The House That Built Me

I like that Miranda Lambert song. But also, it's true.

Found these pictures today. So these aren't the actual house that built me, although I found a few of those too.

It changed over the years, but this was a great yard to grow up in.

Lots and lots (and lots and lots) of good memories.  It's been 5 years now since they sold it and sometimes I still miss it. 

Puzzles

Growing up, my family did puzzles. A lot of them through the years. I have great memories of Christmas break from school and we'd do puzzle after puzzle. My mom would just cover the table with a tablecloth and we'd keep them out for weeks. Friends and family would come to visit and just pull up a chair and start doing them with us. The Charles Wysocki ones were my dad's favorite and became a family favorite. Then as I moved out and got older I lost interest. I couldn't sit still for that long and didn't have the patience for all those little pieces. Even so, when my parents cleaned out their house before they moved, I still took about 6 of them for nostalgia's sake. The year my dad died my mom and sister and I did a puzzle for dad at Christmas and that was the first time I'd done one in a long time.


Then right after Christmas, I was at the store with my sister and saw a 500 piece Charles Wysocki puzzle and bought it on a whim. I cleaned off my table and put it together in a couple of hours on New Year's Day. It was fun. Since then, I've bought a couple more and I've had a puzzle out nonstop. I branched out and bought a few that are not Charles Wysocki. My dad would be shocked. :)  I prefer the 500-750 piece range because they fit on my table nicely but maybe one of these days I'll go get down one of the 1000 piece ones I took from home. I've got a few more on my wish list for my birthday. Who would have thought I'd be loving doing puzzles again? Not me, that's for sure.

Some Nostalgia

I recently watched, or listened to in the background, the Netflix series The Toys That Made Us. It was kind of interesting. The first episode was about Star Wars action figures. I was too young to play with them, and my mom didn’t buy us those kinds of toys. My brother is 5 years younger than me so by the time he was playing with that kind of stuff, it wasn’t Star Wars. I do remember when mom finally started buying “boy” toys, my sisters and I took them away from him and played with them because we thought they were cooler. :)

I did, however, play with Barbies. I did not like dolls that looked like babies. I had a few of them growing up but I didn’t like them as much. When I finally got a Cabbage Patch doll, I wasn’t that impressed and I thought her name was stupid: Dana Rana.  I didn’t want to play with a baby, I wanted to play with barbies or paper dolls that were older. It’s kind of fun looking back and thinking about the fun times I had with my barbies. I know I had a Malibu Barbie, Great Shape Barbie, Diva, from Barbie and the Rockers, and my favorite: Peaches & Cream Barbie. Those are the ones I remember. I know we had a lot more because my 2 sisters had them too. One year I got the swimming pool for Christmas and my sister got the RV. Never fail, my brother ended up pulling their heads off and then they didn’t go back on correctly so they had no neck. After that, we would cut their hair and my mom would get mad at us.

Sometimes I wish my mom would have saved some of our toys, not because they would be worth money - we played hard with them, but just for the nostalgia factor. But then I think why? I still have a few of my stuffed animals and they are kept in a box in the back of the closet. It would be the same way with the toys. It’s not like I would play with them. Some years ago I found some of the Ginghams paper dolls that I used to love and bought them and they sat in a box also. I just don’t play with toys any more unless I’m playing with my nieces or nephews and those aren’t the kinds of toys we play with now.

I have a Pinterest board devoted to toys, books, cartoons, etc. of my childhood and it’s fun to look back and remember every once in a while.