Piggy Tales – Changes at home

This is the ninth in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
This week is when I was 12.
Around this time, some significant changes occurred in my home life. My mom had started seeing another woman, who then left her husband for my mom. She moved in with us, bringing her three kids. So then we were a family of 8; five kids and three adults. Trisha had partial custody of her kids for the next many years, so we tended to do lots of fun things when they were with us (one of those Wednesday after school and every other weekend type arrangements).

Here is all 8 of us: Ashley, Kelby (the only boy), and Firen
Trisha, my mom Willy, and my dad Larry
Me and my sister Robin

Just the kids and of course our dogs (Borzois aka Russian Wolfhounds)

Man, I wish my hair was still that curly!

~S

Piggy Tales – Halloween

This is the eighth in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
This post is a week late because I just barely survived July let alone was able to blog about anything.
The topic for the week is age 11.
It’s a story about Colorado and something classic to my childhood. If you have spent any Halloweens in Colorado, you know that you plan your costume (or your children’s) to be able to go over a snow suit or be comfortable in 70 degree weather because you just don’t know what it’s going to be like until that day. Another year, there was about 2 feet of snow on the ground, yet my sister and I still dragged my dad out to get our candy. People were dumping their entire stash in our bags since we were just about the only ones out.
But that’s not really where I was going with this post. This year was the year we were Star Trek: The Next Generation characters for Halloween.

From left: Trisha (my mom’s partner), Heather (a neighbor), me, my sister Robin, Chris (Heather’s brother), and my (step)sister Ashley.
As any trekkie will be able to tell you, I was a science officer because of the blue. You can’t really tell in this picture, but I was also dressed as a bajoran science officer. Not that any of that means anything to a non-trekkie, but this is about me, right? :)
We had a blast with our costumes! Looking back, I’m sure glad that I didn’t have to make them, but I did help with as much as I could as an 11-year-old. Trisha made them all. As a mom now, I wonder how long that whole thing took and when I’ll get roped into doing something similar.
We happened to get great weather that year, which was good because these costumes did not lend themselves to additional layers. We also went to a big halloween party that year with live music and door prizes. I remember because we won second place with our matching costumes.
Ah, it brings back memories…
~S

Piggy Tales – Um, yea.

This is the seventh in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
This week is when I was 10 years old.
I’m seriously drawing a blank…This is what I get for not thinking about it earlier :/
Here’s the only picture I could easily find of me this year
This is me holding my 2-year-old soon-to-be step sister with our brother in the background. Don’t you just love my outfit? Never had much fashion sense, at least it mostly matches :)
This was the year my mom started seeing more of a close friend of hers whom she had known for several years and who would later become my second mommy. More on that in later posts…
~S

Piggy Tales - Homeschooling

This is the sixth in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
My excuse for the late posting this week is that I was on a wonderful anniversary trip with my husband and just didn’t get the post scheduled like I wanted to.
This week is about when I was nine.
So, I’ve written before about how I was homeschooled and loved it, but here’s a few more reasons why.
This is at the Children’s Museum in Denver (I think) with some good friends. One thing that was always nice with homeschooling is that it didn’t really matter how old your friends were. This girl is a year younger than me, and a year older than my sister. She’s a twin so it was great for the four of us girls to get together, which we did very frequently.

I can’t find the picture right now, darn it, but there’s a picture of a whole group of us on a field trip to a museum in Denver. {Hooray! I found it!!}
We did many such trips, either just our family or with a group of homeschoolers. One day, we went to several different small museums related to Colorado’s history. Another day, we went to several different religious buildings such as a mosque, a Jewish temple, and a cathedral, all in Denver.
I loved being able to do my school work where ever and whenever I wanted to. My mom worked in Boulder (about an hour away) one day a week, and usually my sister and I would go to my grandma’s house all day. We would do our school work, but then when we were done, we got to do other fun things like play restaurant with real food or have a tea party for 20 of our “favorite” stuffed animals.
Nothing else specific is coming to mind about this year, so I’m calling it a night :)
~S

Piggy Tales – Water World

This is the fifth in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.

This week, the story is about when I was 8.

When I was 8, we started a birthday tradition for me that continued at least until I got married. My birthday is in August, the perfect time to go to the water park!

If you were in Colorado in the 80’s, this was about the only choice for a water park. I have lots and lots of fond memories from going.

Here is me at age 8 with my sister and three friends. I’m the only one actually looking at the camera. We always brought along several friends since it was my birthday party. We would bring our lunch and play aaaallllllll day. My favorite part as a kid was the lazy river or the River of the Lost Pharaohs, a four-person tube ride that went in and out of tunnels and had animatronics people throughout.

The wait was sometimes over an hour for a three minute ride, but we felt like it was worth it! (The video doesn’t have sound and isn’t the greatest, but you get the idea)

It’s fun to go there now because I remember when most of the attractions were built or remodeled or remember going on them a bazillion times as a kid.  We’ve taken Kahlen once, when she was 18 months, and she *loved* it! We’re going to try to go every year, but with new baby last summer and crazy busyness this summer, we’ll just have to see how that goes.

~S

Piggy Tales – Road Trip anyone?

This is the fourth in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
This week, the topic is age 7. I really struggled with coming up with something, hence the late night post :)

Me, my mom, and my sister

It wasn’t that things weren’t happening, I’m sure, I just have very few distinct memories from this year.

I do know that around this time my sister and I started taking long road trips with my paternal grandparents. Every year, they would drive from Colorado to Wisconsin to visit relatives, and sometimes they would take us with them.

My sister and I had a great time. We had lots of adventures along the way. My grandpa is retired Air Force, so we would generally stay on base on the way there. I remember every time we went with them, they would buy us a new game to play in the car. Remember those little travel versions of Connect 4, Guess Who, and so on? I think we owned all of them eventually.

We would stop for lunch at a rest stop every day and break out the picnic things. It always seemed like a real meal because we had food that required a plate and utensils, not just sandwiches (although we had sandwiches too). We would stop for a good long time before continuing on our journey. I think that’s what made it successful to travel with us short people, I’m gonna have to remember that!

~S

Piggy Tales – First Grade in New Jersey

This is the third in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
This week, the topic is first grade. That’s my sister, my dad, and I on the roof of our duplex in New Jersey.

When I was in first grade, we moved to New Jersey. We originally moved out there for my dad’s job, but we didn’t know anyone there or like it much either. My dad’s job wasn’t all that my parents had hoped for, so we weren’t there for long. More on that later.

My mom had been homeschooling my sister and I until we moved there. She ended up getting a job and decided to send me to public school. I lasted all of 6 weeks before I was begging to be back at home.

I distinctly remember being extremely bored and feeling like I knew all the things they were going over. I remember that they put me in second grade reading and I had to walk down the hall by myself once a day to the 2nd grade classroom. Then I would proceed to get in trouble nearly every day because I read the entire page we were on before the kid who was reading aloud was even half finished. I wasn’t trying to be rude, I just was a fast reader. The 2nd grade teacher would actually watch my eyes to see if I was staying with the reader. Ugh.

I learned later that they wanted to put me in second grade math and second grade spelling, but were unwilling to move me up to second grade. Seriously? What else is there in 1st grade?

So after six short weeks in the public school system in Mount Holly, New Jersey, it was back to homeschooling with me, hooray! Thanks, mom :)

We lived in New Jersey for 14 months, and moved back to Colorado, into the same house even! It so happened that the people who were renting the house we were living in were just moving out, so we moved back into the same spot, which my parents later purchased. We did visit several fun places while we were there, like the George Franklin Museum, Please Touch Me Museum, Independence Hall, and several other places in Philadelphia, but we were sure glad to be back in Colorado. I can’t really imagine living anywhere else. Visiting is nice, but you just can’t beat Colorado!Not the best picture, but it was the best I could find right now. It was taken 6 years ago with a film camera about 15 minutes from where I now live. 

~S

Piggy Tales – A sister for me

This is the second in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
This week, the topic is through age 5 or so. After thinking about all the things I could post about, I decided to post about my sister. She is 27 months younger than I am. She lives too far away now, so I only get to see her once or twice a year :(
This is me right before my sister was born. My parents took a road trip from Colorado to California to see relatives and go to Disneyland. My mom was 8 months pregnant, so she couldn’t ride very many rides. I don’t think they would even let her on Dumbo the Flying Elephant (something about the straps not fitting right, sheesh).
After having another successful home birth, my sister entered the world on November 3, 1983. I was there during her birth, although I don’t remember it. Here’s one of the first pictures taken of the happy family of four (my mom is on the other side of the tub, in there with us too)
We had a great time together. Yes, we fought like sisters do, but not as much as some. We never went through long phases of not liking each other, even as teenagers or adults.
My sister wasn’t happy unless she was sleeping with me, especially as a baby. I slept in her crib with her until she was old enough to sleep in a bed, then we slept in a waterbed together, probably until we were about 9 and 7.

Christmas 1984. We liked this picture so much, we reenacted it  18 years later.
Thinking about my relationship with my sister has made me glad that my kids are about the same age apart. They have the potential to be such good friends, which I can already see developing.
See you next week for the next Piggy Tale!
~S

Piggy Tales – My birth

This is the first in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to talk about this post with my mom before I wrote it, so there may be some revision later on :) I know the basic outline of the story, though, so here goes:

It was hot in August the summer I was born. My parents had been married for a year and a half, having gotten married on Valentine’s day, 1980. In their small tiny house in Loveland, they had a fan, but little else to keep it cool. Many days would find my mom walking the aisles of the nearby King Soopers just to be somewhere that had air conditioning.

Having grown up not knowing anything about nutrition, my mom battled hypertension and toxemia during the entire pregnancy, something that she completely overcame with a better diet with her second child, my sister.

When she went into labor on August 8th, everything was ready for me to come out, except me. The midwife came over and hung out as midwives are good at doing. They took several trips to said grocery store during that day and the next to get some relief from the heat. I was a stubborn little one and was comfy where I was, thankyouverymuch.

After 42 hours of labor, I finally came. My mom hemorrhaged, which we learned is genetic and happens at the first birth of all the women in my matrilineal line (happened to my grandmother, my mom, my aunt, and me at least). The decision was made to stay home and just take care of it there. Mom and dad were tired, but happy that I was a part of their family now.

I was a healthy little girl at 7 pounds, 14 ounces and 21”. My parents were the first ones to give the grandparents a grandchild, so both sets of grandparents were thrilled as well.

I found a photo album of me from the time I was born until the time my sister was born 2 and a bit years later at my paternal grandmother’s house, so here are a few pictures of my first month:

Two weeks old

My mom, me, and my dad when I was 4 days old

My dad's parents and me when I was 16 days old

(As a side note, my name didn’t come from anywhere spectacular. My parents both read a fiction book and liked the name, but not the character, so it was decided)

There you have it, my knowledge of my entrance into the world. Next week, the topic is birth-age 5. See you then!

~S