Our adventure to Amish Country deserves a post all on it's own....mostly because I took so many pictures! We planned to go on a weekend while Brett was home, but the weather didn't cooperate. I decided to be brave, and with the GPS take my mom and the kids on our own, on one of the few nice days we had.
Our first stop was Heini's Cheese Chalet!
This cute old man Atlee was our "tour guide." He explained the whole cheese-making process to us. Very interesting! If you can see through the glass (and the awesome flash reflection) you can see the HUUUUGE vat, filled with the beginnings of some jalepeno cheese.
Our favorite part is the aisles of free cheese and fudge samples! Momma Max couldn't resist the cheese curds :) Emri is showing her fudge sample! We spent a while in this place and when we got out to the car.....
...the battery was DEAD! AWESOME time to NOT have brought the husband along! haha! Well, I'm not sure if our car has a glitch....or if it's my brain, but this is like the 4th time in a year I've killed our battery. Really. We had sat in the car for a while when we first got there so I could feed Jet and change his diaper. Apparently, (according to Brett) if you have the car on, open and shut the driver door, then climb in another door, turn the key off and never open the driver's door again after turning the car off, the lights stay on and drain the battery. CONFUSED? Me too! Why does it matter what door you get out last?! ANYWHO..... LUCKY FOR US....there was a construction site pretty much in the same parking lot. Pretty sure these Amish guys whistled at my mom when we got out of the car hours earlier :) After I tried starting the car like 25 times, we figured I better ask for some help. No sooner than opening the back of the car for some jumper cables, the man in the hard hat was walking toward me telling me they could help us out. Apparently they'd been watching! haha! He told me not to even get my cables out....and with a nod of his head, his buddy in a red truck was driving over to us! A few minutes later we had power....and I was soooo grateful!!! One of them made the comment, "Now that was even faster than calling AAA!" They pulled away, back to work.....just yards down the parking lot, and my mom and I were like, "That was so nice, we should give them some $." Momma handed me some cash and I handed it right back!! "Mom, I went and got the guys....you can go pay them!" hahah! She walked it over (as you saw in my previous post) and of course they wouldn't take it from her. They said it was their good deed for the day! THANK YOU NICE MEN!
The only down side of this hiccup was we needed to keep the car running for a while to get the battery charged....I was going to take my mom to this yummy Amish restaraunt, but we settled for a burger instead at a little cafe. It was nice outside so we sat at some picnic tables out front and kept the car running. While we were there we took a horse & buggy ride!
E very excited to see the horse pulling up to get us!
I don't know what it is about the lifestyle that is so intriguing to me?? Maybe I'm just impressed that they get along so well with their simple way of life. I mean....who just gets around by horse and buggy these days?! The area they live in is soooo hilly. I was a little nervous driving up some of the big hills....you get to the top, can't see a thing, then it's straight down from there. Very rollercoaster-esque!
I loved this little school house. Mostly I loved that they were playing volleyball on the concrete pad. There was another group of kids playing baseball in the field behind the school.
Some Amish traffic :)
I totally had to zoom in for this one and it's still not super close, but these little girls were out playing with the baby lambs....the girl on the left is holding one in her lap.
All the houses are white...and all their laundry is strung across their yards.
If I was this guy I'd probably be mad I was Amish! He was HAND-sawing that tree. He'd probably been there all day!
Mary Ann....this cemetery pic was for you. It's pretty shoddy, but I was driving and there was no where to pull off! If you blow the pic up and look really closely in the middle the bushes spell out "Wooster Cemetery." I thought it was cool :)
I was pretty bummed, after the whole car incident and taking our time with eating, we pulled up to this big Christmas Shoppe that I really wanted to go in, and we see the sign says CLOSED. Apparently the Amish people close everything at 5! We seriously got there at 5:00 on the dot! Grrr. A few other shops we were interested in looking in were also closed. I don't know if we'll make it back there before we move. Oh well! At least Momma Max got to see some real Amish folk, and ride in a buggy :) E zonked as soon as we headed home and slept most of the 2 hour drive!
Jet really was there too! He was just a little angel baby in his seat the whole time.....awake to eat and then back in for the ride. I love it when they're that portable!
