Taking in the County Fair

Saturday we took Maddy, Anna, and Lindsay to the Sarasota County Fair. The fairgrounds are a permanent fixture just east of the city. Many years ago the area around the fairgrounds was all country - filled with orange and other citrus groves, and truck farming. Now the city has sprawled all the way from downtown to Interstate 75. The dairy farm adjoing my sisters home has been converted to subdivisions and  lately,  big box stores. A huge shopping center is within walking distance.

Judy's daughter Jennifer and her little girls arrived from Orlando on Friday afternoon and we took them on their first trip to "the fair". It was so much fun watching them as they enjoyed the many shows taking place. The first one was a pig race. I must admit that I have never seen pigs racing. I guess it was patterned after the Florida dog races. You should have seen those pigs run around the track!

Nobody wanted to ride the big elephant. But it was fun watching people climb up on top of the elephant and be led around a ring inside a big fenced area. I rode an elephant once and was afraid he might take off running.... but he just walked along the path at the Cincinnati zoo. We saw a tiger show and felt sorry for the tigers who stayed in a big covered truck between shows. I know it must have been hot inside that truck. They looked so sleepy when they came out.

Their favorite thing for the little nieces was riding all the wild rides. Even 5 year old Lindsay loved riding the ferris wheel, the swings that flew out into space, vertical drops, etc. I just stood back and watched!

We stopped to listen to the music shows: oldtime music, bluegrass, etc. We wanted to see the sea lion performance but the crowd was always too big and we couldn't get close.

The whole afternoon was so much fun since we had the little girls along and watched them with all their excitement. I can't believe they actually ate that big bag of cotton candy and the giant (very sweet) elephant ear.

We were there all afternoon and started to get a little sunburned, altho the temperature as in the low 70s and a slight breeze. A perfect day to go to the fair...........

Too bad Jim and Guy got "put in jail".

Soaking up the Sun in Sunny Sarasota, FL

    

We arrived in Sarasota this afternoon around 4 p.m. after an 8-hour trip from home. Traffic was not too bad on I-75. I guess we were a few hours ahead of the spring break kids headed to FL this weekend. What we did see were a lot of expensive motor homes, most with FL license plates. I can only imagine how much money it takes to fill their gas tanks. Jim said that if they could afford to buy those big homes on wheels, then they surely must have money to buy gas 

for them.


                                                           We are visiting my sister Judy and her husband Guy. Today their daughter Jennifer and her three little girls arrived from Orlando for the weekend with us.

We celebrated Maddy's 11th birthday which was March 12. They brought their new (6 weeks old) puppy, a Morky,  with them. 

The girls and their new pillows I made for them.  Maddy is holding up one of her two floor pillows.  This is the back side with the appliqued flip flops.

Spring has sprung - finally!

Today the sun was shining and the temperature got up to the low
70s and all of a sudden, flowers were blooming everywhere.


Our King Alfred daffodils are so pretty this year. I have them scattered all around the yard.


Because of the spring drought last year, we only had about a dozen blooms and they were small. This year they are so pretty.

Our tea olive tree is full of fragrant blooms, just outside the back

porch door leading to the kitchen. It blooms several times a year.

The purple Japanese magnolia is showy - but doesn't last long. The first cold night it will get killed back, and turn brown.

The green plant growing under the bell by the back porch is Rosemary. I love to touch the leaves and smell them. It's an evergreen.

Who do you think you are?

Friday night we watched a TV program on NBC "Who Do You Think You Are?" and found it most interesting. Both Jim and I like geneaology and have done a lot of research, especially Jim.

We had fun watching as Sarah Jessica Parker located her ancestors and learned that one was part of the Salem Witch trials. Someone had reported that she was involved with two others in practicing witchcraft in Salem, Mass. Her great grandfather left his family in Ohio and went west in 1848 as part of the gold rush crowd. They never saw him again as he died young, working as a miner searching for gold. They had a lot of photos and you could see certain family traits passed from generation to generation.

This is also true in our families. My Smith ancestors from NC and PA were Quakers. My Papa Smith was a very devout Methodist and shunned material things. I don't remember that he ever owned a car; travelling by horse and wagon when I was young. His daily family devotions were long and I would usually fall asleep while he was reading the Bible. Looking back I can see how his Quaker ancestory was reflected in his daily living. I've heard reference to the large Smith nose all my life. In fact, I inherited this trait.


Our oldest son looks so much like Papa Smith and Papa's father, William Cole Smith. He gets his height from them also. The older photo is my great grandfather William Cole Smith, and his son is O.C. Smith, my grandfather.

March came in like a lion!

When will spring ever get here, I wondered, as I put more firewood on the fire tonight. Today was a dark, windy, very cold day and misting rain all morning. I struggled to get things done that I had been putting off for awhile. Not every exciting, huh?

I went to the gym this morning and worked out on the weight machines for 30 minutes (trying to make my stomach smaller) and then walked on the treadmill for 30 min. without holding onto the rail. Nobody was there and I turned the TV on to keep me company.

I am learning to use Skype on my computer to talk to family members. It's so much fun to see who you are talking to. Our son called around 7 pm from SC. It's a different experience - to be looking at the person you are talking to. There's so much about high technology that I can't understand. For instance I've had my current cell phone for about 4 years and just yesterday discovered you can use it to take pictures!! And I still haven't learned to go back and get voice mail. My brain short circuits when I start trying to learn new technology.

For instance I am still trying to learn how to turn on (the sequence of pushing buttons) our new HD TV. To add to the complications, you also have a sound bar to operate. But during the olympics I think I learned how to turn the tv on and off. Oh, you don't just push one button to turn it off! I really enjoyed watching the olympics in HD and surround sound. It was like being right there. You could almost feel the bumps as the skiis were gliding over the hard snow and ice.

Today, to make the dull day a little brighter and cheerful, I made strawberry shortcake for lunch. Found good ripe strawberries at the market yesterday and sliced them and piled them over angel food cake covered with whipped cream (for me it was free Kool Whip). Made me think of summertime!

For breakfast today, I sliced an apple and cooked it while I made some toast and spread it with part skim ricotta cheese. I placed the apples on top and sprinkled some cinnamon and Splenda on them and sat down to have a delicious low calorie Apple Danish for breakfast. It's nice to eat something other than oatmeal or cheerios for breakfast. 

Let there be light!

New pendant light fixture makes reading the
newspaper a little easier. First I got my eyelids "tacked" up and now I have a new reading light.


I can see sooooooo much better.


Note the jar of raw almonds we keep on the table for snacking. The apple tapestry place mats came from the Dollar Tree last fall and were $1 each. We have really enjoyed them and the fact that they can be washed in the washing machine.


Behind me is our small galley kitchen and the laundry room (with pot rack hanging in front of the window).

Photo: Nell and Caroline, reading Caroline's paper about Andrew Jackson.  She is in the 8th grade and a very good student - all A's.  

Let it snow!

"The Big Snow" in Elba, AL on Feb. 11, 2010
My brother Perry Wilson took this photo of our house on Friday morning after we had 4" of snow - a rarity in this part of the country. And we were not here to see it!


We left Elba on Feb. 10 to go to Virginia Beach, VA to attend the funeral of Jim's brother's wife. We stayed Thursday night with our son and family in Florence, SC. It snowed in Florence, SC on Friday night, after we left to go to VA. We were always one day ahead of the big snows.


After having lived in parts of the country where there is always plenty of snow, we were not too unhappy about missing the snow. How well I remember the winters in Minneapolis, MN. Lake Minnetonka near where we lived would freeze over and there were ice houses out on the lake where people would go to fish (and party and drink beer, etc.). Then we had snow occasionally in north Texas and Winston, Salem, NC as well as Florence, SC. When we moved to Elba, we gave away our snow shovel - thinking we'd never need it again.


Last Friday was a holiday in Elba - schools were closed and county roads closed. It was also a very sad day for our back-yard neighbor. It was the day of Sammy Morrow's funeral.