MEMORIES 4

I am adding another picture with Santa. There are only two. I have not posted much because I was trying to find the right photo album. I finally did find it. The problem with going through the picture albums and and scrapbooks is that it truly brings back memories. It accentuates the loss, the loss of family members and friends and the loss of childhood innocence. I grew up in a simpler and less complicated time. Over the next few days I wil show pictures of my early Christmas and most pictures are of me sitting by the tree with my presents. It was great fun to see those pictures.

MEMORIES NO 3

I am struggling to post interesting memories. We had a small to moderate size house. There were three bedrooms and one bath up with an eat-in kitchen, dining room, sun room, living room and foyer on the first floor. The basement did have a toilet but no sink etc. At some point my parents converted the dining room into a family room and the sun room became the dining room. In the beginning the tree was in the living room. My father was a salesman for a company and at Christmas would receive some small gifts. One gift was a fairly large round plastic container of cashew nuts. My father would not open this until Christmas Day but I do remember reaching up into the container to pull out a few cashews ahead of time. I was very careful not to break the scotch taped areas so as to (in my mind at least), preserve the image that the nuts were undisturbed. I am sure my parents knew but they never said anything. I am including a picture of my house - it is the white house with green awnings - and a picture of me with Mr. Bear. I still have Mr. Bear and he appeared in the story of the 5 Christmas Bears as one of the ancient ones.

MEMORIES, MEMORIES 1 AND MEMORIES 2

Remember, I said to scroll down at least 3-4 postings to reach all of the memories. I prewrote 3 of them. I have posted the first three as of today (Dec 5).

CHRISTMAS MEMORIES

I tried to pre-write a few of this year's Christmas postings and put them on hold. Unfortunately they are subsequently being published by the date I originally wrote them. Please scroll down several postings to "Memories" for the initial Christmas posting for this year.

VACATION REVIEW

We are back from vacation and getting ready for the holidays. We traveled 15 hours the first day leaving just a mere 5+ hours the second in order to get back in time for the Winter Dance - the kick-off to the holidays. We had sunshine all the way on I-75 from Riveria Beach until the Ohio River. Once we crossed the Ohio into Cincinnati we went from sunshine to cloudy. Amazing. The pictures with the palm trees and ocean and the one of the spanish moss tree were from Hilton Head an the view of the ocean and beach was from Singer Island Fl. While in Florida I shopped at Bloomingdale. They had great clothes and a great sale. I basically bought $580 of merchanise for $88. Not bad. The almost two weeks were a great way to relax.