What I did on my summer....nah, no vacation yet!

My sister Penny tells me I'm slippin in my bloggin! Haha! Here I am sissy, and WHERE are YOU???

I took this picture the other day (my staging sucks, sorry) of what is left of a tea set and water pitcher set that I have. My dad occasionally would bring things home from his longhaul trips. Of course I don't have complete sets but I remember as a child playing with these sets and having plenty of teeny tea parties! They are incredibly precious to me. One of them is from Little Wyoming, a place that lay along our trip to Nebraska. Of course we had to stop and check it out while on that trip. We had ice cream cones for 50 cents and walked around checking it out. I know it must have looked different way back then but still. The other one you can see is from Kansas City Mo, don't know the story behind it really. When we were on our trip we talked a lot about things that we remembered, it was so fun listening to the stories Penny, Connie and Teri told, one of the things we all talked about was our love of Tootsie rolls! huh? Yep....our dad used to bring them home to us after one of his trips and it was a special treat to get a handful of tootsies!

ALSO:
Tonight I got to talk to my oldest sister Carol. She always called herself my other mother and would tell people I was her oldest child! It has been so much of a blessing this summer, rediscovering the pure joy of having sisters, having their love and support and just knowing that I share a past with them that I didn't have with anyone else. My oldest sis is 13 years older than I am so by the time I was 5 she had moved out and joined the Army, her way of escaping something she felt she couldn't leave any other way I suppose. She met and married my brother in law Cecil while in the Army, he was in it too, and they have lived in Florida since getting married a long long time ago, prolly something like 40 plus years? I don't know...haha! Anyway, my first memory of her other than cellular ones (and by that I DON'T mean a phone) was when she came home for a visit while pregnant with my nephew who is a mere 6 years younger than I am. I met Cecil for the first time on that visit also. You know, its something else to have brother in laws that I have known for the hugest part of my life. I have known both Richard and Cecil since I was quite young, I have no memory of my life without Richard in it for sure. Somehow that just blows my mind.

Our mom always loved Boston Terrier dogs. Our first one that I remember was Sox, who was quite possibly one of the coolest dogs ever, in the entire universe. One of my biggest heartbreaks besides leaving dad and my sisters for Oregon was leaving that dog behind in Idaho to live with Penny. So while Carol and Cecil were home on their visit (by the way, they drove all the way from Florida to Twin Falls Idaho in a Volkswagon bug) I was searching for a way to make it make sense that Cecil was now a part of our family. I couldn't figure it out, I was, after all, only 6. One evening we were all sitting around in our house, a tiny little cottage that I to this day, adore, the adults were talking and laughing and I was staring at this fascinating new adult in my life, this man who spoke in a very thick southern accent and could bend his body in funny rubbery shapes and do all kinds of fun things with me. I so wanted to fit him in somehow, suddenly, it occured to me!!! I had it!!! I KNEW how he fit!!! "Cecil!" I shouted into the room, (yep, I was the same as a little girl) "You and Sox both have brown eyes, you are part of our family!" Yep, at that moment, it fit for me, Cecil was an honorary part of our family because he shared the same color eyes as our dog! Every single person in the family has blue eyes, even now, but not the dog....Cecil would always grab me and tickle me and kiss on my neck and tease me, callin me his "boogaloo in the swamp" girl...to this day when I see him he will tackle me and tickle me and make me giggle. Its not really funny to anyone else but it is a special tradition for me.

I love my brother in laws, they are such good men. Our mom must have done something right because out of 5 daughters, only one of us have ever been divorced, we have all been married for a long long time. Its amazing really, coming from a divorce situation, that all of us have been so committed to staying together. We have, between us, 200 years of marriage! Hahahahaha!

We had a fun evening and a rare day off today. Our niece Kristen is leaving for college tomorrow so her mom and dad had a going away party for her. We didn't get to stay a really long time but it was fun the time we were there. Hard to believe that its that time already. Aaron will be going over next week for his placement test for school and then making some plans for his apartment sharing with Eric Lawrence. It will be a change for us, having him move out, but I think it will be really good for him, to be on his own.