jane – i bet Lisa has some great info to pass along to you; i’ll see if she will share here!

lisa – sorry it’s taken a few days to respond – i’m applying for a new position at work, and that coupled with other stuff has really been eating my time.

indeed, no one else got the book, and i’ve already finished it! it has some great information on so many subjects; really good stuff!

The Fort was definitely one of the best parts of my childhood, no question. What an awesome thing to spend our time on! And holy wow, the cold!! Sliding around in your ditch with our moon boots, falling down, freezing our butts off…. do you remember the time we sprayed ourselves down ridiculously badly with bug spray on, um, parts of our bodies that wouldn’t normally get bitten? I remember a lot of BURNING.

The tress are indeed osage orange trees, and they’re still there, thankfully, scraggly as ever. The people who bought our house have made a lot of changes, but most of the trees are all still intact. That makes me happy.

Mom and Dad really did spoil me on Christmas, and even though it was cool then, I don’t think it did me any favors later on. I had a terrible attitude about what the world owed me – truly, spoiled rotten. We surely never did hurt for toys and games, but I think it was just Too Much. Easy to say that now, of course, right? Back then, I had a different view.

I remember the raw hotdogs, and also hearing a train way far away and wondering if it was a tornado coming to kill us. Ah, the perils of camping in the backyard!

I hope you can come up sometime this year, that would be great! If you can’t make it all the way up to MI, maybe we could meet somewhere in the middle. It would be awfully fun to spend a couple of days running around Mason and all the old stomping grounds together, though.

A Skylark? Wow, I have absolutely no memory of that at all! I wonder where that part of my brain went…. although I naturally do remember 10:10, and it crosses my mind now and then when I see any digital clock displaying that time, lol.

Ok… break time is over, back to work!! Love you, lady!

adding that book to my amazon wishlist immediately!

And I also wonder what Dell and Corey are up to these days. LOL!!! Remember 10:10? So goofy, it’s almost painful to write. hehehehe

I loved going to Cedar Point, too!!! It’s funny, back then no ride could scare me or make me sick. Today, tho, I feel like hurling on most tame rides. Elizabeth DOES throw up on rides, and unfortunately for her friends, that does not stop her from going on them!! LMAOO

I remember your Mom screaming for you: AIRRR–ROOOONNNNN and I think we heard her no matter where we were!! hehehe

Oh! And when I was reading your blog last night and the first picture was of the damaged packaging I was like OH NOOOO… nooo! LOL Damn the postal workers! I’m so glad everything was safe inside. It didn’t occur to me to pack the stuff particularly safely INSIDE the envelope! Sheesh.

Gotta jet to work!
XOXOXOX

My first memory of us is in the driveway that night too, but I don’t remember anything BEFORE the endless trips up and down the driveway. My mom or I actually have pictures from that evening!! I remember those two funny little skateboards… nothing like today’s “Tony Hawk” types.

When I think of “US”… It’s predominantly The Fort. Thank god for endless hours of outdoor time… I wish I lived somewhere like that now for my kids. *sigh* Summertime fort. Wintertime fort. It was all good. Just today I was trying to describe what my feet would feel like after being outdoors all day during a Michigan winter. How PAINFUL my feet got to feel, and then the thawing out indoors later was just as painful! Knocking down icicles to eat… “ice skating” on the frozen ditch water near the road… I LOVED doing that. Digging caverns out of the massive snow drifts. I remember my moon boots and those weird ski mask things I had to wear that got soaking wet with snot and THAT was as uncomfortable as anything else was!!

Those weird trees along the road of your house… I don’t remember exactly what those ball-things were, something like “O sage oranges”?? Hmm. LOL Riding our bikes for miles in any direction.

I totally still remember your phone number too. I know yours better than I remember mine. I had to call my mom every day after school and then I’d call you….on that old rotary dial phone. With the CORD of all things. And I remember being jealous of people with long cords because mine was short and I couldn’t really get anywhere with it.

I was so jealous because your parents seemed to buy you EVERYthing we ever wanted. Brand name clothes and makeup and all the good board games and books! I just have two words on that subject: DARK. TOWER.

I can’t hardly image what life would have been like had you NOT lived across the street in the ONE other house. LOL

Oh god, BALLET! I *was* terrible. I remember I met Amy Stewart there before we ever met her thru going to the same school. And my 8th birthday party was at your house? LMAO Why would that be I wonder. Weird.

I will have to find old photo albums too…

Sweeping out the tent in your backyard. Didn’t we eat raw hotdogs that night, wondering if we were going to get sick or die?

I love all the old pics of us together… they are really good ones, considering what kind of camera they must have been taken with! hehe

I wish our 20th high school reunion was THIS summer… last summer was just terrible timing since we were JUST arriving on the mainland from Hawaii, living in the hotel and all…. I just couldn’t get up there.

I promised my Mom I would road trip to Ohio to see her this summer. It will be the first time I’ve ever gone to her house, because I’m a terrible slacker daughter…. Maybe we should start cooking up a plan to extend the trip on up to Michigan, too. I could either leave the kids with Mom and come solo, or bring them along too, and you could use them as manual laborers.