Another farm tour...this time we took the new missionary couple, the Peach's (from Colorado) to visit the Pease's dairy farm. Grace is in our Primary class, so took a few pictures of her with one of her favorite cows "Rosie".
It has been very warm here already and the 90 degree weather is scaring me to think what this summer might be like. The black flies are already out and swarming around our faces, dive bombing into our eyes and mouth. They are pesky and biting flies that arrive in New England in May. Hello bug spray!!

We live just off Dairy Hill, which used to have lots of dairy farms, now there are just a few left. This is one of them. Our Ward has quite a number of families who still milk cows, have chickens and do the whole farm thing. They are great people and work very hard.

Last Sunday the Kill's from our ward, invited us to dinner. We enjoyed being there during milking time. It is so much work and right now, they are loosing money doing it! Some of the cows are truly beautiful animals, especially the babies! They also have goats and chicken and love working with the critters. The family are true Vermonter's, and are really good people!

Elder & Sister Sanford head for home in Maine after 18 months. They bought a new (2004) Subaru, so will have 2 cars to take their belongings home in. It is a 7 hour drive, and plan to come back for the dedication of the remodeled South Royalton Chapel in August. We will miss them and look forward to getting to know the Peach's from Grand Junction, CO.

The couple across the table from us are the new Visitor Center Directors, Elder & Sister Mitchell from Orem, Ut. They own a scapbooking company called American Crafts.

We have lost another missionary couple. The Vorwaller's from Urda, Ut. headed home March 30. after a year of serving as JSM Visitor Center tour guides. We will miss them a lot! We got together often to play games and eat dinner. Learned lots of new games which we usually lost. They live about an hour from our home in Utah so we plan to visit them when we get home in August. Sister Vorwaller (Shellie) helped me learn some new crochet stitches during the long winter. It is great to meet and make lifelong friends while we are here!

I painted a picture of Cassie and sent it to for her birthday. Now she's not sure she wants a picture of herself on the wall. It was suppose to have Chynna in it, but couldn't get it to look right because of the angle, so had to paint her out of the picture.

The Vorwaller's have tapped a couple of sugar maples for sap, then cook it outside on a grill to reduce it to syrup (3 gallons to get 3 pints or so). A lot of work for so little. Makes you appreciate what goes into it.
We have been painting the office and break room at the shop. It is looking brighter and cleaner and gives us something to do while things are so slow. Also, planted some flower seeds inside to spout. Then will plant in a cold frame, like a tiny greenhouse, outside when they are an inch or two. We have ordered over 2000 from the nursery, these will just be back up flowers and to fill in if needed.

Zone Conference is always a treat. We are uplifted by the young Elders & Sisters as they share their missionary experiences and testimonies of the gospel. We had our picture taken with Mission President & Sister Jensen, as two of the senior couples we have been serving with at the Memorial are about to be released to go home (the Vorwaller's & the Sanford's).

Mission Updates for 1st week of March

Hint of spring ... our land lord gave us the flower and we have really enjoyed it's beauty and smell.

The weather has been very nice this last week. It actually rained during night and now the news said we will wake to more snow in the morning. Will it ever end. The road to and from our apartment is so muddy we have to put the car in 4 wheel drive to make it certain spots. I've been told that it only get worse during spring with all the rains.

Ruby and I went to the Vermont Flower Show this week end at Essex Junction. It was okay ... I think Ruby enjoyed it more than me. The above picture is of a small potting shed I would like to build in our back yard someday. She took a painting class and painted with water colors, and is painting as I write this ... but only after her Sunday nap. I went to a class on composting, sound interesting but not sure it's worth the trouble. I will give it try when we return to Utah.

As we drove by the house on the corner where we turn off Dairy Hill Road on to McIntosh Pond Road, I noticed they were packing up to move. We stopped to talked, an then I noticed they had a small utility trailer and asked if it was for sale. He said yes, so looks like we may have just the trailer needed to haul all the stuff we have collected back to Utah. Nothing important mind you, but because our car was so full coming out we decided that we did not want to return back the same way.