Vacation Day Five ~ Vermont!

We stopped at the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory on the way home from Ben & Jerry's. We got there too late to go on the factory tour, but we still went in and walked around.

This is what the sidewalks looked like walking to the building. Very cute!!!

They were all decked out for fall.

The buildings are painted some very bright colors. I'm sure it keeps the attention of all of the kids that come here.


Did you see the prices of those bears? That is just for the naked bear. Clothing and accessories are extra.

When we first went into the building, we thought we could find something cool for our nieces for Christmas. (all three of them) After seeing the prices, we changed our minds since that would have been their only present.

They even had a bush trimmed in the shape of a bear. (Edward Scissorhands must have been here)

This definition is above the doorway into the gift shop.

We left empty handed, but it is fun to say we have been there.

Green Thumb Sunday!

For GTS this week I thought I would show you what I do for a living. I work at Walmart in the floral department. I am the only person in the department. I decided a few days ago that I wanted to check into making fall arrangements. This is what I came up with.

A carved out pumpkin with oasis inside of it.

Real flowers, silk leaves and a bow finish them off. Some have scarecrows in them also. As of Friday when I left work I had sold five pumpkins and two Halloween arrangements. When I left, the floral case had two Halloween arrangements and three pumpkins in it. I can't wait to see if they all sold.

You will see that the pumpkins all have different prices. That is because of the price difference in the flowers.

Our district manager was at the store on the day I decided to do these. He was walking the store with our manager and I showed them what I had made. They said they looked great but they didn't seem to think that they would sell. I guess I showed them :)

I hope to be able to make more for Thanksgiving. I will keep you posted on how many I sell.

Have a great GTS!

Vacation - Day Five!

We decided before we left for vacation that if we had a real rainy or gloomy day that we were going to take a road trip.

Well today was the day. Here we are going over the Crown Point Bridge heading into Vermont.

That is Lake Champlain below us.

Here we are at our stop. The Ben and Jerry's Factory. Click HERE to visit their website. We decided that we wanted to go and take the tour of the factory.

The "Cowmobile"

This is inside the building in the gift shop. The place was crazy. There were so many people in there that you could hardly move. They had a tour that started every 10 minutes. Our group was us and a group of senior citizens that all came together on a bus. There was around 35-40 people in the group.

This is the inside of the theater. We stopped here to watch a short film about the history of Ben and Jerry's.

They didn't allow picture taking in the actual area where they made the ice cream. The tour guide asked that we didn't take any pictures because he didn't want to have to take our cameras and break them. It was all "Top Secret". Click HERE to take a virtual tour. Make sure your sound is on. Our tour guides were very funny and did very well with a couple of hecklers in the crowd.

After seeing the ice cream being made, we got to sample the flavor that they were making that day. It was Strawberry Cheesecake. (Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream with Strawberries & a Thick Graham Cracker Swirl) After every one had their sample, there was still 2 left on the tray. Some one said that the tour guides should eat them. The guides turned them down and said that they already get to eat 3 pints a day.

This was the end of the tour. They said we could either walk through the door or go through the Milk Shake Tunnel.

This stained glass window was on the front porch of the building. We thought it was cool.

We each bought new T-Shirts, got a magnet for the fridge and some free ice cream cone pins.

Stop by next week to see what else we did in Vermont.

Vacation ~ Day Four !

Today was a rainy day but it was still in the high 70's. We drove around for a while to get pictures. They aren't the best because the sun wouldn't stay out long enough for us to get them.

Follensby Clear Pond

Clear Pond

Clear Pond


St. Regis Lake

Scenes on Rt. 86



We can't believe how bright the colors were even though the sun wasn't shining so brightly!! We have more Autumn pictures to share with you from day four. We will show you soon. Don't forget to click to enlarge the pictures.

Vacation - Day Three - Still!

After we left the Wilmington Flumes, we stopped at A&W for a quick lunch and then did some driving around to see some more scenery.

Click on all pictures to enlarge This picture was taken on one of the dead end mountain roads. We thought it showed a lot of the colors of the leaves.

Franklin Falls Pond

Our next stop was Franklin Falls. We don't know if that was just the name of the town or if there was actually a waterfall there. If there was, we didn't find it. We did find Franklin Falls Pond.

Franklin Falls Pond

The shoreline was just bursting with color.

Union Falls

From there we drove to Union Falls. On the way there we had an interesting thing happen. We had driven 5-6 miles down this narrow mountain road when we saw a flagman standing on the edge of the road. (we think he may have been sleeping because he really jumped when he heard our car) He said that the road was closed and that we had to wait to get through. After a little while, he said we could go ahead. He asked if our SUV was 4 wheel drive. (that made me a little nervous) I told him yes and he said to go ahead. When we got to the construction area, the road was still blocked but we were waved ahead. They had a 6' deep hole across the road. We actually had to drive off the road through all the sand and dirt that they had taken out of the hole. There wasn't much room to spare. The workers down in the hole were about a foot away on the drivers side and a nice steep drop off was on the right side. Laurie wasn't too sure about it all, but we made it OK.

Cascade Lake

The next place we stopped was Cascade Lake. We have stopped here every time that we have visited the Adirondacks. It is always so beautiful to see.

Cascade Lake

It was pretty warm out, so I went back to the car and put on my swim trunks. The air was warm, but the mountain water was freezing cold. Whose bright idea was this???

Laurie went in the lake too.

We headed back to Lake Placid after I dried off. This last picture was near the ski jump area on Rt. 73.

That is about it for Day Three. Day Four will be posted soon.

Au Sable River!

Some of the many views of the Au Sable River.

Rivers are roads which move, and which

carry us whither we desire to go.

~Blaise Pascal

She Cracks Us Up!

We had Baby J. on Saturday night while Mommy and Daddy went bowling. She has her own personality now and she just cracks us up. I had tears streaming down my face half the night just from listening to her talk. She doesn't understand that we don't have a clue what she is saying.

She is stealing candy from someone smaller then her already!!

I guess she doesn't like that kind of candy.

I asked Baby J. if she could give the ghost a kiss?

She took off running towards him and...

gave him a big old Kiss!!!

We decided that we better take the candy out of the little guys pocket because it is about 10 years old. It was just there for looks. (I guess Chris didn't like that kind of candy either because if he did it wouldn't still be there. LOL) We put one of her blocks in the pocket instead. She took it out a couple times and thought it was fun. I told her we had to pick up and asked her to get the block from the ghost. She walked over to the ghost, put her hand in the pocket, started pulling it out and her had got stuck in the pocket. She started shaking her hand back and forth trying to get it out. She finally had to let go of the block to get her hand out. She came running towards me like the ghost was mean to her and wasn't playing nice at all. The look on her face was priceless. Chris and I laugh every time we think about it.

Really she is OK. Look at the great big smile on her face. Don't you just love the ponytail?

The poor little thing is getting four teeth on the top all at once.

Her new thing this week is saying

BYE ~ HONEY

We don't know who would have taught her that.

Vacation - Day Three - Wilmington Flumes!

We thought that this video might give you some understanding of the power of the flowing water. I think that the only way to really show you would be to take you there. (we better buy a bigger car. LOL)

Remember to click on the pictures to get a better view.

The water flow of the Au Sable River has carved out the rocks for millions of years. We would guess that the side walls extend up 45-50 feet.

This is a little further downstream. This waterfall ends up in a popular swimming hole.

Chris thought that this picture might give a better perspective of how far up we are. It is pretty scary looking over the edge. We read somewhere that people actually cliff dive here. That is really scary.

This is downstream a little further. The river slows down and is only a couple of feet deep here. It is very peaceful.

This is a pond that we hiked to quite a ways upstream from the Flumes. It is a beaver pond. You can see that most of the stumps in the pond have been chewed and cut down by beavers.

Kind of like this one. Look at the teeth marks. (makes my teeth hurt thinking about it)

We walked the trail past the pond for a couple of miles and took some more pictures of the Au Sable River.

We will have more of Day 3 to show you soon.

We have added some new items to the store. Click HERE to check them out if you have time.