About this whole ant thing...

I'm really not as "ant obsessed" as this here blog may make me appear to be. I'm not an entomologist or anything like that. Here's the scoop: I grew up in a Brady Bunch style blended family. I have four older brothers (all of them 'half'). Two of them are 10 years older, and two are seven years older. When I was little, they nicknamed me, "Amy Ant". I was small. I was busy. I was annoying. The name stuck.

My half sister, by the way, is fifteen years older than me. She got married when I was in kindergarten. My first nephew was born when I was eight, and thus I became, "Auntie Amy Ant". As a thirty-something, I reclaimed my nickname to use as my tag on online message boards, etc.

I will say that I do like ants. The little not-too-creepy ones anyway. The ones that invade my kitchen 2-3 times per year, however, I give special "medicine" (AKA: Terro) to wipe out their entire family. So I'm not really such a friend to the ant-ants.

As for the antfarming, well, that's my job really. As a mom, I am the queen in this ant hill. I may not have minions, but I'm still the queen. As a teacher, I pretty much see my classroom as ant farm experiment. The possible exception is my junior class: with those kiddos it's a little more like cat herding. Cute, cuddly, and moving in many directions all the time. I love them all...the ants and the cats.

Edited to add: I've had this post saved as a draft for about two weeks now. (That's just lame.) I wanted to add the photo to illustrate my antiness. One of my big goals for this year is to learn how to use our scanner, and tonight I finally had my first lesson--thanks to my sweetie. (One of several reasons why I don't post my los to the gallery on 2Peas.) The photo above was taken in March of '75, just before I turned 2...and I think about the time my nickname stuck. It was taken in the kitchen at my Grandpa Vic & Grandma Rheda's house. My grandma had this huge yellow ceramic chef cookie jar, and chances are, I was on this stool to check it out!

Two of my three grandpa's were serious shutterbugs, and I'm pretty sure I've inherited my photo-obsessiveness from them. My childhood photos are few and far between, and I'm thrilled to have access to the many slides my grandpas took. There's a lot of personal history to be relived as I work though this process, and it's going to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r for sure. I'm excited to get them scanned and organized so I can share them with my siblings. Who knows, maybe someday I'll even get around to printing and scrapbooking them! (ha ha ha)