Spring Cleaning & Other News

Life is marching on as usual here, except that everything we do lately is with the purpose and objective of accomplishing our big move. We have given up trying to buy a house before Andy starts work in NH in early May, or before Aiden and I move down there in early June. After having one contract on a home fall through due to toxic mold in the attic and radon in the water, we have decided to rent a house until September so that we are not under pressure to buy something immediately and can get to know the area a little better.

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Our house in VT is on the market too, for-sale-by-owner, so we are trying our best to make it look as attractive as possible. Grandma Chris and Uncle Kenny came up recently for a visit and helped out tremendously by raking, pruning, and mulching the winter schmuck out of our yard. Aiden had a great time with the mulch pile, as did the white throated sparrows.

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We also enhanced our pond by adding a waterfall feature, which will hopefully help aerate the water and keep it from becoming an algae lagoon before someone puts an offer on the house! We've got loads of toads and wood frogs making whoopie in our pond. It's noisy! And today we noticed that the first little tadpoles have hatched from the masses of eggs clumped on every bit of vegetation. I guess if you build it, they really do come. We have to watch Aiden like a hawk in the yard because one of his favorite things is to whack the pond water with a stick or throw small pieces of gravel in.

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This is definitely a bittersweet time for us (and more bitter than sweet right now, I'd say), having to uproot from what is, for the most part, a great life that we've worked to build here the past 4 years or so. Andy and I are both spending a lot of time giving each other pep-talks to convince ourselves that we've made the right decision. I hope that we do look back on it and say that it was a good decision, but the thing is that at this point we don't know, there are so many uncertainties... will we like the area, find a good daycare, will I find a job, will Andy love his new job, will we find a place as nice as this one to live? It's overwhelming. And incredibly stressful. But I guess people do it all the time, so I imagine we'll live through it, hopefully a little wiser and stronger for the experience.

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We'll see...

Some scenes from Mom & Dad's pond on Turkey Lane. Andy caught some "monster" panfish while Aiden played with Chris and Kenny before dinner.

We took Aiden for a walk at Shelburne Bay awhile ago. He was running along at a good pace until he saw the excavator off to the side of the trail, and then he refused to budge. We had to stay and watch it dig forever. And guess what happened when we had to leave..... WAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Made a quick pit-stop at Bristol Pond (Lake Winona) to look for the resident Sandhill Crane pair there but we didn't see them. Still a beautiful early morning though.

Summer is officially here I guess... go sawx