Vermont: Part II

Last Thursday was Excursion Day on our trip to Vermont.  Jen gave us a bunch of tempting choices and we picked the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory.  We have our priorities.  I went to the JSBM (all the cool kids call it that) nine years ago with Jen and Allyn.  Remember when those two had a combined five children?  Me neither.  We got sucked into the new senior missionary's vortex of knowledge almost right away.  She wanted to tell us everything she knew.  EVERYTHING.  Even though this is not the place for it, I'd like to make a plea to all missionaries at visitors' centers around the world: pipe down.  It's such a beautiful place and given some room, we really could have had a nice spiritual moment.  Obviously we still enjoyed ourselves very much.  I'm just sayin'...

What is it with kids and running around in circles?  Bridget was over-the-moon about this flagstone path around the monument.  The wind was blowing the leaves on the ground in fancy patterns and a couple of times Bridget just stood with her arms outstretched feeling it with a big smile on her face.

Barefoot at the JSBM?  I guess that's OK.  I also love Jen's hair in this photo and Brian and Ben so reverent in the background.

This rocker was next to the hearth.  The original stone hearth was the best part of this visitors' center.

We had to hussle (what?! I thought that was a word -did my Jr. Jazz coach make it up?) to Ben & Jerry's from the JSBM.  While we took the 15 minute tour, Jen and Ben (and Henry) got us some lunch.  The tour was interesting, for devoted ice cream fans like us. :)  My favorite was hearing about how they had to figure out how to get balls of cookie dough in the ice cream without ending up with all cookie dough or no cookie dough in the pint.  Our tour guide was an ice cream maker during that time and he said he was standing ankle-deep in cookie dough while they figured out the process.  All the fun stuff in the ice cream has to be even colder than the ice cream to be successfully added in.  (There is no end to the useless trivia in my head at this point.  Do you know how many magazines I can read cover-to-cover during a 10 hour day in the airport?!)

Why is Vanilla on this list.

At the end of the tour we were given heaping cups of ice cream.

Brian was cut from this photo.  He'll thank me later.

All the babies in Vermont can eat that much ice cream in one sitting.  It's no big deal.

We were home in time for Jen's piano students and I took a nap by their wood stove while Brian, Bridget, Ben and Henry played at the park.  Heaven.  That evening I made some just-ok chili (I will blame not having all the ingredients and not the fact that I forgot to do something kind of important toward the end of the cooking time).  Then we watched Ethan and Taylor rehearse a bit for the upcoming high school musical, "Bye, Bye, Birdie."  I had a few photos of that, but they're all out-of-focus.  Sorry, Ethan.  (Not as sorry about not getting photos of Taylor standing around during a big dance number.)