Tripping Over Typeset

First off, I can’t believe it’s August. Where did summer go? I have friends with kids who are already back in school for the year and that is just not okay.

We’ve finished off another month so it’s time to look back and remind ourselves of what we’ve learned, done or just plain old loved.

So here we go:

Our annual family reunion was this month and we all traveled back to our hometown. Yeah, I was born in a small town…. And there’s something about going back to where you came from that brings all kinds of nostalgia, self-reflection and memories. This time was no different. We made great memories and had some real small town fun!

We rode a trolley-like bus through town; starting at my grandfather’s print shop, onto the local ice cream place and then the local roller skating rink! Yes they are still around. It ended up they were closed for inventory and cleaning.

We were a little sad…. but in small towns people know people.

The owner… who happens to be my 6^th grade home room teacher and my old cheerleading coach… Yes, I was a cheerleader! (Look at all this history you are learning in a simple one month round-up).

The owner watched our fun bus pull in and our family clan pile out. She was dumbfounded and excited to see this crazy bunch come back to her small town for roller skating. She did not disappoint these out-of-towners! She called in reinforcements, opened up the back door and let us all in.

The memories came flooding back as we skated round and round with strobe lights and music pumping through the ceiling. We rocked it out to YMCA while our own teenagers roller skated around on the same wooden floor from years gone by.

Another highlight of the trip was the merry-go-round.

Not many people have a merry-go-round in their own front yard but Grandpa was the inventive, creative type. On Grandpa’s corner lot sat his print shop, their house and the little neighborhood grocery store across the street. Kids filled the yard on a daily basis with visitors and customers coming and going.

Maybe Grandpa thought there was no better way to entertain kids than a merry-go-round.

It was made from the rim of a wagon wheel, held up by an iron rod through the center and boards nailed on for seats.

I rode it when I was a child but after Grandpa died and the house was torn down, the merry-go-round disappeared. The only evidence of its existence was the concrete center that held the iron bar.

My brother’s dream was to have the merry-go-round rebuilt for the next generation to ride. We didn’t know “the bones” still existed but when our cousin heard about this idea, he went back to his home, pulled the parts out that he had been storing all along and rebuilt the dream.

It was quite the moment to see our own small children now riding the merry-go-round that Grandpa had built back in the early 1940’s. And of course all of us big kids took a turn as well.

(Sorry for the fuzzy pictures.  The sun was setting and this was the best we could get.)

Home again, home again

We are now back home and in full clean out mode. This Quigley house has too much stuff.

We are going room by room cleaning up, throwing out and sorting through.

In the past I have justified all these clothes because we live in a full-on 4 season climate but in reality we have our ‘favorites’ that we just rotate through and everything else just hangs for posterity reasons or for some special occasion that never really comes. The girls and I hunkered down, tried things on and consulted one another on what was good, bad and just needed to go. We’ve already filled 6 garbage bags and our closets are still stocked with enough for all seasons! That should really tell us something!

We have finished the clothes and are moving onto movies, knickknacks and all things no longer needed including books.

For some in our household this could cause some major breakdowns but I think we are up for the challenge. We might need a book recovery support group on the other side but I think we’ll make it.

I’ll let you know in our next wrap up how it all turns out.

Good-bye July, Hello August!

*Linking up with Chatting At the Sky