Family Vacation-wrap up

After Harper's Ferry and Gettysburg we continued on to Lancaster County for a few days in Amish Country. The vacation home we stayed in was a remodeled farm house from the 1800s and on a working dairy farm. It was such a neat house and in a perfect location surrounded by Amish homes and farms.


After a year living in the rolling hills of rural Maryland you'd think I'd be used to scenes like this, but I'm not. The view from the house was beyond beautiful.




The house was great, but I think what kids liked best was roaming around outside and even trying their hand at fishing in the pond behind the house.








The house we stayed in was actually part of the farm so we were also able to enjoy close proximity to some lovely calves.


The farm owners were very kind and offered us a tour of their dairy farm that was just a short walk from the house.


Ruby enjoyed her walk up to the farm tour with Grandfather.


For a boy who often includes "farmer" in his list of future professions, Max wasn't interested in getting too close to the cows.


I guess this is Reed trying to encourage him.


Watching the cows get ready to be hooked up to the milking machines was very interesting as well as very stinky. Just check out Max.






Another stinky part of the tour. One thing we learned for sure is Cows+ enclosed area= Awful smells. The kids made no secret of house they felt about it too.


The highlight of the tour for Ruby was of course the "baby cows".


Baby cows might have been the highlight for Ruby, but the neatest part of the trip for me was seeing the Amish people doing their thing. I was/am fascinated at their commitment to living what they believe. It is truly remarkable and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how they could be so committed and wondered what I could borrow from them. One thing I did pick up on is that they are not big complainers. They live very restricted lives, but instead of complaining about their limitations they seem to find joy in what they can. There are so many time I would have loved to haven taken pictures of them at work, but since I'm pretty sure they do not like photos taken I had go "private eye" to get anything.

As it turns out I'm not a very good private eye because this is all I got.


I was feeling real sneaky with this shot.


I seriously couldn't get enough of watching the Amish work away. I even told Sam that I thought I would like to do a summer with the Amish. It would be so interesting to experience their day to day life and see if I was tough enough to hang with them.


We did venture into town for a buggy ride and to visit pretzel shop for a tour and a pretzel making opportunity.Even the Amish horses seemed very obedient and kind.


A very sweet Amish girl was our driver/guide and answered countless questions about the Amish way of life as we toured the area in a buggy wagon. I took this picture before I knew they prefer to skip photographs.


Luke and Max waiting for our turn in the buggy.


The kids all packed inside the buggy.


The buggy tour was awesome and totally worth the time and money we spent on it. The pretzel tour, however wasn't worth either...and it was free. The shop owner who did the demonstration was so rude she actually made me not want to buy her pretzels. I guess the kids weren't as sensitive as I was because they seemed to have a good time trying their hand at pretzel making.






Ruby wasn't as interested in making the pretzels as she was in eating them.


This last part is from Sam because Lindsay is too tired to finish this off:

We also got to eat dinner at the home of an Amish family and gain a little more insight into their lives. There are no pictures, of course (just as there were no pictures in the house), but the dinner left an impression. The mother and daughters prepared and served the food, and, while we ate, the father (with his Brigham Young beard) and sons (clean-shaven because they were unmarried) made their way back from their labors and joined the meal.

The term "old fashioned" seems too new to describe the world the Amish live in, but almost as interesting as the things they live without were the technologies they allowed in. Earlier that day we had passed on Amish woman pushing a gas-powered lawn mower, and there in the room with us was a refrigerator. It turns out that electricity is shunned, but the diesel lawn mower and propane-powered refrigerator are acceptable.

Spending time with the Amish made me grateful for the many conveniences we usually take for granted, but, more than that, it helped me understand a little better that it's our relationships with our family and friends that provide real satisfaction, and many of the things we work so hard for aren't worth the time and effort we put into getting them.

When I first got to Amish country, I might have felt a little sad for all the things they didn't have, but now I think maybe they've given up some things that aren't as important as we think they are for things we should all think are more important than we do.