There's No Place Like Home

Unless we are here...

Sitting Here...

Listening to these...

Eating LOTS of theses....

Celebrating....

apologies for using all the pics from the same evening, that's what happens when we get a professional photographer 1 day of our life :)
My Beautiful Grandma Jones!  Happy 85th!

Our home away from home, New Hampshire, or what my mom likes to call "Yankee Land" has been the destination of many of the Jones Family vacations over the last 26 years of my life.  We have moved up from the rusty old blue suburban we used to DRIVE, (yes you read that right DRIVE...non-stop, with 3 little girls, in case you are wondering it takes 3 days) to our destination.  Now it is nothing less than miraculous getting the whole family up there at one time, making us almost wish for the ease and simplicity of the old suburban days.  Between the 8 of us, 1 doctor's schedule, 7 full time working members, a toddler, and a machita :) it is quite the juggling act to get everyone up in the same 24-48 hour period.

This time however was a CANT MISS visit to the old dairy farm.  We had the lucky chance to celebrate my Grandma Jones turning 85, complete with party, cake, and 3 hour long family slide show it was something that we just HAD to make. 

Here comes Earl.

Ya, our least favorite friend this Labor Day weekend.  Good ole Earl had us all glued to our televisions & computers way back when he was partying in the Caribbean, to see if any of us could accurately predict landfall, course, and strength of our uninvited party guest.

We went back and forth, made probably 50 phone call exchanges and decided we needed 4 alternate tickets to ensure we would all make it for the festivities to come!  Never fear!  Ole' Earl did not stand a chance against the forces we had pulling for us, one after another we all arrived, 3 airport trips over 24 hours and we all landed to celebrate our birthday girl.

The farm has a special place in the heart of each of us.  As we grew up year after year visiting my dads old family home, we learned to milk a cow, learned to appreciate the smell of "cow caca", learned the taste of our Grandma's blueberry pancakes, and grew to call this home away from home -ours.  Every year our visits change, sometimes slightly, like the year we decided it was NECESSARY to bring our deodorant on a hike up the Appalachian Trail (we were 15 & 13 & 11 don't judge), or the year we just had to stop at Abercrombie & Fitch in Boston before we left. To the somewhat dramatic, like the year we brought the first boy along, or the year we celebrated my engagement, to this year where we had Caris discover the "moo cows" and had little Annabelle along for her very first farm visit.  The farm stays relatively the same.  Simple.  A place we can count on to sleep with the windows open, have coffee on the porch, where the only traffic in the morning is a milk truck coming to collect its supply, and where the sweet smell of mountain air fills our lungs.  Perfect.

We love our home away from home and all that it means.  We are so lucky to have a place we can call ours, that is above all the hustle of our everyday life, someplace where family is always close, where we grow our own tomatoes, where our kids can experience life the same that we experienced it, and our parents experienced it, and the legacy my grandparents have left with us. 

So to our Birthday Girl....Happy 85th!  Thank you for the what you have blessed us so richly with, thank you for our family.


Until next year!