It Starts!

IT STARTS! (Don’t miss the reference here —- Lion King!)

I was born the fourth child with two brothers and a sister being born before me (another brother followed me). Childhood, of course was awesome. We moved to the country when I was around 4, so life was so interesting with all of the exploring we could do on the property and we spent most of our time in the woods playing in the creek, building forts, looking for Kool Pop houses and whatever came to our imagination!

There was a commercial about a big old owl who lived in a little “woodsy” house and he would give children who happened by a Kool Pop. There was also an owl on the tootsie pop commercial wondering how many licks it took to get to the tootsie roll, but this one was different. I wonder if any of you remember the Kool Pop house? Children would be on a walk and come upon this cottage/treehouse thing and the owl would give you a Kool Pop. Our dad would go out and half way assemble something (we found this out later in life) then he would walk around with us through the woods and say, “There is a Kool Pop house!” and point in the direction. We would excitedly look and it was just a partial frame. Dad would say, “Oh I am sorry, I saw it and it disappeared because I am a grown up.” Our older brother and his friend were always building forts, etc, out there, so it may have been some of their failed attempts as well. We spent days looking for those houses. This was probably a good ploy of dad’s to keep us occupied for quite some time! We wanted to find one so much!!!

We had great times there, we had a huge garden, orchards, lots of animals…pigs, cows, goats, chickens, horses, ducks, quail, rabbits, a bit of all farm animals. Dad had a very long sledding hill built for us and a pond. You can figure our childhood was filled with lots of fun things to do. My older brother one day asked me if I wanted to ride Sarah, the cow. I of course said sure. He hoisted me right up there and off Sarah and I went. We went all over those 10 acres! When we returned, my brother came running up and started helping me down asking if I were okay and if the cow tried to get me off of her or run me into any trees or fences. When I said no, he started excitedly hollering, “Hey everyone we can ride the cow!” My mother heard this and I am pretty sure she was not too happy with my brother, but I was safe and had a nice ride!

The entire country was ours for the exploring. We would walk or ride bicycles all day and visit neighbors and gather in each other’s yards or woods for the day to play. We would run out that door at sun up and return at lunch and head right back out until supper. When we needed snacks, we could grab something from the garden or have some berries, apples, peaches, cherries, whatever was growing. I sure miss those fresh foods! It seemed that most of the time everyone was at our house. We had a huge yard. We would play baseball, starting with flies and grounders. As cars would come by they would stop and get out and play and before long we would have a baseball game. The same thing would happen with kickball or flag football. It was amazing that people who never even knew you would feel comfortable enough to stop and get out and ask if they could play! Of course, we welcomed them.

We caught the rain water in barrels so we had a lot of barrels. We would “walk” on the barrels and have races. I have a picture of this that I might post some day! We had barrels for our appropriate sizes. My little brother and I had the smallest ones. Doing this took some balance and leg strength! The neighbors came down and got in on this activity as well. People passing by would always stop and join in the fun. What great times! My older brothers became more competitive and adventurous and would race with my little brother and me on their shoulders! Pretty sure mom was not thrilled with this either.

Well, this is a bit of background. I really did not think I could just jump in and randomly tell stories. I feel this background helps you get to know me and my family and to know my character. I will try my best, but I probably will not tell stories here in chronological order and I may just want to talk about things at times and not tell stories. I have always been one of those people where so many random things pop out of my mouth that I even surprise myself sometimes. Often times, it is the case that I would have been better off keeping my mouth shut. Oh how I try to talk myself out of the situations I get myself into then. It is always good for a laugh, though!

I will probably post on two days a week. Thank you for coming back again to read what I have to say. More to come………………..