I went to bed last night feeling a little under the weather. I am now sitting in bed with my lap top and nothing to say but I have a day that needs words for the challenge I set before myself.

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So I will start with some fun stories. I grew up with a go-cart and a three wheeler so the smell of any ATV makes me pretty happy. We had land that we could ride the 3 wheeler on but had rules we had to follow.

Obviously.

One of them was no horse playing. I remember racing against a sibling and flying around a tree…..a pine tree…..with tons of pine straw on the ground. I remember the ATV falling on its side and landing on my leg. I got up so fast, shocked that I could get up and hadn’t broken anything, and with the super natural strength of a child who was about to get a butt whooping, I righted the 3 wheeler back up and went on my way with a large bruise to show later.  I slowed down and learned my lesson about being careful. I am not sure if I told anyone sooo mom and dad, if you read this, I am sorry. You were right.

That was a lesson that I quickly knew my parents were right. This next story though took many years to learn. It was not until I became a mother myself that I understood why my mom was so furious. Here is the visual so you can be there with me about 25 years ago. We lived out in the country and on a dead end road. It was awesome. When my twin and I were about 15 or 16 a new boy moved in up the road. He was about 9 or 10, the age of my brother, and boy was he a brat. One day they must of talked of fighting so together with the help of our friends we encouraged a fight. Melinda and I drew a huge square on the road with a rock and had the two boys stand in the designated area. The fighting could begin. I am not sure how much time passed and I am pretty sure no actual punches were made before my mother came out side. She was so upset that we allowed and even encouraged our baby brother to fight someone. We could not for the life of us understand why she was so mad. Once I had kids I was like -Oh Heck ya, my kids would have been grounded for life had they allowed and encouraged their siblings to get in a fight. Thank you mom for not grounded us for life and allowing us to get out and meet our husbands and get married. You could say we owe ya for that. (edited to add my brother’s comment that he said he did win and remembers kicking him. lol)

I could go on and on with stories of my childhood, like the time Melinda, myself, and Amber our cousin wrote all over Amber’s sister, Rachel, with permanent marker because she said it was fine. We all know the outcome of that story. It was not fine. I could also tell of the time we went swimming in Fish River behind our house and saw HUGE catfish or how every Christmas Eve when coming home our parents said the the red light high up on a tower was Rudolph’s nose and we better get in bed asap..I could tell so many more stories but what will I write about next week when I sit at my lap top with nothing to say.

Here are a couple pictures of my three kids that are home in this season and not in college with the other two. Will they remember the time they paused their school day to go play in the rain or will they tell of how snakes and lizards lived under the black matt in the back yard and Kori loved to catch them? Will they remember how the squirrels loved my garden and would bury their food in there much to my irritation? I had an amazing childhood and there are so many things I wanted to recreate for my kids but I can look back now and see that they are making their own memories and that some of them they will try to recreate for their own children.