A rather rambling post on a few of the reasons why I love where I live.

Should we start with the fish?

 

39 fish to be precise.

 

39 little fishy girls "swimming in a sea of sorrows" that Alice (of Alice in Wonderland) has created with her giant tears.  And when Miss Alice arrives on shore she attempts to dry off by running in a caucus race.  Also participating in the race is a group of 8-10 year old critters, including our own cute little mouse.

 

Smithfield Youth Theater puts on a play every year for our town's Health Days.  Participation is free and completely volunteer driven ( I sewed for 16 hours and fish-sat for 3 hours ) and the kids had a wonderful time being involved.  They also got cool glow in the dark cheshire cat (or in Ginny terms "treasure cat") shirts to wear in the Health Days parade.  Which goes right by our house.

 

 

Joanna opted to ride with her school, Summit Elementary, for the parade.  Which brings us to a few more reasons why I love Smithfield (especially the schools).

The guy in red out front?  I'm pretty sure that's Mr. Green who Ethan will have next year for 4th grade.  Rumor has it he is awesome because he doesn't just send his students out for recess, he goes out with them and plays.  Dodgeball on the playground? sure.  Tag where he is all-time it?  Why not?

The guy in back with the cake hat?  Principal Daines.

And this lovely gem of a women is Mrs. Merkley.  Ethan and Jo have both had her for Kindergarten and she is precious beyond rubies.  She's also our neighbor.  And my relief society president. 

 

Summit Elementary celebrated it's centennial birthday this year.  100 years!  Elementary schools just don't last that long.  It called for a lot of celebrating.

Ethan got to help plant the centennial tree out in front of the school

I'm starting to notice a trend to Ethan's pose in pictures.  

There was a big program to celebrate the birthday.  The kids all learned songs and dances and if I ever figure out how to get video from my camera onto this blog you'll be able to see how much Ethan blossoms in front of an audience.  Another cool thing?  My grandpa Merrill was a teacher at Summit 80 years ago.  

I love that this is where my kids are growing up.  A community large enough to provide lots of opportunities like the play yet small enough that it's almost impossible to make a trip to the grocery store without bumping into someone you know.  I love that we have genealogical ties here as well.  Our pioneer ancestors James Sherlock Cantwell and his Daughter Ellen are buried in the Smithfield cemetery and my Grandma and Grandpa Merrill are buried ten minutes north in Richmond.  It feels good to be somewhere that you already have roots.

Ladybugs

Joanna got a ladybug habitat for her birthday.  She mailed off for her baby lady bugs and a week later they came in the mail.  She dumped a mass of what looked like half inch long alligators into their new home.  Joanna was very dutiful in making sure their water sponge was wet and they weren't in direct sunlight and that no one touched their little world because "it would make them think there's an earthquake and they'll die".   She got excited about every step they made in their march to adulthood.  They ate what looked like ground up graham crackers for a couple weeks, quadrupled in size,  and then as a group attached their little behinds to the roof.  They just hung there for another week and I'll admit I started to worry they had all died.  Finally they all busted out of their old husks and looked like honest to goodness ladybugs.  Except yellow.  They stayed with us a few more days eating water soaked raisins while they put on a more rosy hue and then finally Joanna released them all into our strawberry patch.

 

"raising ladybugs is awesome"

...And back out of school

 

 I gave up blogging for a while.   Anyone notice?  I was getting sparse for a while.  Then I lost my mom who was pretty much 95% of my reason for keeping the blog and my last bit of gumption fled. 

  

 The other day the kids starting looking through the beautiful book Jill made of my blog for Christmas two years ago.  For a week they poured over it for hours.  Ethan would take it to bed with him and I could hear him in there giggling at the stories until way after he was supposed to turn out the light.

 

I was so grateful for the memories captured in it.  I know right now the kids just enjoy reading about themselves being cute and funny.  I hope when they're a little older though, maybe when they're parents themselves, they can sense the real reason why I wrote those stories down; I just love these kids so much.

 

 

  I've been looking forward to summer for months now.   That magical time of year when we spend whole days in each other's company. This one will hopefully be a little more normal, at least compared to last year.   I'm sure there will be more funny stories, more cute things said.  Maybe a little bit of back-journaling here on the blog from the vast photo library on our computer.

Maybe we'll even see a little bit of this guy who I, you know, love more than anything.

Hooray for Summer