Our Home

Here are some shots of our place.  You can see our porch garden.  It's been pretty good to us so far.  Lots of basil for fresh pesto and the tomatoes are doing alright.  Not quite like planting them straight into the earth but you do what you can.  You can also see our church pew we bought off of craigslist!  We may not have a couch or a decent bed yet but we do have a church pew!

Wedding Pictures!

Seifert Barons

Only weeks before we ended up in Pennsylvania we discovered that we we heading back to our roots.  The Sipherd's (Seifert's), or rather Adam Seifert came to the colonies from Germany back in 1749.  He married Maria Schwartzwalelder and they settled in Dover township, York County, PA.

This is the house that their son Johann Michael Seifert built in 1798.  We also after a bit of searching and some help were able to find Adam's grave site.  How amazing it was to find all this!

As for the Hess family, Rob's mom's family, just this week we were able to find a ton of information on them in Lancaster, PA.  His great-great-great...... grandpa Hans Hess and great-great-great....... grandma Magdalena came over from Switzerland in 1717.   We spent hours in the Lancaster Historical Society Library and were amazed to find that distant cousin's of his had already done so much work.  Even down to creating a Hess Family self guided tour of family sites.  So while we don't have any pictures yet there will be plenty to come.  We still have a lot of research on both sides to do but we have a fair start.

Oh and it is interesting to know that both families settled within 45 minutes of where we live now, and just across the river a ways from each other.  And NO we are not distant cousins, at least we are pretty sure.

Niagara Falls

Wow we went on the Maid of the Mist boat tour and it was amazing.  What a great way to experience the falls.   You get so close and so wet!  We also went on the Cave of the Winds Tour and that was phenomenal.  That's where you are able to walk straight up to the off shoot of the falls (where the water is pounding off the rocks) and we got as close as we possible could.  Words can not describe though I seem to be trying.  We were down to the bone soaked even though we had on the rain slickers.  We were surprised though how warm the water was coming out of Lake Erie.  

Before coming to the falls we camped on Lake Erie and that was certainly interesting.  It nearly like being at the ocean.  You couldn't see the other side, you could hear the waves crashing (or rather rolling in.  Quarter foot waves don't really crash but they sounded tranquil), and we even found sea glass or as Rob pointed out lake glass.

Up State New York

We were able to visit the sacred grove and the Hill Cumorah while on our trip in August.   As we were moving out to PA we have been able to visit many church history sites and this.   certainly was the highlight.  Visiting the Whitmer home where the church was established was a uniquely special experience for me (erin).  I am not quite sure why that stands out to me but I am grateful for the experience.   Being able to visit all the Church History Sites was something both of us have wanted to do for years and it was wonderful to be able to do so together.

Hello Everyone

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