rural living's the life for him

We. are. back! 

Did ya miss us?  No need to answer - I know you did.  :-)

Asher and I spent the past 5 days traveling through central Pennsylvania visiting friends and family in the town {and nearby} where I grew up.  We had such a fun time!  Let's start at the end, shall we?

Our second of 2 stops was to visit my good friend from Bucknell, Emily, and her family.  Em grew up on a dairy farm and still lives in countryside with her husband and their brand new baby girl.  Little Scarlett is so precious! 

I soaked up having a sweet little one to dote one.  Miss S was old enough for lots of smiles, but too little to have stranger anxiety - perfect!  Asher wasn't really a fan of me loving on Lettie - apparently, his mommy shouldn't hold other babies.  We'll have to work on that, I guess...  {anybody else watch Modern Family last night?  It was very much like that! ha!}  He did - kind of - agree to let us take their picture together.

Emily was so sweet and thought up lots of exciting stuff for Asher to experience.  What little boy {especially one who lives in suburban Virginia} doesn't love seeing farm animals, dump trucks, trees being chopped down, and - in general - getting super dirty and running all over?!  I thought we'd never convince him to leave. 

One of the first things we did was visit Emily's husband, Shawn, doing his job as a logger. 

Shawn was really great and took time out of his day to show us how they chop down trees, then drag them out of the woods, trim them down, and load the logs onto the truck.  Phew - it's a LOT of work.  I really admire how hard he and his Dad work day in and day out!

Shawn tried to give Asher a ride in the skidder, but A wasn't so sure.  He decided to pass and play it safe staying with me, so Lettie got to ride instead!  There's just something sweet about a daddy with his little girl - no matter what the circumstances.  :-)

The next day we went to visit some friends of Em's who have a working farm.  Asher got to see his first herd of cows up close! 

He was glued to the fence and kept talking to them - "moo.  mooooo."  When they 'talked' back Asher would get so excited!  ha!

He also got to run with the chickens.  I expected this to be like the skidder ride - thanks, but no thanks.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  Asher jumped in there and started chasing the chickens all over {poor things!}.  He was flapping his arms and trying to catch them.  Too funny!

Thanks Emily, Shawn, and Scarlett - we had a wonderful time and can't wait to visit again!

One of the hardest parts about being away is not having regular access to a computer {even my phone didn't really work out in the woods of PA!}, so I'm still getting caught up on blogs.  Looking forward to seeing what you all have been up to while we were away!