THINGS I HAVE A HARD TIME LETTING GO OF

The inside edge of the door where we measured the growth of our kids. Looks like Marks height was last recorded in July of 1994. That was Johnny's height in December of December 1989. Wow!!! That's thirty one years.

We have a shelf in the kitchen with family keepsakes. The yellow Ball jar belonged to John's uncle, the platter on the right belonged to my grand mother (Mama Hale), the syrup pitcher was found under Bruce's house when it was remodeled years ago. It must have belonged to the Lewis' that lived there when I was little and the Micky Mouse was a toy that belonged to my brother Mark ( who died when he was four).

The canister set in the middle of the shelf was brought over when John's great grand parents came here from Germany back in the 1800's

Now this is probably one of the strangest things I hold on to. This plant was given to Sarah by her softball team when my dad died 18 years ago. Over the years I would decide to throw it away, but would say to myself, " I'll water it one more time". As you can see it is in pitiful shape, but not dead yet. I can't bring myself to toss it out.

In looking around the house, I found some pretty weird stuff, like this cut out of a turtle. Sarah was the turtle and Nichole her best friend was the frog. If you can see there are #99 stickers on it. That was the year they graduated from High School and I'm pretty sure they created this lovely master piece earlier on.

Now these are a couple of things that I am not sentimental about, but every time I have started to get rid of them, one of the girls will say, "Oh mother don't throw those out, they have been there forever" and then remind me that I threw out the little boy sports pictures that hung in the boys room. So here they hang waiting for some of the kids to come home and claim them.....

This picture is hard to see, but it says May 20Th 1984. Oh my goodness, that's 27 years. Now I have painted this bedroom several times since then, but I have never been able to roll that roller brush over the Unicorns that Sondra painted on the inside closet door.

This is one of the Unicorns that she drew. She would have been 12 or 13 at the time.



Now the picture below is my pride and joy. I was 8 months pregnant with Mark at the time. Johnny, Monica and Sondra were absolutely driving me nuts that day. I went into the bedroom to ask them to settle down , and they had made the most god awful mess I had ever seen. I really lost it, but decided I had better calm down before trying to discipline them. I stomped out of the bedroom into the hall took my foot and kicked the door. I popped that big old hole in it and then I had to worry about trying to explain to John when he came home. So my punishment has been that every time I walk down the hall I have to remember that I need to control my temper. One of these days we plan to take it down and see what all the kids and grand kids have stuck down in the hole in the door over the years.

And last but not least is my Bitchalittle sign. This has hung in my kitchen, by the stove for probably the last 40 years. I have decided a number of times to take it down and throw it out but it still hangs there. This says a lot about me and my life and how I have handled things over the last 65 years. Enjoy life a lot and BITCHALITTLE.