Ask Murphy not to do something or why she is doing something and lately her answer will likely have an interesting caveat. Because I want to.

“Murphy, why are you standing on mommy’s couch?”

“Because I want to,” Murphy says with her head nodding while maintaining eye contact over the back of the couch willing me to agree with her.

Everything is because she wants to—or doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to brush her teeth, she wants to eat pasta for every meal, she doesn’t want to potty on the toilet—and then five seconds later she does want to.

Life is always changing, but what is it about going back to your hometown that makes you feel like you are 17-years-old again? Even when I roll across the Franklin County line in my grown-up car with my husband and two children, car packed with diapers, extra clothes and goldfish snacks, I still feel like an awkward teenage girl.

School’s out for summer, but that doesn’t mean the art display at Verna Belle’s Café will be absent. Several donated paintings are now on exhibit on the café’s south wall, where pieces created by Manhattan and Ogden art students usually rest.

Three of the pieces were painted by former resident Lucy Mulroney, one was done by F. Gene Ernst, a former Passport member, and a fifth is a print by the late Charles H. Sanderson, a Kansas native. The Meadowlark Hills Art Committee plans to find homes for these pieces in our common areas.

When I was seven-years-old, my parents took my younger sister, Holly, and I on our first summer family vacation. The destination was San Antonio, Texas and there are two things I remember well from that trip. I can recall our day at Sea World where I sat in the splash zone to watch the Shamu show and I was disgusted when the salt water from the tank was splashed into my mouth. My smile that had been wide, and apparently agape, faded and I looked up at my dad in horror as he laughed saying, “Then keep your mouth shut!”