Living Among the Amish

Just about every Sunday you can find us driving around the back roads of Lancaster County listening to "A Prairie Home Companion," eating donuts, drinking coffee and taking precious time yell at Hannah and Lizzie to be quiet, stay in your seat and stop hitting your sister.

It's a lot more fun than it sounds.

Here are some of the scenes from our trip yesterday. It really was a picture-perfect day. However the pictures aren't exactly perfect because I was riding shotgun to Mario Andretti Rasmussen so I usually have about a nanosecond to snap a photo before I get whiplash or we've broken the sound/speed barrier.

Love the farms out there. There are dozens of them:Beagles for sale at the first farm on the left:I love Sundays in Lancaster because you can usually see the Amish out and about and it really does remind me of a simpler time (in which I've never lived.) Here are some horses enjoying their one day off. If you travel through Lancaster during the week you'd likely see these horses pulling some sort of gasoline-free farm equipment:On Sundays you'll likely only see them pulling the occasional Amish family:

Or taking a rest...

...while their family picnics. This picture is at Poole Forge park where we often stop to play on the playground or wade in the river. Pretty much the same as the Amish people do. Only they get there on their bikes and in buggies. We burn fossil fuel. And eat highly processed sugary donuts.

Lots of lovely scenery:

Every time we drive through these towns I wish that I could be Amish. I love the simplicity of it. I love how the children always look neat and well-behaved and sweet-tempered. I love looking at the laundry flapping in the late summer breeze and the children playing volleyball or baseball or tag. I love seeing dozens of the Amish fresh from church, taking a few moments to chat with neighbors before they get in their buggies to head for home or to a neighboring farm for an afternoon of fellowship.

I sigh at these bucolic thoughts. And then Rob reminds me that they don't have air conditioning, Facebook or reality television. And that we only got four tomatoes from our garden this year. Jolting me back to my electricity-guzzling, produce shopping lifestyle.

But it's nice to think about:

Poconos - Ha Ha Ha

One of the best things about vacationing with my family is that they are funny. Usually not intentionally, which makes it that much more fun for me.
By far my favorite moment of the entire vacation was when, on the last day we were having dinner and were talking about different animals. I said that I liked cows best and was very excited when my sister Terry told me that her brother-in-law raised them, and maybe I would like one of Barry's cows.
Of course I quickly found out later that the cow I was going to get had been cut into tiny pieces and stored in the freezer in the form of steaks and burgers.
So my mom upon hearing this story said (I swear I do NOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP?)
"Oh, really? What does cow taste like?"
Seriously. I say again. I don't make this stuff up.

Earlier that week we'd been playing dominoes (that's Ann on the left and Beanie, the eventual winner on the right) and Ann had been losing badly throughout most of the several day tournament....My mom had actually been winning for the first few games so, on the last day when she tallied up the scores she was surprised to find that Ann had beaten her by three points, putting Mom barely but obviously in last place. So my ever-gracious mother, schooled in manners and propriety looked Ann right in the eye, got real close and said "Read my lips ... these are MY dominoes." Seriously, maybe you had to be there, but it was FUNNY. And then there's my brother. Here he is at dinner that last night, checking to make sure that no one's watching him get in a couple minutes of serious reading time, but you know, the camera misses nothing...

Looks like Clifford's Christmas is a big hit:
T.A. again ... looking like he had a rough 9 holes. Casey and Grandpa must have outshot him:

Okay, THIS picture cracks me up because A) Rob was very grumpy at the waterpark and was apparently yelling at children that did not belong to him and B) this little girl is having the exact same reaction as his OWN daughters do when he talks to them:

I just don't even know what to say about this picture of my father...

...except that this one is even funnier:I hope you enjoyed this several day tour of our trip to the Poconos ... it was a great time, and already we're looking forward to next year!

Poconos - Waterpark!

Split Rock now has an indoor waterpark, H2oooooohh! This fact was not lost on Hannah or Liz since they saw the almost-finished park last year, and the million or so commercials for it this year. So we decided that we'd spend one day there, especially since they had a special that allowed a family of 4 to go for only $99. I expect that the park will be a lot more crowded in the wintertime, but it was nice to have NOT a bunch of kids running around.

Of course there were still some 10 year old boys who insisted on firing the water cannons at unsuspecting adults like moi (including my brother who is a few more than 10 years old) but not as many. The place was loud and crazy and humid. The girls loved it. Rob did not. I was somewhere in the middle.

Here are a few highlights.

The best part for the girls was the giant bucket that dumped a ton of water on everyone every 10 minutes or so. They'd ring a bell and all the people would gather underneath it to get dowsed. Hannah and Lizzie couldn't get enough of it. Here's the thing in motion (sort of):

You can see the bucket at the top left of the picture, getting ready to tip:Starting to fall...Watch out!!!!!!!!!!!!:

Hey, where'd everybody go???:

Here's a close-up of the girls right after most of the water dumped. In 10 minutes they'd be back for more!

Here's Hannah in the wave pool. It was really very odd in that pool because while there were lots and lots of waves, there was no undertow at all, so it seemed weird. Sometimes the pool was still and then a buzzer would go off and then the waves would start rolling out:Lizzie coming down one of many many many slides. I don't have any pictures of us going down the giant slide in this raft thingie, but suffice it to say there was much screaming and praying and laughing. TA, Ann and I discovered that the raft goes A LOT faster and A LOT crazier when three big people are in it, instead of one big person and two little people. That was a crazy ride. This slide was much more tame, but Hannah still managed to trip getting off of it, requiring some TLC from the lifeguard. Here's something that only Tommy was brave enough to try, the Flowrider. It's like the automatic surfing machine that allows you to surf on a boogie board, a surf board or to body surf. This is Tommy's first time down and after some expert instruction from Doc Holiday (the social director) he was ready to go. Here he's starting:

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, dude!! Getting the hang of it:

Practically a pro now:

Very pleased with himself (and so were we ... there's no way in heck I'd have tried that thing!):

For info about the waterpark, you can visit http://www.splitrockresort.com/waterpark.php

Poconos - The food!

As a Rasmussen it's impossible to vacation without overstuffing yourself with high flavor (high fat!) food. It's just part of the experience. Seriously, the whole reason I'm doing Weight Watchers is because in the nearly 15 years of being a Rasmussen I've gained a good 75 pounds. So YOU do the math... :) It's fun though.

This vacation was no exception ... except that I didn't overeat anything (except maybe the curly fries on Thursday night, but I paid dearly for that on Friday morning...) I managed to find something good to eat at every restaurant we visited.

Here's some of the food highlights:

For some reason I did not take any pictures at Rob's favorite restaurant, Terra Cottage -- probably because we went there as soon as we arrived and I was too busy calming down crazy children who ONLY wanted to play with their Cousin Tommy, who hadn't even arrived yet (WHEN WILL HE BE HERE? WHERE IS HE RIGHT NOW, etc. etc.)

On Tuesday night we ventured out to a restaurant with the girls AFTER they'd spent most of the day playing with their cousin. So they only asked what he was eating for dinner about 4 times.

In this picture we're enjoying (seriously Hannah is, too, despite the way it looks in this picture) the food and ambiance of Bell' Ago. The restaurant's deck overlooks Lake Harmony and the Split Rock resort and had just enough breeze to make dinner delightful on a very hot day:

Rob (and Hannah) about to dig into his appetizer, a caprese salad. My entree was chicken a'olio, which was a boneless breast sauteed with sweet onion, roasted red peppers, broccoli and red skin potatoes in olive oil and garlic. It was served with positively soupy broccoli, which I avoided, but the rest of the meal was delicious:

The girls had Macaroni and Cheese for their main course, but they were really ALL about the huge ice cream sundae for dessert......which was good to the last drop:Rob has a friend who owns a restaurant/bar called Cuz N Joe's Place in Conyngham, PA, and we stopped by to have dinner. Here's Marie with Rob as he waited for his super huge cheesesteak (I also had a super huge southwest grilled chicken salad):The girls had fun reconnecting with Emily, who they met last year. All three girls will be starting 1st grade this year, so there was much talk of iCarly, Jonas Brothers and SpongeBob. They girls got the chicken tenders and fries and ate every single thing on their plates:Terry (on the left) visited for a day with her son (and my nephew as well as the only current hope for a new generation of golfers) and we went to the Sunset Green (at the Split Rock golf club) for lunch. Here, I had half of my chicken panini sandwich -- very delicious, but with all the other food I was taking home half of every day, I never got to finish that other half. My sister Beanie (Tina) is in middle between my mom and Terry. I don't have an pictures from our lunch at Friendlys the next day. It's a tradition that my mom, Ann, Beanie and I do every year after we finish shopping at the outlets. I had a grilled chicken sandwich at Friendlys, and left half the bun and most of the fries behind. Beanie drank an entire black and white milkshake right in front of me:Piggy's! This is the girls absolute favorite place to eat, and they had lunch there twice during the week. The restaurant has a little gift shop where each year the girls select a toy if they've been good on the vacation (which happily they always are, although their behavior the day AFTER vacation usually leaves much to be desired...) You can see my lunch right there in the picture -- a couple of scrambled eggs, homefries and toast. I only really ate the eggs, not because I didn't like the rest or even because of my diet, but because of the curly fries I ate the previous evening (no picture of those) that upset my stomach for much of the next day. :( The girls had waffles (Hannah's was plain, Lizzie's with blueberries) and Rob had the eggs lunch, too. Only he ate all of his. Plus some of Lizzie's waffle.We always have at least one meal all together. This year we went back to Sunset Green where I had some grilled salmon and absolutely delicious sauteed vegetables and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. Here's the whole gang getting ready to order. For those who might not know all the family players (and many of them are missing from this picture) they are (left to right around the table), my niece Brenna, my sister-in-law Ann, my nephew Tommy, my brother T.A., my mom, my dad, my sister Tina, Hannah, Lizzie and Rob.Just in case you didn't believe me about the excessive eating, here's Rob's appetizer- a seafood martini. You can tell by the looks on Hannah and Lizzie's faces that they are pretty sure Dad's not going to be sharing it with them (to be fair though, he did give them each a shrimp):And finally, here's Brenna trying to steal some of Tommy's dessert (which was the molten chocolate cake):In other food news, we went to Hog Heaven at least once (I didn't get anything), Dunkin' Donuts a few times, ate a lot of sandwiches, popsicles and salads and with the exception of those d*mn curly fries a wonderful gastronomical time was had by all!

Next blog: Waterpark!!

Poconos - The Lagoon

Make sure to have your eye-drops ready -- there's going to be a lot of reading and looking at pictures over the next several days! We're back from our vacation with my family in the Poconos and I've got the pictures to prove it!

Many fun things happened during the vacation. Lizzie caught a fish with her bare hands ... I almost caught a bat with my bare hands (by mistake), we ate a lot (well, not me, I didn't gain an ounce over the week thankyouverymuch), we swam a lot, we talked a lot and we laughed a lot. Here are some pictures taken at the Lagoon at Split Rock. It was actually pretty hot in the Poconos, so we spent time at the Lagoon every day.

Here's my brother T.A. playing in the sand, under the guise of helping his daughter Brenna build something.

Here's Hannah doing the same thing:
Then conferring with Brenna about sandcastles and probably boys ... can't you just see them as teenagers?:Hannah eventually found a much more fun use for the bucket, pouring water over Tommy's head.

Lizzie, Tommy and Hannah splashing each other in the water.

Tommy teaching Hannah to float (made much easier by the floatation device she's wearing...)

Brenna just looking adorable which she did when we weren't at the beach, too:

Ann preparing for the rain (kidding). Actually Rob and I were so impressed with the beach umbrella they got for $17.99 at CVS that we went out the next morning and bought one, too.

Here's the fish that Lizzie caught with her bare hands. Impressive, isn't it? I think she's a little sports fisherperson.


Or maybe I'm just telling you a fish story ... Here's the fish in the bucket where it was placed after some little boys caught it and gave it to her (and one to Hannah, too). Lizzie is showing it to Grandma who is obviously wondering how that fish is going to feed 11 people for dinner. :) But Lizzie really DID catch it once it was in the bucket. WITH HER BARE HANDS!!