pretty quiet here at RV There Yet. We’ve been at our family Cabin in Vermont, and we’ve been too busy just soaking it in. We were the first ones up this year – first ones to drive through the high grass to the front door…..

First ones to see the pear trees in full bloom


First ones to use our rustic “bathroom facilities”. (OK, so it’s an outhouse, and trust me, it’s always better to be the first of the season than the last of the season.)

First one to see how high the pond was

and then to walk down and be the first one to take my “official” cabin picture -

and then a couple more pond pictures-


We were the first to check out the wildflowers before the first mowing -




First ones to sit by the fire for that first cup of the day (or the last one at night) -

First ones to hear our hummingbirds scolding us until we got the feeder filled!

First ones to mow the grass.

(That was a little tricky this year. But after a new tire, a new battery and a new blade bearing assembly (?), the riding mower is good to go. Of course, we ended up doing the first mowing with the push mowers, and were reminded again that we aren’t as young as we used to be! So thankful my man was here to solve all those problems!)

Mowed!
But I still managed to find a couple of buttercups that had escaped the blade!

And we were the first to sit on the back porch and enjoy the evening sky -



Being the “First up” has been great! We’ve been soaking in all that is The Cabin. The peace, the quiet, the naps and the chores. And have been blessed by all of it!
If you’d like to see more pictures from this last week – Here you go!
And if you’d like to read a little about the history this family treasure, check out this post.

Tomorrow we head to Pilgrim Pines Conference Center in Swanzey, NH, for our June SOWER project. But I’ll be back at the cabin next weekend for Girls’ Week. Ah…….

We’ve been having a lovely time here in Cobourg, Ontario, visiting with my Canadian Family, but I wanted to share just a couple more (“couple” being a relative term) vingnettes/pictures from our time in Vermont. You know, just in case you were wondering if I REALLY liked the place!
First of all, you have to know that my dear husband LOVES the Cabin. Not just the food and the quiet and the utter restfulness of the place, but the fact that he can set up his tools on the screened-in porch and play with wood! The only defined chore that he had was to finish constructing the last three screens on said porch, but believe me, this guy just kept going until he ran out of wood! (And then we would just take a road trip to Home Depot and buy more!)

New wood box, new sink “surround”, new bench at the pond,new screw box, new grill station. This was definatly a case of a man with too much time on his hands and too much wood available! (But I confess, I loved every last little bit of “stuff” that he made!)
Then there were the ATVs! My brother brought over his two ATVs for us to use during our time there. What a blast – and what a blessing! Whether we were exploring

or using it for hauling -

we surely loved having them at the Cabin. Thanks, Dewey and Sharon for sharing!

Ah, and the company!
Besides Josiah and Abigail, with whom we shared the first week -

(loved that!!!!)
we also had Lynne and Roger for an overnight. More fun!!!!

Plus we enjoyed several visits from family in the area!

Here we are enjoying that blackberry pie with my SIL, brother, BIL, and sister. Great company to accompany that great cabin food!
Personally, I can’t think of a better way to spend a late summer evening!

Oh, and a couple more pond shots -

OK, I know this is dark and fuzzy, but if you look very closely there is a Blue Heron standing at the edge of the pond (down from the left side of the boat). You can actually see his reflection more clearly. I’ve never seen one here before (although my niece reported a sighting earlier this summer), and we’re delighted that he graced us with his presence.
And the pond did have other activity too!
Josiah gave a brief stab at fishing

And great-nephew Marshall went for a swim (joined by a couple of the dogs).

While Gary was busy doing the final construction on the new pond bench, I was busy with my camera. Imagine that!

The Burn Pit -
One of the chores we had been assigned was burning the burn pit – which had accumulated an abundance of branches and trash over the last summer or two-

It took us several days of attempts before we got it to actually burn all the way -

but by the time we left we felt we had it pretty much down to the basics.

Who knew there were actually stones at the bottom of the pit! I’m sure by next spring it will be filling up again (and the blackened edges will all be green!).

OK, OK, enough is enough!
We’re here in beautiful Cobourg, Ontario

but more on that later!
Thanks for hanging around for one last (for this year anyway!) post about The Cabin!

PS – if you’d like to see a couple more pictures of our time in Vermont (like one of Gary as a cow at the Cabot Creamery), feel free to browse the bunch HERE!

Do you find that when you’re camping, the food tastes especially good? That’s how it is here at the Cabin .
It might be because we can toast our English muffins by the fire -

Or it might be that I finally have a wonderful selection of cast iron pots (a little too heavy for RV life)

so I can try out “Roy’s Cast Iron Pan Apple Pie” -




Oh, yeah, that was good! Thanks, Roy!
Or it might be the blackberry bounty of the surrounding hills

that enabled my first ever blackberry pie!



Mmmmmm………
Even if it’s the breadsticks and pizza


right out of the DiGiorno box in the freezer that our son left behind,
it still tastes better at the Cabin!

I love mornings at the cabin.
Whether it’s the crisp morning sun on the distant mountains

or a walk in the early morning mist, with the promise of a blue sky day ahead

or having your morning quiet time in front of the fire

Cabin mornings are the best.
And sometimes, when Morning at the Cabin looks like this -

That’s OK too!
It’s The Cabin.