And we will dance...: Akron

As promised...part 2 of the blogs for the day have come. Hopefully writing this one will help me bring my mind back to that peaceful state of contentment and gratitude.

If any of the people who may be reading this are not familiar with Akron then I want to introduce you to where the majority of my life was spent.

Akron is a town of about 5,000 people. Because of it's smallness we are pretty close knit and have a strong sense of community. The school has pre-k through 12 all in one building. Everyone knows each other and everything that is going on in your life. It can be a very gossipy town but also one that brings people together. I think we all hold a lot of pride in this small town.

As I think I have wrote before my family also holds a lot of tradition here. The vast majority of my family live here. My parents have lived in this same house the entire 30 years they have been married. Nothing much changes in Akron....

And when you need a break from the fast pace life of boston, it can be a place of comfort to retreat to. The differences between here and the city are astounding.

I have started journaling a lot on the things I appreciate about being back in Akron (and because Boston has become my home I will probably do the same for there when I return)

But here are some of the things that make Akron special to me:

- Waking up to the birds chirping outside my window

- We never have to lock our car door or our house door

- Our dogs roam freely on our land (no chains, cages, or fences)

- You can watch the sunset

- There is a never ending amount of green fields around me

- We have a pond (pictures to follow)

- The 3 cats that wander around our house provide all the entertainment you need

- It is even great to hear Roger the rooster crow at early hours of the morning

- My water bed :)

- Hard wood floors to dance on

- Slow paced life

- Knowing everyone somehow (when you order a pizza for dinner the conversation goes along the lines of who is dating who, who is married to who and how that person is somehow related to us or our neighbor down the street!)

- DRIVING

- No traffic lights

- There are no side walks or cross walks where I live

- Sitting around the dinner table with my entire family (sister-in-law included!) for the first time since Christmas

- Having an oven that preheats in 5 min. vs. the 45 min at Harvest House

- Baking with mum :) (Today I made chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip m&m cookies, can't leave alone brownies, strawberry pretzel salad, oatmeal raisin cookies, frog cookies, and watched my brother and Kathryn make pasta!...all for the 4th tomorrow)

- Small town fireworks tonight

- Strawberry picking

- Tiger lillies with freckles (there are tiger lillies in boston but none of them have freckles!)

Ok ...now for some pics....

For those of you who don't know...my family has a pond on our land that is only about a 5 minute drive away but it is in the middle of the woods and is a great escape when you want to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. We spend a lot of the summer here having picnics and such....it was so great to return!

This is a pic of the fire place (that my dad built by hand!)

Me and my daddy

The Tiger lily with freckles!

Ha...I was joking with my family that this would be a great way to portray ourselves as a really hick family...my brother washing his shoes in the water