Vermont Weekend

We spent the final week before our departure to Australia in Vermont visiting my family. We stayed in Guilford the first night at my Aunt and Uncle's house. They live in a perfect Vermont house, complete with a wood stove for heating so naturally we were put to work helping stack firewood for the winter. Here I am stacking wood out of the tractor scoop.

Here's Jaimee horsing around in the tractor scoop:

Actually we did real division of labor: while I helped Uncle Neil with the wood, Jaimee helped Aunt Betsy prepare a dinner for 14 that was happening later that day. That evening we had dinner with cousins and other family in Brattleboro. We had the dinner at the condo of the man who put me and Jaimee up in New Orleans earlier on our trip. He's a friend of my Aunt Betsy and since my sister and her wife were up from Boston and my cousin from Scotland was visiting he graciously let us all stay at his condo that he has in Brattleboro. So this is twice now I've accepted accommodations from someone I've only met briefly. In fact, the condos are really two condos connected by a passage way in the attic and the condos were just perfect for a nice game of Sardines which we played after dinner. Sardines is a variation of hide-and-seek but only one person hides and everyone else searches. It was great catching up with family over an enjoyable evening.

The next day we headed back to Jaimee's dad's house since we hadn't packed for Australia and beyond yet. We met up briefly with our Seattle friends Brendan and Sara Anne and Greg and Laura who are living in Boston for a year and visiting Boston for the weekend respectively. Those who have been following our blog from the beginning may recall that Greg and Laura are the couple we stayed with in Seattle for the two weeks before we left. It was really nice seeing them as well.

We didn't finish packing until the morning when Jaimee's dad and step-mom drove us to the airport to catch our flight. Here we are with our bags before heading to the airport:

Our schedule was to take a flight from Boston to Los Angeles and then a flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane Australia. We knew it was going to be a long day, which we will describe in our next post.