My granddaughter Riley sent Stanley Lambchop to visit us in Laurel and learn a little bit about our history. So I wanted to share Stanley’s adventure with all of you.

So here we go…

Oh, my goodness…we loved having Flat Stanley visit us in our “HomeTown” of Laurel, Mississippi!

Papa and I enjoyed showing Stanley around our little town and sharing some history and fun facts about Laurel. For those of you who might watch HGTV you might recognize our town Laurel, Mississippi because of the TV show called “HomeTown” with Ben and Erin Napier.

Over the last 7-years the community of Laurel has been working to revitalize their downtown. There wasn’t much left downtown after Hurricane Katrina came through. So many homes and businesses were damaged, and life changed a lot.

However, the community has worked hard to revitalize the downtown businesses and the homes in the area. Ben and Erin work hard to bring new life into many of the old homes by renovating them so that new families can move in them.

New businesses have opened, and the downtown is now a beautiful and quaint little town with restaurants and stores to shop in. Tourism from the HGTV show has impacted the community and allowed us to continue to improve and grow our little community.

One of the fun things about Laurel is our collection of murals around our town. Part of our economic development with the Main Street Organization is to create spots around downtown where our artists have created murals and we took Stanley on a tour of some of them to share with you Riley, and your class.

Riley has been to visit us in Laurel so she may recognize some of these spots!

Another fun fact about Laurel is the Amtrak Train runs right through Laurel and you can jump on the Crescent Line Train and hit three major destination such as New Orleans, Louisiana, Birmingham, Alabama and New York!

Here is Stanley with the Amtrak mural on top of the Scotsman Store and our train station.

I think Stanley had a great time with us and enjoyed his time with us in Laurel. Stanley is heading back to Largo, Florida on Monday and I can’t wait to hear what you thought about his fun trip with us!

Thanks Riley for sharing Stanley with us. I hope you enjoy reading about his adventures.

PS - Stanley hung out with me at the Be Amazing Paper Company which is my business downtown. So Stanley got to learn all about printing, paper and books! I think he is a real fan of reading books now and writing letters!

Stanley Comes to Visit Laurel!