Tag Archives: Vermont

The quiet returns

It’s quiet here at the cabin this morning. The remnants of the reunion – Toby and Tammy and kids out in the RV, Josiah and Abigail with little Weston in their pop-up, and a niece and friend up in the loft – are sleeping in just a bit it seems. I thought maybe I’d get a chance to sort through the 700+ pictures I’ve taken in the last week and get started on a Post-Reunion blog post. But as I sit sipping my coffee, knowing that at any moment a sweet little face will come through the door, I figured I’d just leave you with a quick – THE REUNION WAS WONDERFUL! I’ll share more in the days to come, but for today I’ll just share the BEST part of the whole week –
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These wonderful people I am blessed to call Family!

Sometimes it’s the little things

There are a lot of BIG things to love about our Cabin in Vermont.
There’s the heritage
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We are celebrating its 75th anniversary next week with a family reunion.
There are the patchwork views and sunsets –
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There’s the quiet of being in the middle of 100 acres, when the only sound is the rustling of leaves in the wind or the chatter of birds in the trees.

There’s the sense of peace and the blessing that happens every time we’re there.
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But sometimes it’s the little things that really make the cabin The Cabin.
It’s knowing the correct order of window opening to get them all open at the same time.
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It appreciating the old Frigidaire that keeps on chugging
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and how along with a random (and rarely changed) cartoon or kid’s artwork there’s the note from my Mom explaining the correct settings for proper operation!
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Don’t miss the faded final comment – DON’T SHUT OFF! (Who know’s if it will start again?)
It’s how we still keep a couple of my grandmother’s cookbooks in the little bookcase, even though we rarely pull them out to find a recipe.
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But if we do take a look, we find the following inscription –
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(Franklin being my doctor grandfather!).

But today I was struck with a new small thing that made me again wonder at the history of this special place we have been blessed with. I was raking up some yard mess onto our “drop cloths” (honest, we have a drawer that’s marked – “Drop cloths”!) Basically they are old sheets that have already been “restructured” by being cut down the middle and then the two edges sewn together (hey, there’s still lots of good sheet left on the edges even if the middle gets worn down, right?). Perhaps they lived a good life down in town before they came up to become cabin sheets, and I’m sure I slept under them in my youth. Now, however, they’ve become “drop cloths”. But this time I saw something new. There, just along the edge was a name tag, hand written in my grandmother’s steady printing –
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Stanley Dwinell.
Stanley was my Dad’s older brother who was tragically killed (along with his three sons) in a train – car wreck in 1952. I wonder if these were sheets that had been labeled before he went off to camp one summer. Or maybe off to basic training? I’ll never know, and I don’t think it’s really important that I do. But it was a very poignant reminder of the history that is in this place.
Yes, the small things.
The treasured things.

Change of scenery

After 11 weeks (yike, it’s been ELEVEN WEEKS!) of hard work in the attic of Dreyer Hall at Montrose Bible Conference, Gary and I are taking a lovely three week break at our beloved Cabin in Vermont. So it was Good-bye attic with all your shiny duct work, stuffed burritos and wires –
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and Hello Cabin!
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Ahhhh……..

To add a little excitement to our time here, we decided to bring Lizzie right to the cabin! We’d never attempted it before because the road is a little, shall we say, sketchy, but since there had recently been some road maintenance done we decided to give it a shot! (We also wanted the RV there for our family reunion that is happening at the end of the month.)
Here she is coming up Wright’s Mountain Road, the dirt road that happens before our dirt road.
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Probably the trickiest part was the turn into the cabin road since it’s one of those really sharp left turns and we knew she’d never make it on one swing. Fortunately there is a driveway that adjoins ours that had just the space we needed to get the right angle.
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(Don’t you love how I say “just the space WE needed to get the right angle”? Like this part of the “We” was doing anything besides holding her breath to see if “we” made the turn. Oh and taking pictures, of course!)
Here she is – making her maiden journey down the cabin road!
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Not too much space to spare, but all in all it went great!
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Right now she’s nicely tucked into the the last curve of the road –
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Looks like she’s having a nice vacation, too!
We’re actually sleeping at the cabin, but it sure is nice to have our entire home just down the lane. And we’ll move her closer to the cabin during the Reunion when our son Toby and family will be sleeping in her.

We’re keeping busy getting everything ready for the Reunion (and 30+ people camping on the lawn) so I’ll have more to share in the days to come (and it won’t have anything to do with Air Conditioning, promise!). But for tonight I’ll just leave you with what we found outside the the cabin door on Sunday Morning –
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A Luna Moth Party!
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Such perfection!

It’s impossible

to accurately condense Girls’ Week into a blog post! Maybe I should have tried to write a little something each night, but since I was too busy having a grand time (mostly losing at Rummikub or Speed Scrabble), I never got any closer than thinking about it. I have been blessed with two of the absolutely best sisters (and a mighty fine brother, too, but he isn’t invited to GW.) and each year (we’ve been doing this for 20 years!) we treasure all the more the time we have together. And to be able to spend the week together at our family cabin – well, I just don’t know if it could get any better.
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Morning coffee by the fire-
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Wildflowers galore
Wildflowers
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(even the dandelions look pretty at the Cabin!)
and grass up to the wazzoo!
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(I did eventually get some (but not all) of the lawn mowed, but for the first couple of days weed-whacking a path to the outhouse did the trick!)
We were there a little later than previous years, but we still caught the beautiful wild iris in bloom at the pond –
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Ahhhh.
We took a day trip to see our aunt and two of our cousins, another special tradition of Girls’ Week.
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Aunt Berta turns 90 in September and I don’t know how many more chances we’ll get to visit. Sigh.
Our other big excursion was taking a train ride from Bradford to Newbury and back again (about 20 miles round trip).
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Trainride
It was a rainy day, and although it’s a drive we’ve done thousands of times over the years, we really enjoyed seeing it from a different perspective.
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Other than our trip to see Aunt Berta and that very fun train ride, our outings consisted mostly of quick trips to the grocery store or to check out ice cream flavors at the Mini-Mart. We spent most of our days snuggled in at the Cabin, keeping the fire burning low, enjoying each others’ company. We played lots of games
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and ate way too much chocolate (is that possible?)
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We also discovered that when you run out of apples to spread your peanut butter on, those little miniature dark chocolate bars work pretty good as a substitute!
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What a wonderful week! We laughed and cried and won and lost and prayed and worshiped together, all the while so very aware of the precious gift that we have been blessed with – each other!
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I’m back in Montrose and Gary is catching me up on all that he got done while I was away. Trust me, there will be more exciting A/C pictures coming, but for now if you’d like to see some additional Girls’ Week photos, here you go –

Newbury Train Ride

Cabin Wildflowers

Girls’ Week 2012 – the complete set!

First Up

Spring at the Cabin

The grass is high with tiny wild flowers sprinkled throughout.
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The pear trees are in bloom
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and the Cabin Bunny is peeking past the dandelions.
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The cattails haven’t taken over the far side of the pond yet
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and the view up to the cabin is unobstructed by the summer foliage.
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A walk to the well brings a whole new view of the cabin
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hidden by the trees later in the season,
and a small stream trickles by on its way to the pond.
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And Gary is on the mower.
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Spring at the Cabin.