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