The Happyish Homestead

Friday, February 26, 2010

An Assessment


Today is my parent's anniversary. In honor of that special occasion, I would like to take a moment to reflect on my childhood and my parents.

Most of the kids got spanked, a lot. I was spanked about twice. I was a great kid. Anyway, on one such occasion, we had decided to play kitchen downstairs and the beverage of choice was....Kool-Aid. Brilliant, I know. Well, inevitably that Kool-Aid spilled and we were all lined up for due consequences. This was my first experience of 'physical' punishment. My older brother, I think he knows who he is, told me it wouldn't hurt as much if I laughed. He got way more credit for his intelligence than he deserved. I laughed, I got another swat. Lesson learned.

We worked, probably more than we should have, but that was partly our own fault. At one house we had an apple tree which only produced small, sour apples. They would inevitably fall to the grass and start to rot. The kids' job was to pick up the apples and put them in the garbage. Our take on that task was to chuck the rotten apples over the fence, into the neighbor's yard. My brother's idea was to pick grass and use it to cover the apples. Thus, we created more work for ourselves, but you couldn't tell us that.

Our family had a big lot and a lot of yard and on one occasion my dad thought he would buy a riding lawn mower. We, as kids, thought it was a great idea too, until we were the ones expected to rake and bag the grass clippings. Not such a great idea after all.

Because we had a large family we could support 2 kick ball teams. You know, kick ball, the poor athlete's sport. I remember that being a lot of fun, but what it probably was, was a lot of crying.

We watched Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman religiously.

Sometimes my parents went out, or tried to runaway, I'm not sure which. And we had babysitters. I don't think those babysitters got paid a lot, and whatever it was, it definitely wasn't enough. My older sisters made up irreverent chants about those saints.

In the summer we lived outside and on the trampoline.

One time, my sister got a tick embedded in her head. That was gross.

I fell out of the tree while my mom was gone from home.

Good times, good times.

Happy Anniversary.

Your favorite daughter,
Katie










6 comments:

  1. That was worth the wait! I love the memories. We really should compile a book one of these days!

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  2. What you forgot about the time I locked you all out of the house for the whole day, and you had to sit in the dog pen.

    Or the one time we did try to have a sitter, you guys all decided to ride the garage door as it went up and down.

    I almost forgot the days you blog and about missed this one.

    I love you all

    Love mom

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  3. How did you only get spanked twice! What about all the times we tried to sell our "wonderful" homemade projects for money around the neighborhoods...or snow cones....or riding our bikes to the library and trying to ride home with bags of books on each handlebar...or vacuuming stairs...or cooking everything we had ingredients for in the Betty Crocker Cookbook...boy, you seem to have a poor memory. :) Here's to us!

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  4. I don't feel worthy to leave a comment on this one! You crack me up, and I'm seriously impressed you only got swatted twice. I too, was such an angel. We had a paddle that said "honor they mother and father" on it, and it was cracked down the middle. (but I'm pretty sure it was not cracked while being used on someone's bum...) And I never recall ever being spanked with it...reference above statement about being an angel!

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  5. Ahem....well at least I blog regularly...Emily. Did you miss the part where it says 'I was a great kid'?

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  6. What older brother could be so devious? Who do you mean?

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