Speaking of Blasts from the Past...

I think our recent homecoming theme threw me into a nostalgic mood. I've been going through pictures and scanning them into the future. All kinds of interesting things have surfaced. I particularly enjoy looking at the expressions of faces that were too small to see before. For instance, here's a couple of pictures that show how my children really felt about hiking...one of our favorite family past-times.

 And here are a few that demonstrate what I'm sure my neighbors knew all along--they kept the whole street lively.

They played a game in the evenings called "kidville" Carina, my oldest, was the script-writer and manager, and there was no lack of kids to be the players. The swing set was sometimes a pirate ship, sometimes a star ship.

The street was not usually busy with cars, particularly when my children set up road blocks on both ends so they could practice bike jumping in the middle.

No. They weren't dare-devils; they had just put in a lot of hours practicing on an old balance beam we had bought from the gym, so when we visited other places they were always finding rails to walk.

My daughter, Carina, once again, used her camera and some black and white film to capture the neighborhood...a kind of pre-facebook gallery of attitude poses. There would have been more pictures, but the camera got left out in the mud. Years later, I found an undeveloped roll and took it in to discover these.

Here's Elijah and a neighbor who lived at our house most days. And shy little Claye, in an oddly futuristic French art post. I'm sure we would have had a slide show with narrative if power point had been invented.

 Rain puddles were the best. Thankfully, our street and ditches filled up after every little shower.