Day 6 of Our Trip to Vermont: The Little Leger Trio!

My favorite moment at the Festival on the Green was this....when Grace, Jack and Eve all sang together on stage!  The performers that day were the No Strings Marionette company.  Before they began their show they asked if anyone in the audience would like to join them on stage to sing a song.  Both Grace and Jack raised their hands together and were called up on stage.  Well, my little Eve was certainly not going to be left out!!  Eve promptly stood right up and followed her big brother and sister right up on that stage to sing too.  Grace, Jack and Eve ended up singing three songs together.  It was incredibly sweet!  Here are some pictures of their performance....

 A girl duet!

 Jack takes the lead!

 Gracie!

 

Day 5 of Our Trip to Vermont: Grace on Stage!

Grace, Jack and Eve were extra excited for this day of the Festival because Steven Gratto was performing.  We have seen him perform at the Festival for the past two years.  Here is a description of Steven Gratto:

Juggler, unicyclist, fire eater, stilt walker, rope walker, hatchet thrower, balloon sculptor and balancer, Stephen Gratto is a physical comedian and much more. All performances are fast-paced and exciting displays of classic vaudeville and circus skills including many feats of daring, bravery, and side-splitting foolishness. Almost every portion of the Stephen Gratto Variety Show involves audience volunteers, both young and old. This interaction keeps everyone involved and laughing.

Grace was extremely excited to be called on stage to be a volunteer to stand while Steven Gratto and his son rode a unicycle in-between a line of children!

Here are some pictures of Grace on stage...

Steven Gratto asked the "cute little girl in pink" to cover her eyes as he uni-cycled back through the line!!!!

On this day, Grace's picture appeared in the local newspaper.  I'll post that later!  This was such a fun performance for all of us to watch. 

Day 4 of Our Trip to Vermont: Fun at the Festival

Here are Grace, Jack and Eve standing on the side of the stage before the Brown Bag lunch performance began.

My sweet Gracie girl

Every day we arrived early to the Festival because Grace volunteered to work.  Grace, Jack and Eve enjoyed this "quiet time" before the performances began to watch the performer(s) warm up.

Gracie volunteering at the Festival!

Catching Up...

My goodness...it has been awhile since I last posted!  Last week was just one of those busy weeks and I didn't find myself with too much extra time for blogging.  Grace and Jack attended camp at Broadturn Farm this past week and we were busy in the evenings taking care of the garden beds at Grace's school.  It is SO hard to believe that we are approaching mid August.  Where has the summer gone?  Grace will be going to school at the end of this month and Jack is attending preschool three morning per week beginning in September.   Wow!  I have so much to post about and I am quickly falling behind with getting everything in.  I'll do my best these next few weeks getting caught up (I still haven't posted about Grace's dance recital, which was back in MAY!).  Meanwhile, I am trying to enjoy every second of what we have left of summer.  :)

 

Day 3 of Our Trip to Vermont: The Festival on the Green Begins!

We were SO excited for Monday afternoon to arrive because it meant the beginning of Middlebury's Festival on the Green's Brown Bag lunch series!  I have been attending the Festival on the Green with my parents and brother since I was a little girl.  I look forward to this event every summer and I love continuing this summer tradition with my own children.  The Brown Bag lunch series opened with Rik Palieri, a folksinger and singer songwriter.  Rik took us through a musical journey around the world and our very own Gracie girl was so lucky to be called up on stage to help Rik with one of his songs!  Grace accompanied Rik by making a limberjack doll dance during one of his songs.  What fun!

Families are invited to bring their lunch and eat during the performances.  Here is a picture of Jack enjoying a bowl of blueberries before the performance began!  He was so very excited for the Festival to begin!

Here is our sweet little Eve enjoying eating some of the blueberries while she waited for the performance to begin.  While Eve was in Vermont, Maddy kept telling Eve that she has "blueberry eyes."  Every since then Eve thinks it is SO funny to put blueberries over her eyes and tell everyone how she has "blueberry eyes!"

Grace volunteered to work at every Brown Bag lunch performance and during one of the evening performances as well.  Grace was given a name tag and went around to everyone in the audience to ask if they wanted to sign up for a free raffle.  This was such a great job for Grace since she was able to meet so many new people, to read what their names were and to find out where they lived.....absolutely perfect for my Grace!  :)

I love this picture of Jack as he is intently watches Rik Palieri perform. 

Here is Eve watching Rik perform.  She loved all of his music and musical instruments from around the world!

Day 3 of Our Trip to Vermont: Fun at the Ilsley Public Library

We LOVE Middlebury's Ilsley Public library.  Every summer we look forward to attending their fabulous story times, their Itsy Bitsy yoga class and playing in their wonderful children's area.  We enjoyed spending our morning here before the Festival on the Green began later that afternoon.

Jack enjoyed building the library's longest train!!!

Eve loved playing with the trains at the train table!

 

 Grace enjoyed making beautiful beaded bracelets for all of us with Maddy.

Day 2 of Our Trip to Vermont: Fun at Lake Dunmore

On our second day in Vermont we went to Lake Dunmore to enjoy some swimming and kayaking before Bob had to head back to Maine.  It was fun for Grace, Jack and Eve to experience swimming in a lake versus the ocean!

 

Eve enjoyed playing along the shore and swimming with Daddy! 

If you look closely at the picture above you can see Jack kayaking with Daddy!  Jack loved every moment he spent out on the water in the kayak.  He was an excellent paddler.  

Unfortunately, I did not take too many pictures at the beach this day so this is the only one that I have of Grace.  If you look REALLY close can you find Grace??  Grace also went kayaking with Daddy but then she decided to jump into the water and hold onto the front of the kayak for the remainder of her trip across the lake!  :)

Day 1 of Our Trip to Vermont: More Pictures of Outdoor Piano Playing!

Here are some pictures of Grace, Jack and Eve playing a beautifully painted piano, which was located just across the street from Middlebury's Town Hall Theater.

 Grace

Poppy with Jack and Grace!

 Jack and Eve

 This piano was especially fun for Grace, Jack and Eve to play because the keys were all painted a different color!

Grace and Eve

Grace

Jack and Eve

Day 1 of our Trip to Vermont: Playing the Piano Outside!

We arrived at Maddy and Poppy's house on a Saturday afternoon.  Grace, Jack and Eve were so excited to finally be in Middlebury, Vermont!  On our first evening there we went all went out to dinner.  On our ride back to Maddy and Poppy's home that evening we stopped in town so that Grace, Jack and Eve could play several pianos, all of which were scattered outside throughout Middlebury!  This was one of my favorite experiences from our trip to Vermont this year.  I loved watching my children play the pianos outside!  This really was a very unique experience for them.  Grace and Jack were especially excited because they started taking piano lessons in May and they were amazed they could practice outside!   I have several more pictures of this great experience coming tomorrow!

P.S.  It's wonderful to be blogging again after such a long break!  :)

Our Week

We have had a great week.  Jack and Grace finished a three day swim camp today at the Michael Phelps Swimming Center in Saco.  It was such a wonderful experience for both of them!  You can click HERE to see pictures of Jack and Grace and a video of Grace doing the butterfly stroke on their Facebook page.  Eve and I enjoyed some special time together while Jack and Grace were swimming.  We visited Saco's library and went to two story times at our town library together.  Eve loved meeting a therapy dog today at our library named Gracie!  It has been such a busy week but I hope to catch up on this blog real soon.  I have so many pictures to post!

Back from Vermont...

Every July we go to Maddy and Poppy's home for a week to attend Middlebury's Festival on the Green.  We returned from our fun-filled trip this afternoon.  I have lots of pictures to share from our time in Vermont.

Thank you so much to Maddy and Poppy for an amazing week.  We had the best time!

Swallows

We have been hearing lots of tiny chirps from the baby swallow birds inside of this bird house, which hangs from our front porch.  The mama bird was quite busy this morning flying to and from the nest to feed all of her hungry babies!