Home again, home again

We are back!  My goodness, my poor old blog.  I really miss the days of not working when I had time to invest in this space.  As I return to work on Monday (tomorrow! EEK!) I thought I'd better do a catch up here with our summer, aka the last 5 weeks!

I finished work on the 22nd of June, and we flew out that night, after saying goodbyes to the animals.

 

 I flew with Kit and Ella, Matt was already in NYC after a week and a bit in London for work, and Oscar and Remi arrived a day after us after flying out from Tassie the day after Remi finished his mid year exams.

 

NYC, was as always hot and dirty and just gorgeous.

 We got a car straight up to CT where we stay with my lovely dear friend and her family across the road from where we used to live.  It's always such a strange experience going back to the town we called home for 6 years; the kids really think of it as home, and yet...  It is such a wonderfully seductive place in summer time. I went out for a big walk on our first morning there; it's so nice to catch up with the places I know.

 We all regrouped on the Saturday and with our 2 little toyota yarises filled to the max with suitcases (did I mention that we always spend a few days shopping in CT; stocking up on clothes and what not for the year ahead) we headed up to VT.

On the way we stopped for some lunch at the house of one of Matt's old bosses; a lovely guy who has the house to die for.  He and his wife lived in India and Thailand and have generally collected antiques for years.  Their house is like a museum.

 I drove with Oscar and Ella and Matt had Kit and Remi.  It was so nice to spend that time with my eldest and catch up with him as we drove North.

 Usually I hit the ground running when I get up to VT; working on the house in various ways.  As Oscar and Remi were only with us for just over a week, they stipulated I wasn't allowed to do any work and I had to spend the time with them.  We had a bunch of activities (outdoor) planned, but it literally rained the first week we were up there, apart from the day of Oscar's 21st birthday party.  So we had to find other things to do.

 

We hit up antique stores, art galleries, thrift stores,  etc.  and had lots of fun.  The boys made fun of my hat that I wear to keep the rain off my glasses.

Manchester ,VT.

 
I made some fun purchases like this little cabinet and this mexican woven runner (there's a FABULOUS shop in Manchester VT which sells all kinds of American indian, Mexican and Inuit art).

One of our other favourite towns to browse around in is Brattleboro, VT.  There's a train that runs through there once a day which goes to Stamford, CT and NYC (although it takes about 5 hours from CT as it stops in lots of other places).  It's a very handy service for the boys when they want to come up from or go back to CT, so we will often find ourselves in Brattleboro over the summer, but we went just to go. There's a fabulous art gallery in Brattleboro I've bought art from many times (although not this trip) and Matt loves all the record stores.

Street art in Brattleboro

 We had this landscaping done on the house after we left last summer, and while I saw it during the winter time, it was just such a fabulous asset to have this time of year.  (these photos were before I'd done anything to tidy it up from winter; hence the Xmas tree).  It really has increased our outdoor living space.

 

Read the next post for more....