Life in Amherst: Its a wonderful life

We've lived here in Amherst a full week now, and I continue to be amazed and delighted with what a wonderful place this is. Its surreal, almost. We seem to have landed in a place where the people are nice, the food is delicious (huge focus on farming and locally grown/produced items), and the landscape is gorgeous. Our previous neighbor problems are things of the past: our current neighbors have brought us a bottle of champagne and dropped of a trail map (showing all the trails that begin directly behind our house!). Ella is in an outstanding elementary school. I went to the first Parent Teacher Organization meeting tonight, and it was more like going to a meeting of old friends rather than anything else (small funny note: at one point during the meeting, the PTO members were arguing (gently) about whose barn the school sign should be stored in. They ALL have barns!). But then again, we live in a barn.

The trails are so unbelievable, and so close (backyard) that I'm not even sure I can put words on how wonderful it is to live in a place where I can be on trails so easily.

The one thing shocking to us is how much we seemed to have morphed in only one week. Here's just a few of the major changes we have found ourselves making:

1. Perhaps most shockingly, we have decided to go without any television service. We had planned on getting it, but we have been here a week and have thoroughly enjoyed not having a tv, and the kids don't really seem to miss a tv. So, rather than pay lots of money each month for tv we don't watch, we have decided to go without. Instead, we will just let the kids watch videos when they have the urge to sit down and veg out in front of the tv. Its surprising how easy it was to make that decision (though we did have moments of second thought when the Comcast guy was here to install the internet, but we remained firm in our resolve).

2. Instead of watching tv at night, we have begun to take nightly family walks. We live at the end of a very long and mostly empty road, so the girls, the cat, and sometimes Lucky and us go out for a walk at night (or dusk, rather). The girls have been loving it, and so do we. Its so beautiful, and so peaceful at night. Amazing.

3. I'm fully functional now in terms of working from home. So, when the girls leave at 8:30 for school (the bus picks Ella up and Kim drops Maisie off), I am able to just go back into the house and work in this amazing environment all day. I'm absolutely shocked at how much I've managed to get done when I don't have distractions. I can spend nearly all day writing, and then stop working around 3:00 in time to go pick up Maisie and meet Ella's bus. There's something so wonderful about being able to spend time with the kids at the end of the day, and I'm delighted that I can do this now (at least three days/week, when I'm not in New Haven).

4. Also, because I'm home, I've been cooking more. We used to NEVER eat dinner with our kids, except maybe once one weekends, because we would get home way later than they were comfortable eating dinner. Now, we get to eat dinner together nearly every night. What a huge difference that makes. I love to cook, and am getting more adventuresome all the time. Plus, with all the fresh vegetables and cheeses and fruits around here, cooking is interesting and fun again.

5. I've been able to get out my camera again and begin to take pictures. It seems like for awhile there I was relying on my iPhone, which takes good, but not great, pictures. The girls and I went out for a walk tonight down in Hadley across the converted rails-to-trails railroad bridge over the river, and I took some great shots of them together.

Here's to this wonderful life that we've just made for ourselves...

This first picture is actually of Ella relaxing at our house with Lucky: