Friends...

What a blessing friends are to us! We had a wonderful visit with our friend Liz from Raleigh. We took a trip to Morrisville (another prospective town) just north of Stowe, VT on Sunday afternoon. After lunch at a local restaurant, we drove around the town, headed down to Stowe and stopped at the farmer's market (which is supposed to be cheaper than the stores... well, Liz paid $3 for a slice of chocolate espresso pound cake, but was able to buy a Moose postcard for the Bruner family). After a drive through Smugglers Notch (which you can't drive through in the winter), we then sampled cheese at the Cabot store in Waterbury where Liz bought "wicked sharp" cheddar cheese and maple drops she had been looking for the whole time in VT. Our best stop by far that day was Ben and Jerry's (yes, Gretchen, when you come back, we will build in time to go there). The menu was a bit overwhelming, but our ice cream was delicious!! Liz and I (Allison) had a great time talking and praying when we got back to Barre. What an encouragement she was to us!

Before our Maple Creeme

View of Mt. Mansfield (home of Stowe Ski Resort)

After our yummy ice cream!

Ben and Jerry's

Some of our Barre friends have also blessed us this week in many ways! As I posted last week, we lost all of our photos from Nathanael's 2nd birthday party, but at least 3 other of our friends brought their cameras and took pictures, too!! THANK YOU!! Sarah, Bill and Jane... thanks so much for your cameras! You can at least see the cake and the excitement on Nathanael's face. We had a nice dinner with another lady from church tonight and her son and Nathanael had a great time playing. While we were ignoring our kids (we laid eyes on them periodically), our son proceeded to poop out of his diaper all over the sofa!!! So instead of a relaxing night for Brian, who is faithfully keeping up with the Tour de France, he watched the time trial while steam cleaning our microfiber sofa! We're so glad we chose that fabric.

Blowing out the candles

What fun!

"Happy Birthday," by Nathanael

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our friends from NC! They leave for VT in the morning! We are so thankful for their friendship and their desire to help us survey towns in the state. Another of our Barre friends is going to cater some of our dinners together this week, too!! Thank you Gary, Debbie, Kyle, Caroline, Rags, Shay, Bobby, Mary and Christine for giving up a week of your really hot summer to come to the cooler part of the country to help ministries in Vermont! We can't wait for them to get here!!

Olde Mount Vernon/Grace

Birthday Fun!

Nathanael is two now! (or if you ask him, he'll say "I be six") If you keep asking, he'll eventually say "two." We had an adventurous birthday weekend... Gretchen came to visit and we started the weekend with a jazz concert at Currier Park, just down the street from our house. We woke up early the next day and travelled to North Conway, NH to see Thomas! Nathanael had a great time riding on the train and participating in the various other Thomas activities! We had a wonderful picnic lunch and a beautiful drive home through the White Mountains.

On Sunday, the mission team who came for VBS this week cooked NC style barbeque (a noun for all you Vermonters, not a verb!) It was delicious! We brought some home for the week!! :) Monday, Nathanael's actual birthday, we had a few friends over for a Cars themed cake and ice cream. Nathanael even sang happy birthday to himself!! It was really funny! His birthday ended up lasting for a few days as presents came in the mail all the way through Wednesday! This was really exciting for him! We Skyped as we opened CC and Gary and Debbie's gifts and videoed Gram's presents so she can watch how excited he was about everything! It was quite different from last year!! It was definitely a Thomas themed day! Thank you for all who shared with us!

Unfortunately our computer is very low on memory and did not upload all of our pictures from our visit with Gretchen, our Day out with Thomas and our birthday evening properly, so we lost most of them. Here are a few that survived the upload. We are waiting for some from our friend's cameras who were here for Nathanael's cake.

We have a surprise visitor this weekend, Liz Criscione, our friend from OMV/Grace who used to be a Northerner! She will be here until Monday and more friends from OMV/Grace are coming on Saturday! YEAH!! We'll post pictures after her visit and our transfer to a newer and larger hard drive.

Our friends, the Cambios went to NH with us

Nathanael and Naomi

Getting on the choo choo!

Nathanael and Gretchen

Riding Thomas

Life size engine

Our picture with Thomas

Percy Tatoo--it came off very shortly

Gordon from Gary and Debbie!

Books for Presents!

Where We've Been

Where did Nathanael go?

Preparation for our Adventures

The last weekend in June our family was able to go to the BCNE (Bapt Convention of New England) church planter's retreat. We spent 2 days learning tips for church planting and meeting others in New England who are planting churches, too. Child care was provided for us by a great mission team from Houston, TX. Nathanael had a great time and even took a nap amidst all the fun! The most important thing we learned from the weekend is that God will be building the church, not us. This whole adventure is going to take alot of hard work and prayer for people to both come to the Lord and be discipled. The last day of the retreat, everyone was given tickets and "Bunny Bucks" to Six Flags NE in Mass. We had a great time despite the rain (26 of 30 days in June, VT saw rain). Nathanael by far had the best time... he got to ride Thomas, Bertie the Bus, a helicopter, merry-go-round and much more. While Daddy rode the roller coasters, Mommy and Nathanael rode the tea cups, which we deemed safe for pregnant women! Dinner was provided at the end of the day by the convention as well. What a treat for us!

Nathanael has been converted to a Red Sox fan

(that is the only baseball cap we could find on our Target excursion in MA)

See-saw fun at the Retreat Center

Enjoying our day at Six Flags

Nathanael's favorite ride!

High-Five Porky!

Nathanael preferred the lion over the horses on the Merry-go-round

On our way home we stopped in another potential church planting town, Brattleboro. It is in the southeastern part of the state just west of the Connecticut River which separates VT from NH and about 30 minutes north of the VT/MA border. It, like St. Johnsbury has a thriving downtown. Our plan was to spend the night there, but because of the Relay for Life they were hosting that weekend, the only rooms available were smoking... so we drove around town for a while and then headed back to Barre. We noticed a Christian Science Church, Universalist Church, but again there is no SBC church in the area. The town has about 10,000 people. The mission team from NC will be going back here at the end of the month for a bit more surveying.

That Sat, Jen, one of Allison's friends from Duke came to visit. She was visiting her daughter who lives in Wilder, VT. We visited for a bit and took her over to the new house (which we moved to this past weekend). Then, later that evening, Holly arrived for an extended visit! Nathanael had alot of fun with her, they spent the days together while we worked. She also helped us pack up boxes to move to the new house!! We took her into Montpelier for a visit and dinner at Sarducci's (a really great Italian restaurant if you are ever in town) followed by a visit to the famous Dairy Creme! She was a tremendous blessing in packing up and cleaning at the new place to make it ready for our move. Nathanael misses her alot!

Holly's visit to Dairy Creme

Dairy Creme visit

Holly helping us clean the house, notice the floor as compared to the

fantastic appliances including a dishwasher!!!

Taking Holly to the airport

July 3rd we moved into our "new" house. It's a 1920s home full of character... a very narrow staircase, limited grounded (3 prong) outlets, a dryer hookup in the basement with a washer hookup in the kitchen (I am thankful we have both!!) In case you hadn't read our earlier post about the house, the group of 2 homes and a barn/garage were purchased by the Green Mountain Baptist Assoc for church planting interns (including us) to live in when they serve at Faith Community and other Vermont missionaries as well. We are sooo blessed to have such a great place to live! The house is situated on a very large hill with a driveway that is sure to be tricky in the snow (I'll post that prayer request in October when the snow starts to fall--our Highlander is not 4 wheel drive, but we may be able to park at a neighbor's driveway in the winter) Thank you to the wonderful people who helped us get our large furniture from our apt to the house and then up the challenging staircase, too!

The "New" 1920s home

The Duprey family (minus a few kids) who have helped us tremendously here!

Bill and the box springs that wouldn't go up the stairs, so he fixed it!

After a full day of moving, we celebrated July 4th (on the 3rd). VT likes to stretch our their July 4th holiday for quite a few days, which was great for Allison who had a 3 day weekend! Friday night we went to Montpelier for the parade and fireworks. We have never been to a politically charged parade before... it was interesting to say the least. They did have tractors, bikes, beauty queens, fire trucks and the ever popular Shriners driving their go carts. The Shriners even had a ramp going over a Suburban for the men to ride up and over and back down on the road. That was really neat! Then it rained (again), but let up in time for the fireworks! Nathanael really liked them after we started referring to their colors as the colors of Thomas and his friends! (Kay Dorsett, our pastor's wife suggested that... thanks Kay!!) He would say, ooohh! Green like Percy and Wow! Red like James!!

Strange political statements by a group called Bread and Puppet

Traditional Parade Sighting

Nathanael in front of the State Capitol

There were rainbows, too!

Raining before the fireworks

Needless to say, we have been very busy lately and apologize for the delay in posting. We are hooked back up to the internet now! :) We'll send out a mass email later this week with our new address. If you need it before then, just send us an email and we'll get it back to you. Our friend Gretchen is coming in on Saturday and we are going to NH to the North Conway Scenic Railway for "A Day out with Thomas" to celebrate Nathanael's birthday! He's thrilled about Gretchen coming on a plane, going to see Thomas, and Debbie coming on a van, soon!! Our friends from OMV/Grace are coming in about 2 weeks. Please be in prayer for their preparation and travel as they help us survey towns across the state.