Day 11 & 12

Marie is a very avid reader and has probably read half of the Holbrook Public Library (if not more then that) and loves to read stories about the Amish. We did some research and found an Amish Village a few hours away and decided "We are here, we are going to do it!" (That was the theme of the trip and let me tell you, but day 11 we were TIRED. We did A LOT.) We all hoped in the car and off we went to Strasburg, Pa. The Amish Village itself was set up to be a little Amish homestead. It had a house, the buggies, animals, a school yard, all the little things you would find in a real Amish Village. The house to the left in the picture is an Amish home that we tour through. They showed us their clothing and the reasons they do and don't wear certain things as well as how they have come to cope without using electricity.  After the tour we decided to do the Bus Tour and go see some actual Amish homes- I'm so glad we did!

 The country side is just beautiful- fields everywhere and as far as you can see. That is an Amish farm out the window- they all looked like that. Huge barns and silos. So pretty!

During the tour we stopped at a little Amish farm and go to buy things like produce, homemade everything, and lots of garden decor. Here is Ethan with some buggies. The buggies were so cool! They each had like 5 buggies, all different sizes depending on how many people were going with them. We saw a lot of little kids riding scooters with siblings hanging on for the ride. So fun!

After the bus tour we did a little venturing off on our own. We found a little Amish owned quilt store that we bought some square from. The men were very happy to be there. 

Marie wanted to look at a store with some Amish made furniture and I fell in love with this little table and chair set- isn't it so cute?!

 By this time we were all super hungry and ate at an Amish owned restaurant. We had some interesting food- I had chicken cordon blue and wasn't impressed. The best part about the restaurant, by far, was this apple dumpling dessert. There is a WHOLE apple (cored) under that pastry. Mm Mm was it good. With a full day behind us we headed back to Kellie's for the night.

The next morning we woke up and headed to the airport for our flight HOME. By this time Kyle and I were both ready to see our kids and to sleep in our own beds. We got all loaded up in the plane when the pilot made an announcement that our plane didn't have any working fans that kick on in case of a fire. Ugh. We waited for 20 minutes and then were told that they had no idea how long it would take to fix the fans and we needed to get a new plane. Sad day. We were delayed about an hour.

From there on out it was smooth sailing. We made some time up in the air and were only about 30 minutes later then we thought. My mom brought the kids to the airport, our van, and a friend to take her back home and off we went to Holbrook. It was a super fun and very long trip. We were so happy that Marie and Kellie invited us along. Thanks guys for an awesome trip!