News from the Village Victorian Bed and Breakfast
News from the Village Victorian Bed and Breakfast
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Our last newsletter just made it in time for the 4th of July! Now we’re writing after Christmas and hopefully this will be published on our site before the year comes to an end. By the way...a little plug for our web lady....Kathy Barto. She is awesome! |
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| She has reasonable rates just like ours...:) If you have any need for a web-designer....can’t recommend Kathy enough (Thank you, Philip - KB). Just click on Philip’s Musings. There is a link on the right for KMB Designs. Here’s a new family photo too! Not to mention Ellen and Philip in front of the new Gazebo this summer. | ||
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This past summer, starting with several of Philip’s sons from New Jersey coming up, was one full of family visits which enabled us to finally have the family photo taken. |
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The Seattle group was able to spend a few weeks with us, but they just missed the Florida group. Ellen’s Tallahassee sister just loves the cottage in the Vermont mountains at the beginning of July. |
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Hiking and kayaking are her favorite Vermont things to do and she was able to have some of her friends and her son join her. The Wolff’s who reside in France were able to spend a month at their cottage just down the road from ours. |
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Seems we are starting a Wolff family compound at Shadow Lake. Of course Philip was able to spend many days playing golf with his younger brother. |
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Seems they no sooner left than our cottage was overflowing with many of Philip’s grandchildren and one great grandson. They called it the “Cousin’s vacation.” Older brother came from Wisconsin during the Fall.... |
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ending with Philip’s daughters making it up here just before Christmas. All in all a great family season, and Philip’s Mom, who is still doing well in the nursing home near us, was one happy person. |
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We just love the holidays. Ellen was busy using her incredible decorating gift for everyone to enjoy. Our Village Victorian was part of a 5 home Historic House Tour for Morrisville’s Festival of Lights the beginning of December. |
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Then Philip’s 3 New Jersey daughters came to visit! What fun we had. Went out to cut some trees together.... visit Linda from Raven’s Ledge that does the sleigh rides we recommend. That’s her sitting in the driver’s seat of the sleigh.....:) |
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We also went up to the Lake Cottage. That’s the entrance to the new bedroom we put on. Also a photo of the Lake during foliage season. |
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It was soooooo beautiful. We took the picture from the cottage that Philip’s brother just purchased a mile down the road from us. Our cottage is up there in the trees above the red house on the shore! |
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That is his place with the girls standing in front of it. Another shot there of Dean and his son working on my brother’s place...putting on a whole new upper level. |
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Maybe he will want us to rent it out for him....:) We mentioned Dean in the last letter...does great work. Need a good contractor up in Glover, VT? |
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Then we went to visit my Mom up at the nursing home. Actually it was a little more than a visit.....we had a great dinner! That’s the girls again with our son Jon and his fiancée Amy. |
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Ellen and Amy each took a picture! Like I said...we all had a great time. |
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We reported in July, how busy we were during the off season....in the year of the economic downturn? What downturn? We told you about the stand we took against all the greed and profiteering. Our deliberately affordable rates brought us record setting business again this year....the busy-ness continued right thru summer and fall.... And we ended up with more room nights again this year than the year before.....too busy to write a newsletter!.. :) |
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Our most visited page has become Philip’s Musing’s.... We are astonished by the numbers we see... It will pass 20,000 visits during 2008....compared to 7500 visits to our guestrooms page....5000 to our rates page and 4000 to our specials page.....mind boggling to us as it currently is running about 500 visits a week.... encouraging Philip to just keep on musing away..... :) It has become an almost daily “journal” of his thoughts and story of his life as he has walked with God the last 40 years....He just completed the 235th posting since he began just over a year ago. We hope you find it interesting, inspiring....and perhaps a little challenging to seize the day in your own pursuit of intimacy with your creator. Looking forward to 2009.....and more visits from the family and friends. Have a great New Year everyone. Philip and Ellen |
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In 2007 we were up 34% from 2006...this year we are up 38%....just keep the greed out of it and trust the Lord to bring in what we need.....it is amazing what the Lord will do with that scenario. We couldn’t believe it when we had 33% occupancy in 2007...how could it go up from there when the average for the State of Vermont is 20% occupancy and the economy is falling apart? What chance did we have this year?....obviously a pretty good one....we hit 35.5% occupancy this year....We feel very blessed with this little business and the continual opportunity to meet such wonderful people from all over the world
