Summer's Here

June 22, 2005

Celine eating ice cream on Sunday.

We had a really great first day of summer and celebrated in true summer fashion. This morning we found out the weather would be warm (87F) so we planned to go to the beach this afternoon. We did errands this morning, had lunch and then took off to the beach. We visited Crescent Beach once again. The little local beach 5 minutes from our house. We planned to meet another homeschooling family there and the kids had a great time together and I had some adult company which was great. We came home late in the afternoon, had supper and then went to a folk dancing workshop/performance.

A woman in our community has a history/interest in folk dance, specificially Franco-American/Canadian music. She is well connected within the arts community and is working on bringing more folk dancing and instruction to our community. It's interesting that the town we are moving to (Lewiston) has a very strong French heritage and many early settlers came from french speaking eastern Canada. There are several beautiful old Catholic churches in the city and many "old timers" whose first language is French. This is all fascinating to me as my children have a french heritage and I feel more connected to that here than I did living in Alberta - kind of ironic.

Anyway, I would love for our family to be a part of the folk arts scene in our community. So we went to participate tonight. There was fiddling group (about 12 musicians) - including old and young, students and teachers providing the jigs and reels. Then Cindy, the instructor was teaching dances to a group of participants - the kids and I were included in this - and we were "performing" for elderly people at an assisted living complex. Does that make any sense? It was part performane, part participation and altogether toe tapping fun. There was a photographer and writer from the paper there. If they ever run a story on it I'll post a link. Anyway, it was great and something I really hope continues.

It wouldn't be the perfect first day of summer without ice cream! So when we got home we shared a pint of Ben & Jerry's - just happened to be on sale this week. And yes, we did just have ice cream on Sunday. I think that enough ice cream for one week. So, it was a great summer day - took my mind of all I should be doing - packing etc..