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It's morning, the sun is shining in through the shades and the natives are stirring.....I just slipped back inside from some awesome outside quiet by the lake.   It's time to wake up and get ready for school!  The females in the family seem to have the hardest time waking up, ESPECIALLY the teenager!  First things first, we can't function well with beds out, so they are put away. Blankets rolled up, pillows put in the back bedroom, and hideaway bed hidden back away in the couch. Someone asked if the kids hate tearing down their beds every morning and I asked them, they said its still easier then making a bed, to roll up a blanket and a sheet, or push in an always made sofa bed. Kids are responsible to make their own breakfast, and be dressed when school starts at 8:15. We draw chore sticks, but do not do chores until later. This has been such a hit at our house! You line up and draw a stick, get back in line and draw a second. These are your "jobs" for the whole day. This keeps things from getting boring, and keeps the kids all practiced up on the fine art of making dinner, or scrubbing a toilet.
  Then its time for school! We start the day all as a family doing Prayer, Bible, Devotions, History and Latin Vocab. Then we divide off and work on the others things in age groups, but that's another post for another day.....
  We play the rest of the day away, make and eat supper as a family which I adore. If I have a class I head out around bedtime, if I don't we do a family walk, and get out the bikes for a quick ride around the RV park or nearby bike trail. Sophie rides along in the basket of course! Prayers and bedtime kisses and another amazing day is done.....we fall asleep dreaming of the adventures the next town holds. And that, my friends, is a day in the life of the RV Oilers! Hugs, T 
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It was an AMAZING summer of East Coast, and Northern US travel, but now its time to buckle down again, and get back to school schedule. We are starting a week earlier then usual because we will need to take a week off in September to attend doTERRA's awesome convention! If you used to read our old blog, the 4 little Fergusons, you know we call our school the 4 Oaks Academy based on weeks of praying and asking the Lord to help me name our school something meaningful and from Him. Our goal and desire is not to raise scholars, or athletes, but DISCIPLES for Christ. Placing HIM at the center of our hearts and home, schooling within these RV walls, working always towards meeting this goal and purpose.  This is our 3rd year to Homeschool, except now we call it "Road School" because come on, that is way cooler! ;) We ADORE the curriculum we selected from My Father's World. If you are interested in reading more, head back over to the 4 little Ferguson's blog and search homeschool. You will find a plethera of posts on this subject matter. https://4littlefergusons.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/our-homeschool-curriculum/ I may not have a cute classroom to decorate like when we had our home, but the world is our classroom now, and I am thankful all our curriculum fits neatly in the cupboards above the couch.  I adore doing life with Dale! People always ask if we drive each other crazy being together all the time and the answer is no! We have always enjoyed each others company, we were the sappy couple calling for I love you's several times a day when he used to work outside the home. We are best friends, soul mates, and that only strengthened when we realized the cost of a marriage lost then found, broken and then healed. It really makes you appreciate life together! School is no exception. Dale is WONDERFUL with the kids and is a big help in dividing and conquering. I am so thankful the Lord allowed us this opportunity!  One of the main reasons we picked My Father's World curriculum is because it was "one room schoolhouse style" meaning in the morning we do all the activities together as a group, then divide out for math, science and English etc. Well, when I was home alone with the kids doing this, it took some major work to block out the times to where I could have 2 do independent study, while I worked with the other 2. Now that Dale is here, we do first part all together, then we divide up and he works with bigs and I work with littles. This year Destiny is an 8th grader, Tylan is a 4th grader, Avery is a 2nd grader, and Paxton was supposed to start Kindergarten this year. Funny thing is, he passed it already because he did it 2 years ago with his sister for fun. And last year, he did most of 1st grade with her too. For that reason, he will finish the second half of 1st grade and do a good review this year, while also doing everything possible with his 2nd grade sister. I am finding in homeschool, the actual name grade is not nearly as important as allowing the child to learn at his own pace, even if its ahead of the game a bit maturity wise! :)
We started the school day with a Pinterest Breakfast find from my friend, and fellow homeschooling momma, Monica Hoy.... PB&J Banana Dogs In true Pinterest Failure fashion, the jelly did not squiggle out cute like hers did, rather BLOBBED everywhere. Oh well, kids loved them anyhow!  The kids buckled right down to work.....we always have a few kinks to work out week one, but it really went well overall.   We ended the day with this.......  I adore RV parks with a view! What a sunset from our awesome Creator.
I am working on a post in the days and weeks to come, kind of "a day in the life of" and walk through our morning and school routine a bit more thoroughly! Any other questions or items you'd like to see covered on here on this subject? Happy Back to School, everyone! Hugs, T  Well, Minnesota. I owe you an apology! We feel like we MISSED most of it. Due to class scheduling and lack of open RV spots, we had to drop in low, rather then starting North and working our way down, like we had hoped, and giving it a good go. Good news? We WILL be back!!!! :)  The morning of Paxton's birthday was a travel day, so he opened his gift on the road...PERFECT, 8 hours of a NEW Adventures in Odyssey, just what the kids ordered for a travel day!
 As we passed through the area, we decided to make a stop at the Mall of America! Why not? we were right there! It was bigger then we could have imagined! Birthday boy picked to go see the Lego store and eat some PIZZA while we were there.     The coolest part of the Lego store, HAS to be the HUGE lego sculptures towering above you on the ceiling beams........ Fun facts: The lego creations seen below, took 160 people, 3 months to make them. The robot took 8 months, and got shipped in in 2 pieces, then assembled in store. It weights 11 TONS and took over 2.9 million pieces!!!!!!!!!!!!! Its hard to capture size on camera, so pay attention to the people below the lego sculptures for size idea, as well as my family standing on the balcony to see the robot. The attention to detail is amazing. My favorite was Christopher Columbus and all the things in his "office"...... When we walked by the American Doll store, the birthday boy graciously agreed to sit ouside with daddy and Ty and let the girls go explore the TWO story store. We don't own any American Girl stuff, but it sure was fun to look and dream. They still have Samantha! The AG doll I BEGGED for forever! Too expensive then, too expensive now. ;) After a few more hours of wandering and riding the glass elevator and all the escalators a few times, it was time to hit the road again, we had several hours to go.  We found a beautiful forest rv front RV park to stay at. It was very stormy and rainy alot of the time, so we laid low, played games. We also got a chance to see a matinee, The Life of Pets, which was DARLING and later went into Cabella's for Paxton to pick out a present he wanted and use his birthday money from Aunt Kasey. He found a camo vest, toy hunting knife, compass, that came together in a play set. We try to limit "stuff" and focus on experiences for birthdays and holidays now, thus the movie, but at his age, STUFF is still pretty cool too! :) We've already seen hours of Ninja, hunter, super hero play. Good thing too, with all the rain.
By the time we got back to the RV and made dinner, it was getting late, we were able to throw this little beauty together in about 20 minutes! EZ Beef Gryos: *1 pound beef flank steak, thinly sliced and seasoned well with Greek seasoning, salt, garlic, pepper and dill *olive oil *1 cup each diced tomatoes and diced cucumbers *1 cup feta cheese *1 cup homemade dill ranch *"Flat Out" soft pita style bread Slice steak, toss with seasonings. Heat oil in skillet and fry up meat until cooked through but still tender. Remove from heat. Cube tomatoes and cucs and assemble.... On flat out bread, layer dilled ranch dressing, meat, cucs and tomatoes, feta cheese and more dressing drizzled on top. Enjoy!  Paxton got to pick our dessert, so ice cream it was. We found a cute little local place on Trip Advisor and headed the short trip into the tiny town we were staying in. No indoor seating, so we sat in the dark and sang happy birthday to him out there, Check out the "SMALL" cone.....it was like $1.50. Dale got a mocha twist, medium for like a dollar more.
 We all agreed my Dole Whip Yogurt was the best of the night! So delicious in fact, that we decided we needed to go back one more time before we left town. Priorities! This time, for fun, Dale and I got a large to share. Have you ever seen such a thing? Yes, we split it. Yes, they provided a cup. And YES, it was just as DELICIOUS as the first!!!!
Well, that's it for this trip. See why we owe Minnesota another go at it? We will be back and we can try try again. :) Hugs, T  We headed over to Alma Center since they had a really nice KOA that could fit our big rig. We went into town to see some local sites, and saw all these flags and cars along the way. Our curiosity got the best of us, and we decided to pull over and see what the fuss was about.  Turns out, we were at the location of the Barefoot Water Skiing World Championship!!!!! No WONDER it was so hard to find RV parks! We always seem to manage to do that...in town just in time for a rodeo we weren't attending or the week before Bike week, etc. Haha! Kids had fun trying to spot all the different teams represented. We saw Korea, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden and Australia to name a few!  We headed into town for some authentic Mexican that got good reviews on Trip Advisor, called Cinco De Mayo. Best Chimichangas we have had yet! On our way home we decided to do some exploring of the area.....  We pulled over to check out the HUGE dam. They call it the Black River, but its very very golden brown. The force of the water coming out was terrifying and powerful. It was so loud it was overwhelming to the ears! On the other side, it was perfectly still, like glass. Great use of nature to produce energy but I felt bad for the people that build big cabins with windows to see the river that now see the cement buildings and barbed wire surrounding the dam.
 One of our favorite places to stay is a KOA, because of how beautiful and well kept they usually are, as well as offering great things for us to do while we are there! A favorite in particular, is the bouncy pillow. We do family relays (if no other kids are around to get hurt or scarred for life) or just sit like adults and let the kids go wild.    We wanted to see our sweet friend, Miss Ruby, while we were in the area. We met Ruby down in Texas of all places, and hit it off right away. She lives in Wisconsin and loves to RV too!  She treated us to a fun date to the Cranberry Museum and showed us around the local bogs. Warrens, WI is the Cranberry Capital of the WORLD! In fact, they produce enough cranberries in one year, to give every man, woman and child in the WHOLE WORLD, 26 cranberries. Crazy right?! The museum was SUPER well done! The kids did a great stopping at each display and reading about how Cranberries grow and are harvested. I was proud of them, we have made some good improvements in how we "museum" in the year and a half on the road. They also loved the scavanger hunt at the end..... Our stop wouldn't have been complete without some cranberry purchases and cranberry ice cream from the gift shop, of COURSE! I had Cranberry Cheesecake ice cream and it was DIVINE!   Our time with Ruby wasn't over yet, she took us out to the actual bogs to show us where they grow. You know, cranberries are only flooded like the commercials in the fall for harvest. They are flat and carefully maintained all year long, then there are natural gravity waterways that allow them to flood when the time is right. A field must be surveyed perfectly level, or the water will flood one area and not another. The old huts you see are from the 50's when the Ho Chunk Indians used to come help with harvest....  Bye friend, bye Wisconsin, we WILL be back!
Thanks for all the fun! :) Hugs, T First of all may I say, Montana is still sitting very securely as my #1 favorite place in the whole world, er continental United States. But northern Michigan, and Wisconsin are edging in!!!!!!! This last part of our trip has been SOOOOO beautiful and amazing! Wow. Wisconsin is our #45th state in our journey so far. I have to tell you, I cannot fathom that we have been doing this for a year and a half almost. It literally feels like we left for summer vacation a couple months ago, and never went back to reality!! This photo is missing the Wisconsin pin, but it's on there now! :)  I'd love to see your family experience the gift of TIME, and FREEDOM. How about having some extra OPTIONS? Options are a beautiful thing. We are always looking for passionate people to run this race with! And I promise, if RV life isn't for you, you can live at home at still be financially healthy with doTERRA! :) Jump over to the Financial Opportunity tab to read more..... That was a Bunny trail, but one I am so so passionate about, aaaaaaand we are BACK to Wisconsin! So, what's the FIRST thing you do as soon as you get your RV set up for the week at your Wisconsin RV park? You go find CHEESE. You ARE in Wisconsin, after all!
We dropped down into WI from the Upper Peninsula. Our first stop was Peshtigo RIver RV Park in Crivitz, WI. Turned out it was one of our favorite ones yet! Probably because of THIS little beauty just a hop skip and a walk away from our spot.  With no essential oil classes on the books until later in the week, we pretty much spent all day, every day, HERE. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ And it. was. AWESOME. We floated. We fished. We ate lunch on a picnic blanket. Kids Crawdad hunted. We fished and floated some more. We pretty much spent 3 days alone on this river. AMAAAAAZING! The last day, was warm enough, we did a family swim in the strong current. Strapped on some goggles and headed under, letting the current push us like some amazingly fast swimmers! We could see the fish and rocks below us in the golden water, and it was CRAZY and CREEPY and AWESOME all at the same time.  I also want to note, for memories sake, that this trip was when Destiny asked if she could start menu planning with me, shopping for the ingredients and making supper by herself once a week or so. UUMM, Yeah. My kids have always loved to bake and help make food, but out of all of them, Destiny was the least interested. Until now! She selected and made our favorite Creamy Tacos! (https://4littlefergusons.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/mrs-bs-creamy-tacos/) Destiny also made a Peaches and Cream pie for dessert! Mmmm! (https://4littlefergusons.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/peaches-cream-pie/) She was SO proud, and I was too. My little girl is growing up, and its really really special....
After this we had a weekend worth of classes in Medford, with Miss Linda, and our awesome growing team there, so it was time to head out.  We immediately loved the FEEL of Medford, reminded us of home in the midwest. We also loved being parked at the little county campgrounds, all by our lonesome. Medford is a precious, little, quaint town. We rode our bikes to the grocery store, visited the farmers market right on the fair grounds Saturday morning, and had some amazing fresh Wisconsin cheese brats, sweet corn, thick slabs of tomatoes, cucumber salad with a watermelon eating contest for dessert, thanks to our farmers market finds. No pics, just was present. :) That's good too! I have pretty much eaten my weight in cheese since we got here.....SEVERAL TIMES OVER. I adore a good high quality cheese, and I haven't tasted anything like what I am eating here. Oh, and the CHOICES! I know we must have looked like tourists in the grocery store staring, slack jawed, at the local cheese section that LITERALLY WENT ON AND ON AND ON in the back refrigerator section of the store!  The smoked string cheese is the winner so far, with buffalo curds a close second! After this, we headed to Alma Center and Black River Falls, then Warrens. I think the hills and forests really surprised us! We were imagining Wisconsin to feel like Ohio, flat farm lands. Nope! Tons of valleys and big green hills, you can see farms along the side of the road with their crops stretched up the hill at an angle to the very top.  This is so full of photos already, I think I will continue tomorrow instead of packing more in here....
See you again, soon! Hugs, T  Have you seen this movie? You should. In fact, you should own it. And Courageous. And Fire Proof, and Facing the Giants. Man, I love Christian films with quality, heart tugging, God moving stories. Plugged In Review says this: War is as old as human history, an aged widow named Miss Clara narrates in the opening moments of War Room. "We fight for power. We fight for riches. We fight for rights. We fight for freedom," she says. "There always seems to be something to fight about." That's as true for individuals as it is for countries. Yet despite the reality of relational conflict, Clara observes, "Very few of us know how to fight the right way." We fight each other instead of recognizing our common spiritual enemy, she says, the thief who comes "to steal, kill and destroy." If we hope to thwart Satan's schemes, to counter his cunning strategies to divide us, we'll need a beefy battle strategy. A strategy that can come from only one place: time spent asking for God's guidance in our prayer closet. Or, as Miss Clara calls it, her "war room." This movie lit a fire in me like none other! I told Dale, we have to find a place for a War Room in our home sweet rolling home. 'Cause I pretty much wanted to do THIS.......  I settled for THIS........  Tin bucket from Magnolia Farms, Bible verse cards, cardboard place cards for prayer requests, cute clothespins all from Hobby Lobby, pens and a jute twine or two, and we were set. Our bathroom is by no means, big. But there is plenty of space to hang a couple of twine ropes across the wall for easy readability while you um, PARK. I also found a cute prayer sign to sit by the sink too!  Here is our prayer wall in the War Room:  I love reading through these, and catching a glimpse of the heart and concerns of my family. I love making and decorating praises and requests too!   I also ADORE that my kids are hiding God's words in their hearts with these Bible Verse cards. They are SO proud when they get one down pat and can put up the next Bible Verse card to review and commit to memory.    You don't have to clean out a big closet to have a War Room. You don't even have to use a closet. Nope. Not as long as you are intentionally committing a space to share your requests, praises and prayers!  Even a tiny RV toilet room can be used to go to WAR on the enemy!!!  Hallelujah!
Now flush the toilet and wash your hands. There are 5 other people needing to use the restroom! Hugs, T So I have to be honest, I had NO idea there was such a thing as the U.P. I had no idea you could drive the strip of land you see on the map, arched above Michigan and Wisconsin, called the Upper Peninsula. Maybe I was passing notes during that part of class? haha :) I quickly learned just how RURAL it is!!!! NO cell reception, and it was like a civilization of its own. I also learned, that if you live there, you are called a Yooper. Most of the year you get around on special snow mobile paths and the restaurants open just for you and are PACKED with folks with the same idea. If you stretched all the groomed snow paths into a "highway" of sorts, it'd reach from Florida to Washington!!!!! Driving these is all the rage here, in fact under almost every speed limit sign, is a speed limit for ORV's for the winter months to come. Pretty cool, right!?
There is this beautiful bridge you take to get to the UP, and you will see Lake Michigan on your left and Lake Huron on the right.
We weren't in the UP very long, but we did have a TON OF FUN!!!! This first thing we did after a day of leisure, was go to the Soo Lock's.  The Soo Locks makes it possible for ships of all sizes to cross the 21-foot drop between Lake Superior and Lake Huron every day and night! It takes a whole team to make this happen, and it was fun to watch them zoom around on their little cars to prepare for this ships safe passage from one lake to the next. From the Soo Locks website: "These Locks are legendary in the maritime world and have provided safe passage and a vital shipping connection within the Great Lakes for nearly 160 years. They are a wonder of engineering and a living, breathing history lesson. They provide a flight of fantasy as one imagines the highs and lows of a life spent on the seas. Nearly a million people come visit each year!!!!"  So, we wanted to go see more water. Apparently, in the UP, there are no major roads winding along the water like other states, nope. You take old logging roads through the forest to get where you want to go. It. Is. AWESOME. And bumpy. And dusty. And LONG. We traveled a 18 miles this way, in fact....  Just when we thought the bone rattling bouncing was NEVER GOING TO END.... We spotted water! Ahhh, beautiful and worth it! We spent the rest of the day here just relaxing, looking at pretty rocks, playing wave tag, eating free hot dogs for National Lighthouse Day, and napping in the sun on the warm rocks, which quite amazingly, were very comfortable! It was so so breathtaking there! Please take a minute and watch these slide shows....the water is so stunning! We also got to go up into the Lighthouse being restored!  It was so neat, and it took a tight 63 step spiral staircase to reach the top. I can't imagine running up them during a storm to relight the light!!!! I was so dizzy from my slow climb and ascent that I was crooked for 5 minutes afterwards! No lie!!!! Afterwards we went to the other side of the shore and relaxed..... I cannot get over these stunning rock shores of all colors! Make sure you look for the photo of the stones dry vs. wet!! WOW! On the way home, we saw some people along the road picking something. We pulled over to see what they were doing, and low and behold, the entire area was covered in Wild Blueberries. The nice couple picking, gave us solo cups and turned us lose on their treasure. We spent a good half an hour there picking 5 Solo cups of AMAZING sweet blueberries! What a great snack after a fun day of play!  The kids all collected their FAVORITE rocks to take home during our day here. Well, we live in an RV, there isn't room for rocks. Or is there?! Hmmmm. What about creating a "Zen" sink? Ok ok, its not really zen. Doesn't that mean lots of different elements like wood and water and light in a special order? No matter, it reminds me of that, so I am calling it my Zen Sink. Very relaxing and fun to watch the stones turn vibrant colors as we wash our hands! And no, I am not worried about germs lurking in the rocks, our all natural, AMAZING smelling, On Guard soap will take care of that! :) Best soap I have found EVERRRR! No antibacterial at our house anymore.....too hard on our hands, our bodies and the environment!   As the sun set on another fun day, I just looked around and gave thanks to my Heavenly Father. He knew just how to bless these kids of His, knowing our "Dream Come True" better then we could've ever dreamed up. I honestly can't imagine a more fulfilling life, then this one, with the ones I love most. We are so settled, content and happy with this new, simple, wandering journey we are on. Free to explore or stay put, rise and sleep when the body dictates, explore what interests us, and skip what doesn't. No stack of mail to sort, no lawn to mow, no phone ringing off the hook....just life, out loud, wild and free. Sigh. Thank you Lord!  Goodnight, blogging friends! Hugs, T   We left Ohio and crossed into Michigan and drove a few hours before we found an RV park to stay at in Monroe, with a cute lighthouse theme. First thing, a man drove up on his bike and knocked on our door. Turns out it was our doTERRA friends, the Janssens, who had recognized our rig as we pulled in! What are the odds of being at the same RV park at the same time? They also are on the road most of the time for their doT business! They blessed us with lots of tips, advice before we went our separate ways! I love how the Lord works to bring people together. :)  Our first full day there was a VERY special birthday! Avery turned 8! Little bitty peanut is growing up. Her Momma is apparently having to grow up too, since I celebrated my 35th that day as well. Sigh. 35 sounds REALLY grown up! Avery Lyn was the best birthday gift a momma could ever ask for, so it was still a day of celebrating! :)  If you followed the 4 little Ferguson's blog, you know that on birthdays we don't do tons of gifts, or big parties. Good thing, because we have had to simplify our traditions even more, now that we live in a small space. However, birthday girls, or boys, STILL get to be the Queen or King of the day!!!! Everyone has to do your chores for you, and you get to pick where we go, what we do and what we eat! There is always a LOT of talking and discussing what sweet treat they will pick since momma is a Sugar Nazi a lot of the time.  We found an AMAZING farm to table restaurant called Public House. Everything was simply fantastic! After some free Strawberry Cobbler, we headed back to the RV for a swim before bedtime. 
Before we headed into Northern Michigan, we did some classes, met some new friends at a park for a mini oil class and playtime. Would you believe 4 little Ferguson's reader, Lauren wrote me about my Instant Pot, and we ended up talking oils. When I asked her where she lived, because I was wishing I could get her to an oils class, she names a town literally 2 hours from where we were parked. WHAT?! God is so good and He always works things out to the littlest details! She is an avid oil lover and now joined my doTERRA Dorothy team!!! I am thrilled the Lord brought us together like this at just the perfect time. :) Next, we got to stop and see my friend from our Central Christian highschool days. Meet Tara and her beautiful family! One of my kids' favorite things about living on the road, is getting to make new friends in every state! :) Paxton is still talking about his new "fwiend", Landes.
We headed towards Indian River and got all set up and went into Makinac City for dinner. The locals told us the food was just as good as the Island, but cheaper. Score! We are cutting the fat this summer in order to pay off some recent debt from shed house, rv sales tax and surprise tire purchases, so we decided to skip the $100 ferry over to the island this year. We WILL be back and we will get it done! This didn't stop us from having a really nice time in town walking through the quaint little town with lots of window shopping, fudge and fish dinners. We also dipped our feet in our first and favorite Great Lake, Lake Huron.
We loved the Lake so much, we decided to pack up the next day and spend the afternoon there. Michigan was having record breaking highs of 90* and the next day was supposed to be a high of 74*, so it was perfection! I want to post all of these seperately, but I know that I can't. Please take a minute and watch this slide show. The water was crystal clear and shallow FAR out into the water! Absolutely a highlight of our trip.... Everyone kept talking about Bumpy Cake, so before we pulled out a few days later, we made sure to go find some! OH am I ever glad we did! We always try to eat the local culture and explore what the town is best known for. Apparently this originated in Detroit and has swept the southern region of Michigan with its popularity. Its a fantastic, moist chocolate cake, with "logs" of buttercream down the top, and then covered in a lovely chocolate glaze. It was, roll your eyes up in your head, good!  Tomorrow, we pack up and head up to the "U.P."!
Stay tuned..... Hugs, T We have been through Ohio several several times in our year on the road, but this is the first time I get a chance to blog it! Dale and I both grew up in the Mennonite church, so it's fun to be in Amish country and back to our roots. We could actually "feel" a change when we left the East coast and entered this area closer to the midwest again.   We spent a few days in Holmes County Ohio, enjoying the farm scenery and some Amish baked yummies. While we were there, it was recommended to us we accomplish 2 things: See the worlds biggest cuckoo clock, and eat at the Park Street Pizza place in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Well that sounds easy enough! First of all, Park Street Pizza has the most DARLING decor and cool atmosphere....tall ceilings, lots of texture, metal and old stuff used again as new. Wood farm tables and funky colored metal chairs scattered here and there. The attention to detail here was lovely, as they grow their ingredients locally. Fresh ingredients totally changes the end result! Soft, chewy crust, tons of flavor and herbs used in the sauce, real pepperoni. Even the parmesan cheese on the table had extra seasonings in it. Oh and don't skip the breadsticks and salad! WOW! Gooey and cheesy bread and fresh, amazing, colorful salad, with yellow tomatoes, purple carrots. This place has bumped our #1 pizza place in Waynesville, NC down to #2, and our NY style pizza in Hallstead, PA to #3!
Even the bathroom was amazing and I took a photo for future inspiration when we finish our home base. Haha! What can I say, the sink and subway tile work was incredible! OH, and about 7 different sized beveled mirrors in all different shapes and sizes, hanging from jute twin. DARLING! I liked this cool orange light too. Our apartment colors are dark grey, white, orange and this gorgeous robins egg blue that was inspired from Papa Don's fence next door. The neighbors that bought his old place, let us take the fence with us. Dale hopes to make it into a sliding barn door, or coffee table, or some part of our home hub, when we finish it......SOMEDAY!  We wandered around town and enjoyed some flea markets and farmers markets, before heading home to drop off our fresh fruit and veggies, and head back to the cuckoo clock. Troyer's Country Market has the BEST homemade ice cream! The black raspberry was roll your eyes good, and this day, they were also offering fresh peach milkshakes. Great prices, and great treat! Here is Avery showing you the small cone, that wasn't small at all!  By the time we got to the cuckoo, we had missed the hour "show", so we hung out and walked around waiting for the half hour. Calling this place "Little Switzerland" is so accurate, every wood detail on every single store front felt like the Swiss Alps all the way! We found our spots on the lawn a few minutes before show time....  If you follow RV Oilers on Instagram, you got to see a video of the clock. Great music and cute little wooden figures that dance and play music. And the cuckoo pops out too! Lots of history here, this clock took 12 years and $50,000 to build! It felt into disrepair though, and was recently fixed up and brought out to its new place in this town.  All play and no work makes Tonya a lazy girl, so the whole next week was spent teaching classes and business bootcamps in Findley and Alvordton area. Love our growing doTERRA Dorothy team there! :) This job that doesn't feel like one, is SUCH a blessing! I love connecting with my Dorothy girls all over the USA. Look out doTERRA, here comes OHIO! :) When we are in Ohio, we always stay with our friends Luke and Anna, on their beautiful property! Our kids have a ball with theirs....Lane, Ashlyn, Liam and Alivia. The baby, Alivia, was sleeping for this photo, but here they are!  Every day, the kids would disappear and play HARD! They all get along so so well, what a blessing! Schaffners have this amazing property with a huge pond, a giant swing set, and all kinds of places to enjoy. Check out the beautiful views....   You know how you just click with some people? That's how it is with the Ferguson Schaffner crew. We didn't plan on eating together every day, but it just happened! Remember Pepsi Chicken from the blog? Still delicious! Make it. Thank me later.... https://4littlefergusons.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/pepsi-chicken/  The kids played in the pond just about every day, and one cooler afternoon Anna got out water colored water balloons for a good ol fashioned balloon fight! Dale was working on his fly fishing skills everyday, and even managed to snag a large mouthed bass. Yup, on a fly fishing rod no less! The kids played games, cards, and the girls were constantly chasing the baby kitties around to hold them. Lots of evenings were spent outside talking, while the kids played together on their giant swing set....I will load all these photos to a gallery slideshow for easier viewing! :) Please check them out! When you see the donut picture go by, wipe off the drool and know they came from a bakery an hour away. Its called Rise N Roll, and we were too close not to go back again this trip, and get their famous Caramel Cinnamon Donuts again. Sweet Dale got up early one morning to get us some to share!  We could of spent a lot more time here, but we try to leave while people still want us to come back! hahaha!!! I loved my time with this sweet Anna girl!
And just like that, after a wonderful worship service at church, it was time to pull out, say our goodbyes and began our journey just up the road a few hours, to our 44th state, Michigan! We'll be back Ohio! Until then....... Hugs, T |
Tonya Ferguson
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