Roadtrip Recap: Vermont House Swap!

Was it a sign that on the way from Niagara Falls to Vermont we saw a rainbow in the middle of a beautiful sunny sky?




I think it was. Incidentally, we had amazing weather nearly the entire trip. I don't remember it raining once, and my iPhoto is filled with snapshots of gorgeous blue skies. Lucky as always.

Maybe even more than this blog has functioned as an information tool for family to keep up with us, it is a book I write for my boys. It is the depository of my hopes for them, my joy at their lives, and a journal so they can see what happened in their lives before memory takes over. That's a fancy way of saying that this is going to be a LONG entry with lots of boring details. This post will just be about the house and the swap; I'll write another entry about what we did in Vermont. I remember this week with so much fondness. It was a time of total relaxation and freedom for the boys. It is why I regularly fantasize about moving us all onto a small farm and living a different kind of life. And why we might, someday!

In the cold winter before our road trip, I had a thought to try to find a farm to rent out for the summer. It didn't take shape the way I'd hoped, and I switchd to the idea of a road-trip where I could show my boys some amazing sights, see some old friends, and maybe fit in a tiny bit of "farm" in the form of a house-swap somewhere more rural. I crafted an add for Craigslist. It read:

Vacation swap - your home for our DC rowhouse I am looking for a summer adventure for myself and my two sons (ages 5 and 3). We have always lived in the city, and would love to experience living somewhere totally different. I'm hoping to find another family that would like to "switch lives" for a while! Ideally, we'd like to stay somewhere rural but are open to anything. 

I'm going to post a little "about us" and a hopeful "about you" along with a few pictures of our home. If you're at all interested, drop me a line and we can talk in more detail. And if you know anyone you think might be open to this sort of crazy plan, please pass this listing along! 

About us: we live in a very walkable area of Washington, DC. We walk two blocks to the Metro, two blocks to the community center/playground, two blocks to the grocery store, 15 minutes to Chinatown and the Verizon Center and a big movie theatre, and 25 minutes to the National Mall (Capital building, Washington Monument). We regularly Metro a few stops to the museums to visit the American History Museum (dinosaurs!), the American Indian museum, and other fun adventures downtown. There is hiking nearby at Roosevelt Island, and it's easy to get to some great child-friendly places all over Maryland and Virginia. We walk to Thai, Ethiopian, Greek, and Chinese restaurants. 

Our house: a decent-sized house for the city: 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, living room, dining room, kitchen, fully finished basement, pantry, washer/dryer, deep freezer. There's a small bricked backyard that you can use for playing or for parking. We have wonderful friendly neighbors who will be happy to help you acclimate, learn about the area, and provide support (and parties!) 

About you: I want to meet up with another family who is up for an adventure. I hope to find a nice house with at least 2 bedrooms, child-friendly, well-maintained, no pets that we need to take care of (we can handle fish or guinea pigs though). Having a bunch of land and a nice porch would be a bonus.

My old boyfriend Jonathan has a stellar wife named Wendy, and she put it on the local listserve in their town of Norwich, VT. I got a bite from a lady named Gail and everything clicked. Looking back, I realize that we never spoke to each other on the phone, not once. In fact, we still haven't, even a year and a half afterwards! This is the first email she sent me:

I read the posting your friend Wendy placed on the Norwich listserve about your interest in a housing swap this summer. We are very interested if you haven't found anything yet. We are a family of 4 (2 girls (8 & 12) and 2 adults) and live in Norwich. Our house is on the Connecticut River with about 4 acres of yard and a swimming beach and rope swing into the river. The house has 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, family room, and a kitchen/dining/living room. 

We have friends in DC that we would love to visit plus would love to have a chance to visit some museums.. We are fairly flexible with time but are not available for a swap the 3rd week in June, 4th of July week or the 3rd week in August. If this is at all interesting to you, please let me know and I will send photos of the house and property.

To protect Gail's privacy, I won't post the address but suffice to say it was perfect. We sent several more emails and worked out the details. We were able to arrange to swap the week before the boys and I needed to be in Wolfeboro, NH for our week at the lake (maybe 2 hours from Norwich) and so everything lined up wonderfully. Stewart made arrangements to stay with some friends in DC. And so I both took a deep breath and jumped into the adventure! And this is what we found waiting for us:

 























And all of this? Just the YARD of the house we stayed in! Next post...what we did in Vermont!

Roadtrip Recap: Niagara Falls!

After our fun in Ohio, we left the helicoptor landing-site (after being mistaken for Paul's wife and being thanked for my service to the country!) and hit a mid-west landmark: Steak 'n Shake. It did not disappoint.



  From there we hustled up to Niagara Falls. I had booked a hotel while sitting on my butt in front of the TV at Becky's house in Ohio and it turned out to be further from the falls than I thought - once we'd gotten there, checked in, and charted a path to the falls it was later in the day than I wanted. We hit a drive-through and drove madly towards the falls parking lot which was a road-trip in and of itself! Parked, hereded the boys out of the car, down the paths, down a great big hill...and there we were!

 



We looked over the falls and got drenched by the spray. We picnicked on the grass near the falls. We pooped in our pants and hid the poop in the bushes and tucked the underpants neatly into the trash. One of us did, anyway. We washed our hands on McDonalds napkins and water from our water bottles. It was fun.

 





Hotel again, some swimming there the next day, and then off for the most anticipated part of the trip: our house-swap in Vermont!

Roadtrip Recap: O-hi-oh!

After our amazing time in Indy, we retraced three hours back to Columbus Ohio. Back to Ohio to see a college girlfriend who I hadn't seen in at least eight years. A teensy gamble, but it paid off huge. Everything clicked perfectly.

Becky's two boys and my two boys had a great time together - especially her older (Jake) and Nate. They built marble-runs together, watched Home Alone 3, and just generally made friends in that easy way that little boys seem to do. Drew and Jack played a more solitary game around the outskirts as the littlier ones seem to do. Becky and I talked and talked and talked and talked as old friends seem to do, when they're very lucky to fit back together so easily.

Of course I have no pictures of us, but we properly documented the passle of boys.





To cap off the trip, it turned out that the day we were leaving, the Dad of the house, Paul, was doing a Blackhawk landing in a field not too far from their home. We rushed to get out of the house and made it to the park about 10 minutes before we heard the chop-chop-chop-chop in the distance, and got to watch the entire landing. It was a thrill.



Paul and his crew were there to wow a group of campers, but he saw us and came over to say hello to the boys and they were very very proud and happy.



Then Paul took us over to the Blackhawk and introduced us to his crew, and the crew let the boys roam all over the place. Happy kids.





It was a thoroughly excellent visit. Next up...Niagara Falls!

Road trip recap - Indy!

It's hard to know where to start on this post! What a whirlwind this past month has been, and settling back in at home has been the only hard part about it. But Nate heads off to camp tomorrow so life will calm down a bit. I'm just going to take this bit by bit (inch by inch, I tell the boys! Or bird by bird).

Here's the only pic I have of me with the girls...so sweet!



So then we moved out of the hotel into my friend Ashley's house for a few days. We met four years ago, right after I'd had Jack and she was pregnant with her first child. We got to chatting about baby gear in the aisle at Target, and somehow turned it into a real friendship! It was so great to get to spend some time with her and her kids. Unfortunately Jack came down with croup (which I was worried was strep since Nate had recently gotten it) and we spent a lot of time dealing with after-hours care. She even took Nate to a play area with both of her kids so I could stay home and nurse Jack on our second day there. It wasn't the visit I'd imagined, but it was a heck of a lot better than nothing. Somehow I ended up with ZERO photos of our time together. The most rewarding part was that little Bella, who'd always been so shy when they lived here in DC, finally took a liking to me. It felt wonderful.

While we were there, we took a morning to visit the Indy Children's Museum. It kills me that we don't have a Children's Museum here in DC; they're always filled with so much SCIENCE and my boy Nate loves him some SCIENCE, so whenever we're nearby one I make a pilgrimage. This one had us at "dino."



And "transformer."



This was the actual model they used for the actual movie. Of course Nate hasn't even since the actual preview to the actual movie, but he was still impressed by that fact.

Before we even got inside the main area, we found this amazing exhibit of art masterworks re-created in...Jelly Beans! (Jelly Bellies, I suspect). Neither kid was familiar with the original artworks, but they still got a kick out of them.





Nate absolutely ate up the science area, and we decided we're going to start building a few simple Rube Goldberg's here as a hobby (at least the "rolling ball" sculptures. Not sure they meet the criteria of a Rube Goldberg if they don't set out to accomplish a simple task!) Either way, we are both in love with them. Maybe me more than Nate. Just by a bit. Anyway, our house is gonna get it's science on!

We finished the museum trip with a lovely melt-down by Mr. River, and called it a day. Indy, you are lucky to have such a great museum!

Our last evening in Indy, we even got in a visit with the lovely Kara and her daughters Emma and Olivia. Emma and Nate took an immediate liking to each other, Emma is a total sweetheart. And Miss O is sassy, just like my little one. We headed out to their local pool and splashed around for a while; Kara packed us a great picnic dinner. Then Dairy Queen for dinner, and we drove back to Ashley's house sticky, and far too late.

Next up...Ohio!

Road trip!

On Thursday afternoon, the boys and I drove away for a 4-week road-trip. Very exciting. I made an internal commitment to blog every night but obviously it hasn't happened. By the time I get them showered, brushed, pj'd, read-to, and in bed, I have enough energy to zone out on Frontierville for 30 minutes and then get into bed. Where I get molested by Jack ALL NIGHT LONG. His future wife will either love him or hate him. The boy is handsey.

We're getting ready to meet Beth & Scott, and all three kids, at a state park in less than an hour, but I wanted to make sure to get some photos up so that Stewart doesn't disintegrate into a puddle of need anytime today. He misses his boys.

It rained most of the way from Rockville to Uniontown, PA. Nate took this out his window:



He took this one of Jack coloring on a puffy tray. Jack is VERY into coloring right now. And a confirmed lefty.



Driving



Pennsylvania



Hotel!



TV at the hotel (what a MAN, even with Pink Doll in his arms):



Sleeping on the road from PA to Indiana



Ohio



Cracker Barrel



Indiana!



Nate and a baby (Evelyn? Olivia? I have no idea!) Nate is madly in love with these babies. He wants to hold them all the time. He loves when they grip his fingers. He kisses their heads and strokes their cheeks. Jack is similarly besotted. These boys deserve to be big brothers again!



Nate, Sam, Olivia, and Evelyn



Hotel again. We love staying in hotels!





Have dinosaurs, will travel.



This boy is very little trouble. Sassy, these days, but will play by himself for hours. Big brother is not endowed with those skills, and spends his time effing with little brother. Very extremely frustrating

That said? They're both traveling beautifully and adjusting well to all of the changes. I'm extremely proud of them. More later.