Summer Lovin'

Well, hey there!  Long time no see!  We have been so busy that I just haven't had a moment to sit down and compile my creative juices into any form of blog post.  From now until September the weekends have booked up as well, so posts may be few and far between until then.

Let's see...so what have we been up to?

Fast Facts Friday

It's only been a few short weeks since I last posted, but I feel like so much has been crammed into that time frame that it would be hard to post about it all in detail so I'm condensing into a "Fast Facts" style post.  Many other bloggers I follow use this format and I think it will be helpful for me this go around.

1. My bad luck has continued.  My car was hit at work.  I picked it up yesterday from being repaired.  In the meantime I had been driving around a bright orange Dodge Dart with all the bells and whistles.  I will miss the gas mileage, the bluetooth, and satellite radio but it's nice to have my Edge back.

   

   2013 Dodge Dart

Pass the Ketchup

Ok, I am in serious need of catching everyone up on the past week of activities which of course flew by in a blink of an eye.  I don't know where the time went, but it went so quickly I had no time to blog.

At any rate, we had a wonderful July 4th holiday surrounded by friends and family.  Even though it was a week night we threw together a bbq.  The local fireworks are viewable from our front lawn so most of our guests stayed late to enjoy them.  This year we had plenty of activities planned:  wiffle ball, washers, ladder ball, horseshoes, and of course the pool.  I also tried out a new recipe for Raspberry Rhubarb Upside Down Cake which was out of this world.

Growing Up...Country

When I was twelve my parents thought it'd be a great idea to move my sister and I off Long Island and into Upstate New York.  I was mortified.  Our block had just been re-paved which meant a summer of premium rollerblading and bike riding.  Well, this was not to be.  Moving Upstate meant adjusting to "blue stone" pavement (aka rocks stuck in tar) and friends who lived miles away as opposed to just a few houses down.  Not to mention I was being separated from my cousins who were more like siblings to me.  There were all the promises of visiting often, however the reality was once a year for a weekend at most.  Our new school was a fraction of the size of the school districts we'd attended.  Our class size went from 500 to 32.   I remember that my upstate NY cousin Nate was excited that a new girl was coming to the school because that meant a new prospect to date in the future.  Too bad it was me.  Boy was he disappointed.  With a class size of 32, the pickings were slim.  Talk about an adjustment.   With summer quickly approaching I reflect back on this drastic change in my life and the stark contrasts between summers on Long Island and in Upstate New York.

War Heads

Lately there have been a lot of "You know you're from <<insert home town here>> when..." postings on Facebook.  I particularly like the "Long-guy-land" ones, well, because I am originally from Long Island.  I do notice all of these posts have commonalities though: respecting your elders, playing outside, street lights for curfew, etc.  It does make me a little sad to think what the youth of today will remember from their childhoods.  Playing indoors all summer on the PS3, family road trips that involved Hannah Montana on DVD as opposed to playing "I Spy," family reunions where instead of playing volleyball and socializing they  were lost in their own little world playing Nintendo DS... it's sad, really.  

In reminiscing on my childhood there are major things that stand out.  Yes, we had a Nintendo but there were TV time limits and if it was daylight and not raining Mom forced us to play outside.  I had to wear a watch (not a digital one) to make sure to check back in at the house every half hour or so.  I wore out the tires on my ten-speed (boy was I cool with my gray and pink Huffy ten-speed) and my cousins and the local kids played man-hunt, H-O-R-S-E, cops and robbers, stick ball, touch football, and anything else we could come up with until we had to go home for dinner.  We loved the ice cream truck (I think Italian Ices were like $0.50 back then) and War Heads were the candy of choice.

Does anyone remember War Heads? Lemon was my favorite. We used to trade them on the bus like currency.  We would double-dog dare each other to try to eat more than one at a time and not make a face. We would check out each others tongues to see if there was any burn marks because we couldn't believe such a lethal tasting hard candy didn't in fact do so.  For a while there, War Heads were more popular than Bubble Tape bubblegum.  Can you believe these two candies are practically considered antique?  Seriously, when I searched Bubble Tape the first site it was listed on was "www.oldtimecandy.com."  Insane.  When I think of "old time candy" I think of root beer barrels, rock candy on a stick, and shoe string licorice.  What has the world come to??

For "old time's sake" leave me a comment and let me know what you remember from your childhood and what was so great about it.