Lucy Beck		Debbie Ramsdell
	Tanya and Matthew		Marjan van den Belt and Robert Costanza
	Marlee, Rick & Nina		The Devine Family
	Per, Jenny, Solvei & Aren Eisenman		Cara Taussig and Marty Gawron
	Dennis and Trisa Gay		Marc Greenblatt
	Shelia Kerr		Carina Cartelli and Joe Lasek
	Melissa Mcginty		Sarah Sinnott
	Elizabeth Storey		Larilee Suiter
	Peter van Schaick		Mary Van Vleck
	Clark and Suzanne Hinsdale		Jonathan, Lorelei and Finn Atwood
	Gordon Gieg and Amy Snyder

Our family moved from California to join the Champlain Valley Cohousing community in July 2007. We have two children, a daughter Solvei born in March 2003 and a son Aren born in March 2006. We spent six years in the San Francisco Bay Area, followed by one year in Grass Valley, California.

What we want

We have been interested in co-housing for many years. Jenny discovered it while living in Denmark during her twenties; Per began envisioning creating community with friends in high school.

Living lightly on the planet is important to us and we feel that it's easy to fall short of our ideals living as a nuclear family with a station wagon that gets about twenty miles to the gallon... We are interested in living with other people who experience joy from nature and who are committed to caring for and being connected to the natural world. As parents who strive to provide a TV/media-free environment for our children, we are grateful to have found a community where our views are respected. We are excited about what co-housing offers our children--we cannot imagine a better situation for Solvei and Aren. The children love having friends just outside their front door and they have already begun to develop close, meaningful relationships with other adults as well.

All four of us are social people who really enjoy spending time with others. From the age of two, our four-year-old daughter began asking, "Who are we going to visit today?" After a one-week visit to CVC, Solvei announced that if we didn’t join the community, she would be “longing for” her new friends. Beyond the enjoyment we experience living in community, we also wish to live with others who share many of our values.

Who we are

Jenny, born and raised in the Midwest, is thirty-six years old. An Oberlin College graduate and an educational therapist by training, she completed her master's thesis just before giving birth to Aren. Before she and Per met and began to raise a family, Jenny spent a large part of her twenties exploring various spots on the planet—India, Japan, and different countries in Europe. Beyond her interest in working with students with learning disabilities, she enjoys good food, good theater, walks in nature, and time spent with the people she loves. Jenny also has a deep fondness for Scandinavia, as she called Denmark home for three years from 1997-2000.

Per, born in Norway thirty-three years ago and raised in New Hampshire, is a special education teacher by profession. He has worked in both public and private schools and recently received his master's degree. Per has been interested in Rudolf Steiner's philosophy from early childhood and attended both Waldorf and public schools K-12. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1998 with majors in German, comparative literature, and dance education. He particularly enjoys teaching and dancing contact improvisation. Per has been involved with the international anthroposophical/Waldorf movement by helping to plan youth conferences, serving on various committees, and working as a Waldorf teacher for a year. Per's love for the outdoors is rooted in his childhood—as as a boy, he was able to run outside and explore the many acres of woods in his backyard. He always wanted his children to have this same sort of experience and is happy that they will have this opportunity at CVC. Per currently teaches special education at Champlain Valley Union High School.

Solvei is a lively, sensitive, curious, and precocious little girl. She was born at home in El Cerrito, California, on March 13, 2003. She is a social person who values and appreciates her friendships. She is also a verbal child with a knack for expressing her thoughts and feelings. When not playing with friends, she enjoys reading books, playing pretend with her stuffed animals, putting on dress-ups and giving theatrical performances, going to the park or on a hike, coloring and painting, and helping her mama and papa with the cooking. She attends kindergarten at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School.

Aren is a curious and enthusiastic little boy. He loves people, balls and animals. He eagerly makes new friends, and he especially enjoys totally cracking up over his big sister's theatrical antics. He is a generally easy-going happy fellow. Right now he's working hard on exploring the social and physical world around him and trying to articulate himself with an ever-growing but still relatively rudimentary vocabulary. He was born also born at home in the same house as Solvei on March 2, 2006.

We are very happy to be here. Our children have made fast friends with other children and adults as well. We are excited to be a part of a community in which our whole family can put down some deeper roots and continue to grow.