Love it!
We just spent four days at the von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont. I had stayed there one night with my daughter in October, 2020 (we were glad we were allowed to stay!). I enjoyed it so much I wanted to take DH there some day. In November, I made reservations for this weekend, noting that we would be celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary.
After we checked in, we got a message that we should go down to the front desk for a gift. I was expecting a small trinket, but they handed me three gift cards for a total of $150!! We were blown away. We enjoyed a very nice dinner in their restaurant.
On Sunday, we went to a lecture about the family’s history and got to meet Maria’s granddaughter, Kristina, who now runs the organization. Later I was kicking myself for not thanking her in person for the gift cards, but the front desk gave me her email address so I wrote her a note last night.
If you ever get a chance to stay there, do it! It’s in such a beautiful area, and they have lots of activities. We signed up for “Hike with the Goats” and got to walk up to a chapel one of the von Trapp kids built after he survived WWI. The two Nigerian dwarf goats were so gentle and friendly! They reminded us of our dogs, but they were better-behaved. We also went on the “Meet the Cows Tour” where we got to see some of their herd of 90 Scottish Highland cattle and learn about them. The “Sugar Maple Tour” was good, too - we saw their grove of maples and the sugar house. They have to load wood into a big stove every five minutes, non-stop, in order to make maple syrup. Our guide had done it for many years, but he developed back issues and tennis elbow (no surprise!) so he had to stop. The final thing we signed up for was gentle yoga, perfect for us newbies. We had to pay for yoga and the goat hike, but everything else was free.
We left the grounds only a couple of times the entire visit. We definitely plan to go back. 
I have a new obsession/time waster. It is a Youtube channel called Dalscone Daily. Ben is a sheep/goat farmer in Scotland and his accent is so cute. He is always birthing a sheep or goat, or even a donkey or horse. Sometimes he dresses up the goats in hats. He’s just so funny calling the ewes ‘darling’ and ‘mama’. And the little lambs are really cute.
Yep, a good hour a day is now spent in Scotland with Ben.
I’ve posted before about some volunteer work I do driving people to medical appointments.
I’ve made a new friend, a 90 year old man. I’ve driven him twice now, back and forth from his appointments. He’s a little frail but sharp as a tack. It’s incredible talking with him about all our shared interests. The 40 minute drive flies by as we trade stories.
I briefly met his wife of 65 years and she’s delightful too.
Today he invited my wife and me to come over for wine and appetizers on their deck.
Oyster farming is one of our shared interests, but he’s not able to do it any more.
I’ll bring a couple dozen fresh oysters and we’ll have a blast.
I cannot post it here b/c it may be deemed as political, but someone in my neighborhood posted something very racist on Facebook about that city in Michigan and compared it to an area in our metro area. Thank you for providing me with an article to share with her about the wonderful Hero in that town.
My S plays shows there a few times a year with his band. And H & I go see them … at night. Ugh, the stereotypes. It’s a city of immigrants, and it always has been. It was a Polish enclave when I was a kid. It’s never had families with lots of money, because people move away once they can go elsewhere. As a result, it was and is a struggling city. That doesn’t mean it’s a cesspool, though.
What a great story!
I’ll pm you what they posted. Disgusting.
My son did NOT wind up in the hospital, and didn’t get seriously hurt!
He was in a cycling race last weekend, and someone fell in front of him. One guy managed to get by, but my son didn’t. The video of the crash looks pretty bad, and his feet definitely went up in the air, but he’s OK.
Before S could take off again another guy wiped out about the same place, and apparently another did a little later in the race (so at least 4 total that son knows of).
He was doing well before the crash, but didn’t get a podium finish. He did win multiple “primes” which are races within the race, after his fall.
When he didn’t come around with the pack, and the announcer said there was a crash, I went moving pretty quickly towards the pit area. He wasn’t there, but showed up soon after, and gave us a thumbs up/we heard him say someone crashed in front of him. We didn’t know that he’d actually wiped out until after the race.
I got upgraded to first class for our flight home!! 
I had to be “willing” to be separated from my husband 
and sit in a seat that won’t recline such a “sacrifice”
“Taking it for the team!”
In my son’s first adjunct professor job teaching calculus to students retaking the course over the summer, ignoring the outliers there was about an 82 average on the first midterm exam this week. He is really proud of their effort as about half the class has attended his extra study sessions.
This is the type of person who needs to be teaching. I remember my daughter was in an advanced math class in college and the professor was so excited when everybody got great grades on a test. Contrasted to another professor who forced a curve on all his tests (including curving down grades).
As a teacher I would be ecstatic when a class did well on a test–totally did not get my colleagues who would delight in being XXXX-busters. As long as they tried, I would consider their failure to be MY failure, and would re-group to get them to the finish line.
Of course, if THEY did not care, it was hard for me to care…..
I love this so much.
What a beautiful story, kelsmom! Teachers give so much to their students and their communities. It’s so sweet to see that returned.
Thanks to a post I saw on CC a few weeks ago, my daughter signed up for auto-pay on her student loan and as of tomorrow morning, she’ll get an interest rate discount of 1% for the next 2 years. She already has a low interest rate (I think 4%) and with this discount will reach her payoff faster.
Her sister was already on autopay so will go from a .25% discount to a 1% discount.
I was driving a guy to a medical appointment as part of a volunteer program I’m part of.
He’s recently widowed and struggling financially and emotionally. He told me he sold his home a couple months ago and is worried that he’s going to owe $20,000-30,000 in income tax.
He told me what an H and R Block representative had told him and I immediately knew it was bad information.
I fed the relevant information into my Gemini Pro account and immediately confirmed what I’d thought: he can use both he and his wife’s $250,000 exemption and will owe no taxes on the sale.
He was overjoyed; thankful that I took the time to listen and help him, amazed at the capabilities of AI, and, of course ecstatic that he won’t owe taxes.
If he sold after he inherited the base price for the home is stepped up and becomes the price at the time of inheritance. He may not even need the exemption. Plus there is the two year rule where you use both of the exemptions.
I think people don’t understand this. I read in a WSJ article recently about a widow who was very poorly advised and sold her house 3 years after her spouse died (losing that exemption).
I was also discussing this with a friend last week. She assumed that her neighbors would not sell their now multi million dollar house that they bought for $50K ages ago, until they both died. She did not know about the stepped up basis.
Do keep in mind that some of this is state specific.