We are sooooooo Vermonters.

We went to church yesterday at our new ward! The South Royalton Ward of the Montpelier Stake. The building is absolutely beautiful. A real old-timey New England church. It is on the grounds of the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial, which is quite remarkable. It is a giant granite obelisk, in the style of the Washington Monument. The grounds are perfectly landscaped, and there is actually the tabernacle choir emanating from the very woods. Seriously. But as we were driving to church, we saw people walking in from the fields and woods from all directions, and we could hear the organ playing on a bell setting, which was just so perfect. It is a small ward, but what it lacks in number, it makes up for in diversity. There are many senior missionary couples that run the Memorial, and a set of young and strapping elders. We were there for testimony meeting, which is always a bit precarious, "open mic" as we sometimes call it, so we were able to see (and hear) some very interesting people. As Gospel Doctrine started, one of the older missionaries got up and said, "Well, the teacher isn't here yet, so we'll just start without him." We thought that was a little strange, but everyone seemed to go with it, so we did too. The woman sitting in front of us turned around and said, "He runs a dairy farm. That's his mother up there. They work very hard." Then it started pouring. All the doors were open of course, no air conditioning in these old buildings, and all of a sudden, coming up the hill, was a man in a khaki colored button up shirt and khaki pants carrying a horse bit and a big set of scriptures. As he made his way up the hill and into the chapel, the man leading the discussion sat down, and the new man walked straight up to the microphone, soaking wet, set his horse bit on the pulpit, and started teaching. It's ridiculously charming.

We have a saying in our family, "only in Florida"...but I think we can add a new one..."only in Vermont".

We also went to the laundromat today for the first time, and were pretty disappointed. It's very hot and very small and very expensive, and the dryer did not do it's job in spite of the incredible amount of quarters we put into it. Although the store right next door has 24 flavors of soft serve, so I stopped and got some Black Raspberry, and that made everything a little better.

That is a picture of us going to our first day of church.

Oh, and don't let Jake's post fool you. I screwed up the dinner. I was making roasted garlic vermicelli tonight and i used a splatter screen to drain the pasta (our kitchen is not as fully equipped as we would like it to be...) and it bent and all the vermicelli fell into the sink.

Jake saved the day and made some angel hair pasta instead. What a husband.