Tag Archives: Vermont

Family and Friends, On the Road, Pictures of the Adventure, The Adventure, The Cabin

Summer Plans

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The official start of Summer might still be weeks away, but in our little corner of the world, big plans are afoot! I’ve often said that in my ideal world we’d be someplace warm for the winter, but up in Vermont for the summer. We’ve figured out the “warm in the winter” part (well, it’s mostly warm here in Lindale in the winter), but the summer in Vermont presented a little more challenge. Since our cabin is a family property and used by three generations of Dwinells, it was not available for us to just hang out there all summer. (Though truth be told, we’d be more than happy to do that!) So we signed up for May (when there’s not such a demand since most of the kids are in school) which gives us the honor of opening up the cabin. Gary gets the water system up and running, while I’m inside tackling the dead fly bodies, cobwebs, and any other surprises that be waiting for us!CabinSpring2026 We truly love The Cabin in May, when the trees are just beginning to wake up, and the beautiful ‘bones’ of our landscape are visible! Our niece, Christiana, who lives nearby in Bradford, was up last week (it’s always good to make sure the road is passable and things are generally in good shape!) and she sent along this picture –

I am so ready to be there!!

So that takes care of most of May. We head to Ohio over Memorial Day weekend to watch granddaughter #3 graduate from high school and spend a week or so with our Columbus (area) crew! Looking forward to lots of beautiful family chaos there!
In June, we’ll be back in Vermont, staying at our niece’s house in Bradford while she enjoys some vacation time. We’re calling it ‘housesitting’ – but it’s such a blessing for us to be able to stay there. A huge perk of June is that my sister and hubby will be at The Cabin for a couple of weeks during that time! Pretty sure we’ll be able to get in some good sister time!

July was presenting a bit of a challenge, but we put a little ad in the local whatever (you know – Responsible 70-something couple looking for short-term rental…willing to do renovations, etc.) and that did give us a couple of options. But it was actually the time-tested “friend of a friend” connection that found us this sweet three-bedroom cottage to rent for July and part of August. And the location is excellent – less than 10 miles from The Cabin!
Bonus for being in the area in July is that both of our Ohio families will be at The Cabin during the month.  So we can spend time with them, but not crowd them. (Plus, we get to go home to a flush toilet. Just sayin’!)

We’re pretty excited about these Summer Plans! We’ll be stopping to see friends and family in the coming and going travels, so let me know if you want us to try and stop by!  We are very thankful that these plans have come together so very nicely, and we will once again avoid a Texas Summer.  (I’m sure it will happen sooner or later, but not this summer!)  We leave TOMORROW!! Today is worship, lunch with friends, final loads of wash, and wrapping up the packing.  Leaving your home for four months in the Texas heat requires many boxes to be checked. And really lovely neighbors!

Which brings me to my final point. You know I’m excited about spending the summer in Vermont. All of the above plans are answers to prayer. But our little Texas neighborhood has certainly found its way into my heart, and I will miss the dear folks we have come to love here.  Truthfully, we will miss our little nest and the community around it.

I’ll try to keep up the blogging (sporadic though it may be) throughout the summer. But I’m also bringing my sewing machine, so we’ll see how it all works out!

I think the dryer just beeped – better get back to it!

As always – thanks for stopping by –
Steph

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.  Proverbs 19:21

Family and Friends, Mondays are for Memories, On the Road, Pictures of the Adventure, The Cabin

Vermont, Round Two

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Our love for our little red cabin in Vermont is no secret around here.  We’d already been at the cabin earlier in May, but we were delighted to be able to work in a second Cabin stay in late June.  As always it was just what the doctor ordered! We overlapped the first couple of days with my sister Joie & hubby which was a first for us – and quite the delight from my perspective!  We stayed in town with Chris (so thankful for that sweet guestroom!), and took exactly zero photos of the four (or five, depending on the day) of us, but trust me – walks were taken
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thrift shops were visited
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(all pink tags were 10 cents. Yes. 10 cents.)
and ice cream was eaten!
While we were together we also had our annual Dwinell Cabin Association meeting, with over 15 in attendence.
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Zoom has really helped us include more folks in these annual meetings – and it was a great meeting! As our family grows, it becomes more and more important to be organized and official! We love that so many of this next generation are excited about spending time at the cabin. (Excited that they are paying dues too!)
After Joie & Fitz wrapped up their time, Gary started in on what was our big project for this trip – painting the cabin floor!
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We got all the furniture moved to one side and Gary began sanding –
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As he moved around with the sanding I followed behind vacuuming, mopping and taping. Soon he was into the painting!
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Day two was (carefully) moving the furniture to the painted side, and begin the same procedure as the day before. Sanding, cleaning, taping, painting.
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Second coat on the high traffic areas –
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We let everything dry thoroughly before we tried to put the cabin back together again!
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The floor looks great, areas have been cleaned that haven’t been cleaned in a good long while, and I may or many not have gotten all of the fine green dust off of just about everything!
These are the feet of floor painter –
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We stayed down at Chris’s during the process which was great. Truth be told, it was a bigger job than we thought it would be. Thankfully it doesn’t need to be done very often (last time was 2017), and we now know that the next generation will be the ones handling the job next time. =)

After we got that floor done, it was a pretty relaxing time for us. There were no treehouses to build, no docks to construct, or giant rocks to dig up. Chris and I worked on our side garden which we are trying to make into a Native Garden. The hope is that eventually it will be mostly self-maintaining and filled with beautiful Vermont-native plants. This is the first summer to really work on it – and I think it’s coming along nicely! (Now if we could just keep the ‘native’ grass under control!)
Starting out –
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In process –
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And mostly done (well, for this summer at least!)
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The bench was donated to the cabin in Elna’s memory, so I’m calling it Elna’s Garden. It’s a work in progress to be sure – but it is quite the lovely spot to sit and watch the sun set over the mountains.
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We researched where to hang the new hammock (yard sale find!)
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Looks good, but a little too close to the outhouse, especially on a windy day!
Final spot is a keeper!
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Even has a view of the pond!
Besides the naps that we took, the books we read, and the ice cream we ate, some of our other highlights were –
-Celebrating Aunt Vesta’s 100th birthday at the Dwinell Homestead
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-New custom door on the outhouse –
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And of course – my favorite way to wake up
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with a crackling fire and fresh brewed coffee!
We finished up our time there with another sweet overlap – this time with those sweet Chambersburg Fitzpatricks. It was just one day – but it was a pretty perfect cabin day!
-Chores
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-Swimming and games (no pictures, sorry, but lots of laughing and splashing was heard).
-Trip for ice cream
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-and finally a campfire (complete with S’mores!).
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What  lovely weeks we had at The Cabin! We were reminded (as always) what a family treasure this little spot is – and what a precious gift our grandparents left us those long years ago! This was our final ‘see ya later’ for the cabin this year, but we left with our hearts full of Cabin love.

And then we were off the next part of our adventure…
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Details coming soon!

Thanks for coming along on our round two of our Cabin time!
Steph

Family and Friends, Pictures of the Adventure, The Cabin

And so it begins

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We’ve arrived at The Cabin to begin the preparations for our Big Family Reunion, being held here the third weekend in July. Three weeks exactly from today!! On our busiest day, looks like there will be close to 70 folks here – between the ages 6 weeks to 80.5! Since most (if not everyone but us) will be staying ‘off campus,’ we’ll mostly be working on getting the grounds into tip-top shape, and making sure the interior is ready to be the hub for the food and supplies. And since we’ve allowed three weeks to accomplish that, we’ll also be taking naps, reading books, visiting with family, continuing with our Rummicub marathon, and occasionally having ice cream for dinner. No judging, please.
I found the following post from back in 2008 that gave a bit of history of our little slice of Vermont heaven. It’s a wonderful legacy we’ve been entrusted with and it’s always good to remember the rich history of this place!

I came across this picture of our family cabin in Vermont the other night. Judging by the new construction look (both in the landscaping and in the building) it was probably taken around 1938. This little building has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. My grandfather, the town doctor in the small Vermont town of Bradford, bought a 200 acres homestead on the side of Wrights Mountain around 1935. Though it had once been a small farm with a cluster of buildings, only the granite skeleton of cellars and foundations remained. He built this small one room cabin in 1937 or 1938 on one of the foundations, right next to a cellar hole lined with massive granite stones. The story goes that he built it so he could keep track of my grandmother and his children (my dad and his brother and sister). Apparently Gramma Lizzie wasn’t all the happy living the fishbowl life of small town doctor’s wife so she would pack up the kids periodically and head off for different adventures. We’ve been told she had one of the first trailers brought into the state and used to go camping with the kids along the banks of the local rivers. (Obviously before the days of KOA campgrounds!). But whether he had it built to keep track of Lizzie or just to give himself a get-away place not too far from town doesn’t really matter. We will be forever grateful for the gift that he gave his future generations.
The Cabin hasn’t really changed much over the years. I don’t know when it was shingled in red, but it has always been that way as far as I remember.
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The pond was dug in the…uummmm..1950’s something (Elna remembers that, I don’t),

a back porch was added in the early 60’s (I remember that), electricity was added in (around?) 1964 to accommodate the new fangled Destroilet (Yes, it was a propane toilet. Honest.) When I was a youngun’, there were cows that roamed the property from a neighboring farm. I don’t know why that ended, but we haven’t had any bovines around for probably 20 years.[Closer to 40 now, I’d say!) Some of the property has been sold off (we’re down to about 110 acres), and we’ve built a new road, coming in from a different direction. The Destroilet bit the dust around 1995, and a good old fashioned outhouse has served us well ever since. We still use the same well I carried water from as a teenager (the original well was replaced in the 60’s sometime), and although we now have water pumped up to close to the cabin, we still claim “no running water” with pride. No TV, barely a good radio signal, and no phone. (OK, cell phones work up there sometimes, but that’s a pretty recent development. And while it’s nice to be able to call for a tow truck (like last summer), it seems just wrong somehow when the phone actually rings.) Pear trees have grown up in the cellar hole – the perfect spot for a hammock. The red wooden boat that we fished from with Grampy Doc has been replaced with an aluminum one from Sears (though it seems to leak about the same). Here is The Cabin today (well, not today, but within the last couple of years!) –

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[Photo date – 2004!]
Doc and Lizzie left The Cabin to my parents, and they left it to the four of us kids. And it brings all of us great joy to see the latest generation (Lizzie and Doc’s great-great grandchildren) enjoying it and loving it as they did. And we do.
Thank you, dear grandparents!

Here is the cabin today – from a similar, but not exact, perspective.

And I am so very pleased that we will be welcoming our first member of the sixth generation to enjoy the Cabin at this upcoming reunion.

We are so very blessed!!
Thanks for coming along down memory lane with me! Stop by anytime!

Steph

Pictures of the Adventure, The Adventure, The Cabin

Research

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We used to joke about how items ended up at the cabin. The saying was ‘if it’s almost broken, but not quite all the way – maybe we could use it at the cabin.” I confess – over the years I’ve brought my share of items that I’ve replaced in my own world with new, but thought that the slightly (well?) used original item might be useful at the cabin. For whatever reason folks contribute things to the cabin, over the years we’ve collected quite a selection of kitchen items up here. Two crock pots, two blenders, two air fryers, three coffee pots, six pairs of tongs, three pasta scoops, etc. etc. etc.. Since we are a multi-family cabin and none of us know what other folks like to use, there is always a reluctance to get rid of anything! And so the collection continues! Since the porch shelves were becoming quite full of all the duplicate appliances, I decided (with the input from some other family members) to do a bit of weeding out. Of the two crockpots – only keep the newer one. A second small air fryer was just taking up space and the one we were using in the kitchen area worked just fine. It joined the old crockpot in the to-the-thrift-store box. Then there were the two blenders. They were both fairly new (and seldom used, I believe), but I was pretty sure we only needed one. But which one to keep? It seemed only right that we do a little product testing. And what better way to test blenders with than milkshakes. Chris joined us for our research – you know, in case we needed a tie breaker!
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Final result – both made pretty fine chocolate milk shakes.
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But we opted to keep the black one since it is a slightly bigger and the buttons pushed easier. Sometimes it’s the little things!
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In other news, since there was so much milk left over, we purchased more ice cream to continue our research on another day! This research is hard – but someone has to do it.  Happy to take one for the team this time!

Now if we could just figure out if we really need a dozen frying pans – as seen in the header photo along with the cast iron ones that (though often used) are hung decoratively on the wall!
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Family and Friends, Pictures of the Adventure, The Adventure, The Cabin

Real Quick

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It’s late – and I’m sooooo ready to lay my head on my pillow, but I just wanted to share the good news that we’re back at The Cabin!  Yippee!!  Gary has some finishing touches to make on the tree house before the families start arriving in July and I hope to bring this blog a little more up-to-date (along with getting a couple of books read, naps taken, and generally sleeping in.)
These six days will go by in a flash, I know, but I’m so glad we’ve been able to sneak up for a little Cabin Love between projects!
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