We are the Collins Family.  Matt, Kristen, Alaina and Kenna!  Virginia has been our home for almost 6 years!  Before Virginia….and kids, Matt and I lived in New York.  A promotion brought us to Virginia and when I found out we’d be living in Tysons Corner, I literally cried my eyes out.

As a child, I grew up in the country.  My closest neighbor was at the bottom of our big hill and it was my grandma!  My bus ride to school was an hour each way.  In the summer, all you smelled was cow poo and mowed hay!  Getting stuck behind tractors and making mud pies were the memories I made growing up.  I wanted nothing less for my kids.

Enter Matt.

We met in college and eventually started dating.  Right after Matt proposed, he received a promotion and we were move down to Northern VA.

Matt grew up in a small town outside of Syracuse, NY.  It was nothing like my small town. His had a grocery store.  Mine had a church.  I didn’t think he was very country when I met him…but boy, has that changed.  I’ve even had to reel him in a few times!  Not the straw hat!!

After bouncing around Northern VA and deciding we couldn’t handle everything that came with that area(traffic, people everywhere, traffic….traffic), we decided to move
farther west.

Enter this tiny town called Stephens City.

For the first time since moving to Virginia, I truly felt HOME.  We had a beautiful old fixer upper home with 3.5 acres.  Life was great.  Then chickens happened.  We made
it work.

THEN FIVE ALARM FUN

I needed to do something.  Being a stay at home mom was driving me CRAZY!  Literally. Matt gave me a choice…Bounce House business OR Alpaca Farm.  I wasn’t willing to learn how to sheer Alpaca.  So we started a bounce house business(enter coolest parents EVER here).

Five Alarm Fun has grown into pretty much a full time job for me.  We’ve run out of space in our barn to store units and decided we wanted more animals.  All of which can be done here on 3.5 acres, but we were tired of old houses and projects.  An idea popped into our heads and we continued to roll with it thus…..

Thistle Dew Farms was born.