It was the best of days; it was the worst of days! It started off with Mike
taking suitcases down to the van and discovering that the battery was dead.
Turns out one of the girls had left the door open—wide open—all night long. In
the rain. Then one of our girls knocked over a cup of hot chocolate/coffee all
over the hotel room floor and my blanket.
Mike stayed remarkably calm, got a jump, got us all loaded up
and we started driving to Amish country. It was a beautiful drive! Hills and
farms and trees, and it wasn’t long at all until we started seeing buggies! One
cute little blonde-haired girl was looking out the back of one we were behind,
eating a lollipop, but she wouldn’t wave at me.
Our first stop was at
Hershberger’s Farmstead, where we bought some home-made candies and cookies,
dolls and postcards, and looked at animals in their petting zoo. There were
goats on the barn roof!
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| Seriously, those are live goats! |
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| The draft horses are HUGE. |
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| See? |
From there we went to a Swiss cheese store where we bought
Amish butter cheese—yum.
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| I loved these cow bells! |
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| Yum! |
Then we went to lunch at the Berlin Farmstead Restaurant. We all got the buffet, and the fried
chicken was awesome.
They directed us to Schrock's, which had some cute crafty
stuff, and they told us about the Yoder farm, which ended up being the highlight of our day.
We took a tour which started with a buggy ride, driven by a friendly old
Amish man. He and Mike talked about trees the whole time.
After that we were shown an example of an Amish schoolhouse. They only go to school through the 8th grade. Dutch is the primary language spoken at home, then they learn English around first grade and German in third grade, because the Dutch they speak doesn’t have a written language, and their hymns and Scriptures are in German.
Next a young Amish girl gave us a tour of the barn, which was full of baby animals—some only a week old! They were so sweet.
There were two houses we toured, which were built in 1866. One
showed how old order Amish live, with absolutely no modern conveniences, while
the other was an example of the new order Amish, which have battery and gas
powered lamps, running water, and more decorative, colorful furnishings. The
man giving the tour grew up Amish but left the church about 17 years ago. He
was really interesting.
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| Mike bought the girls Amish dresses for their American Girl dolls-- |
We had such a nice time on the tour, and the day was so
beautiful, and everyone was happy and cheerful…then I rolled down my window to
take a picture and we heard a CLUNK and the window wouldn’t go back up. At
all. Ever. We had to drive all the way to our hotel in
Sandusky (2 hours) with the wind blowing my hair. Thankfully it didn’t rain! After we
checked in we drove to Walmart and bought some plastic and duct tape and
covered it up.
We worked so hard and got it just right, then started to drive
to get some supper and realized how INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS it is to drive with
the window covered up!! I didn’t realize how much you use that window! So we
tore it all back off and went to eat at Sonic. I wrote all our orders down for Mike so he could order them all right. I wanted a 4-piece fried cheese sticks, so I wrote "4 cheese sticks." When they delivered our food, we had four 6-piece cheese sticks! That just capped everything off--we laughed so hard.
After we ate we went to the hotel and started unloading our
luggage. We were a little concerned about the hotel because it was a Super 8 and we had read some bad reviews. So when we looked in our room and saw that not only was it clean, it was HUGE, with plenty of room for Rebecca's air mattress, we were so relieved. I guess I was so excited I wasn't paying attention because when I was taking my luggage in, I tripped – holding my laptop – and fell on the sidewalk. I protected
my laptop at the expense of my toes, knee, and elbow. I’m okay, but what else could happen on this crazy day?!
In spite of all that happened, we took time to drive down to the coast in Sandusky before bed, and with the window down I was able to get a picture of the beautiful sunset. Plus it was so fun to see our name everywhere!
Moral of the story for today: all's well that ends well! :D
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