And I never got salmonella, either.

It's been a while since I've done a Sincerely 'Fro Me To You post, but I thought I'd try to get back into the swing of my favorite carnivals. :) So this week I bring you the following photo from my archives.

It seems to be a bit of a pattern in my very young childhood for my mother to place me on the counter and take a picture. I really had four siblings but two of them fell off the counter and cracked their heads open. Only the strong survive in this family.

This picture illustrates the reason why my sisters swore I was spoiled rotten growing up. Notice my older sister in the background cleaning the pool while I eat yummy cake batter. I bet she would have liked to lick a beater, but chances are she had no clue beaters were being handed out for licking. The glory was all mine.

I think I can hear Donna Summer singing...

I'm a little late with my Sincerly 'Fro Me To You for today... but I'm going to blame it on this sneaky little virus that seems to be sweeping through my house.

Today we're going to head back about 25 years to 1983. Except this 1983 happened in 2008. At the skating rink.

We actually do have an updated skating rink in our area but our favorite is the same one I used to skate at when I was a kid. And it looks exactly the same. I'm not even exaggerating. It seriously looks EXACTLY the same. It's like a time warp.

This year we had Munchkin's birthday at the rink. She was a little nervous to get on the skates but told me it was because they were brown and that she didn't look good in brown. I sort of don't blame her, really. I'm pretty sure the skates are the same ones I used to skate in when I went to the rink.

Um.. yeah...

But after a little encouragement and some force we got her on the skates.

And eventually, with the help of the wall and the promise of presents later, she started to glide a bit.

Before long she let go of that wall and actually made it around the rink a couple of times.

Then she demanded those presents.

And we ended the day with a little no skate boogie on the rink.

For more Sincerely 'Fro Me To You flashbacks, check out We are THAT Family!

It was the summer of '69

Today's Sincerely 'Fro Me To You post comes to you direct for 1969. I wouldn't make my presence known to my family for another 8 years, but I've heard so many stories about this time in my family's existance that I almost feel like I was there.

It was this year, I've heard, that my mom and dad packed up their two little girls and traveled clear across the country. In the summer of 1969 my dad was a dapper young man of 26 and my mom was a fresh faced girl of 23. Their little girls were my sisters B1 and B2 who were 3 and 2.

They traveled across the country from Florida to California or maybe from somewhere else, I don't know, they were driving a lot, and they decided to stop at the Grand Canyon.

Only the approach to the Grand Canyon was nothing like what we would do today with our GPS sattelites and online driving directions. No, they had a map. A map that my 23 year old mom read while my 26 year old dad drove. In a car with a bad transmission.

So they wound their way up and down roads and found themselves here, at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

When I look at this picture I always think of how fresh my mom looks. How young and beautiful she is. Her smile lights up the picture. I'm amazed how she looks perfect for 1969 and yet still perfect for today.

My dad looks like he stepped out of a Beverly Cleary novel. No, not one of the Ramona books... more like Jean & Johnny. Didn't you all read that as a kid, too? I'm not sure why B1 has no shirt on under her jumper... I can only guess it was because it was probably 102 degrees in their car with no air conditioning in the middle of the desert. I'm also unsure as to why my mom cut their hair so short. I suppose it was for ease of care.

About 13 years later my mom would chop my hair in a similar fashion and I would spend the next 5 years explaining to well meaning strangers that I was a girl because they wouldn't let my pierce my ears. But that's a topic for another entry.

For more Sincerely 'Fro Me To You posts, check out We are THAT Family!

It was the last year I was really a dork... I think...

I haven't completely humiliated myself yet here for Sincerely 'Fro Me To You. I don't have a whole bunch of pictures from my past and the ones I did happen to have ganked from my mom's house before the fire are typically the pictures I liked... so there weren't a whole lot of really embarrassing ones to choose from.

That is until my sister gave me a framed picture of our family from a long time ago. It sure was interesting to look at. It was before The Man, before four of the youngest generation were even thought of, before my other sister's current husband joined our family and when her ex-husband was still a part of it.

However, it wasn't that picture that I'm posting. It was the picture that my sister had put behind that picture in the frame. I don't think she realized it was back there and, honestly, I'm not sure what possessed me to open up the frame and see if there were any other pictures stuffed in there.

But I did. And there it was. The subject of today's Sincerely 'Fro Me To You post.

The year was 1989. The first Bush had just taken office, the Cold War was ending, and Paula Abdul was rocking the charts with Straight Up.

I was in 7th grade.

I remember that Guess tee shirt. It was my favorite and I was proud to wear it on picture day. I'm sure my mom was so proud. Don't you love how I had those sleeves rolled up? I bet my jeans were pegged, too. Most girls had their bangs perfectly curled upward in 1989. I, however, didn't learn how to make my super thin hair do that until 8th grade. It was quite a sore spot for me, actually.

But wait... there's more.

Seeing this picture inspired me to dig out my 7th grade yearbook. I had friends on the yearbook staff in middle school. Friends who I still know to this day. Friends who should have known better than to publish a picture such as this in a book that would be looked at for years to come.

You might wonder what I'm doing there. I'm doing the chicken dance. At an assembly. With my principal. I love how I wrote "stupid picture" across the front of my shirt.

As if I had to point that out.

It is possibly the most humiliating photograph ever taken of me. Definitely the most humiliating photograph taken of me and then distributed to over 300 of my peers.

I'm not sure what inspired me to actually do such a thing.

Oh yes, I do remember. I won a Milli Vanilli tape for doing it.

That's right. Blame It On The Rain, peeps.

For more humiliation, check out We are THAT Family.

And don't forget to vote for October's Little Fish before you go!

Made to be a Granddaddy

Today's Sincerely 'Fro Me To You picture is one that has been taken at least ten times before. My dad, standing at the edge of the Atlantic ocean with one of his grandchildren, just taking it in.

I'm fairly certain my sisters could pull out several shots just like this one with their own kids and every single one of them makes us all smile.

My dad lives for his grandchildren. I'm not sure there has ever been a man who is willing to do more for his grandchildren. He bought a condo on the beach so they would always have memories of the beach with their family. He bought a house in the mountains so they could remember family vacations in such a breath taking location. He takes us on amazing tropical vacations every year just so we can all be together and so his grandchildren have incredible childhood memories.

He would stop at nothing for them.

Goober's birthday is Friday and today I called my Dad to ask him if he had gotten a present for him yet. We'd gone to Toys R' Us today and after we had gotten some things for him from us, I noticed something else I thought Goober would like and wanted to give him an idea if he needed one.

But of course, Dad had already gone shopping. As I listened to my dad read off a list of at least four perfect for Goober things he had purchased (including the very LAST Wall-E remote control robot that I know he's just going to blow his little five year old lid off for), I couldn't help but smile at how much he loves to spoil these kids.

I sure hope they learn to appreciate him some day.

For more great Sincerely 'Fro Me To You posts, check out We are THAT Family!

PS - Whoa, I'm really getting sappy lately, aren't I? Hopefully the wit and sarcasm will return soon...

I think it was called goldenrod...

Today's Sincerely 'Fro Me To You post is brought to you by the letter O for "OMGosh why is that baby on the counter" and the color yellow for "what the heck was the 70s thinking when they painted a kitchen appliance that horrid color"!

There I am with my hair in a kerchief at 2 years old. Why was my hair in a kerchief? I have no idea. Perhaps I wanted to look more like Aunt Jemima? Maybe I was spending the day doing hard housework?

Apparently I was trapped against my will on the counter and quite horrified. Perhaps I was just horrified about those wretched cabinets or maybe that scary mushroom canister. Who knows?

I just wanted to show off those cute little legs.

For more Sincerely 'Fro Me To You posts, check out We Are THAT Family!

Hose water and soggy diapers

It's that time again! Time for the Sincerely 'Fro Me to You bloggy carnival at We Are THAT Family!

This picture was taken when I was heavily pregnant with Munchkin and Bug was about 18 months old. Poor Bug wanted to get in that pool so badly with his uncle and cousins. At this point no one could tend to him in the pool the whole time so he occupied himself with the hose.

He was adorable out there playing with the hose. He'd flail the water around, watch it splash on the patio and in the pool. Occasionally he'd get lucky and hit an actual person and be thrilled with the reaction he'd get. Whenever it would hit him he'd stop and inhale and make this shocked look like he just couldn't believe how cold it was. It was just amazing to watch him discover the world around him and his impact on it.

I'm sure he got to go in the pool shortly after this picture was taken, so no one needs to feel sorry for him. :)

Pregnant Women Make Bad Hostesses

If you read my blog regularly then you're probably tired of hearing about Munchkin's birthday. Too bad. :)

In honor of the Sincerely 'Fro Me to You carnival at We are THAT Family, I was going through some old pictures and found some from her 2nd birthday. This one stopped me short.

What's so shocking about this picture? Only that I'm 8 months pregnant in it and I'm sitting on the FLOOR! I complain about getting up and down off the floor now only 5 years later and not even remotely preggers!

I need to quit my whining and do more yoga.

I can remember this day so well, too. We had been only been living in this house for a little over 3 months and it was August and I was so pregnant and I was hot. I had tried on every maternity outfit I had trying to look decent for the party without being too overdressed and in the end I just settled on this pink Motherhood top that covered that ugly cloth maternity panel in my ugly shorts. In the end no one cared and we all walked around barefoot and casual and I was *so* glad.

I remember Munchkin was fussy the whole day and I was heavy and tired and I just couldn't wait to get everyone out of my house. There were kids running around every where and people asking me how I was feeling constantly and so many hands on my belly I wanted to scream.

I think that face about sums up my feelings for the day. In fact, I think that couch is where I was when I broke into hormonal pregnant tears after everyone had left.

She still hasn't shaken that attitude problem.

The Queen of Filters

I'm a little late posting today... but I did manage to get Goober enrolled in Pre-K so we're all good. :) Priorities, my friends.

Today is Thursday and I'm happy to join in on the Sincerely 'Fro Me To You Carnival hosted over at We Are That Family.

Today's story is about the first time I decided I would make it on my own. I had recently withdrawn myself from classes at the University of Florida because I had pretty much screwed up and wanted to save my GPA. I didn't, however, want to tell my poor father who had paid a lot of money for me to go to college that I had withdrawn. I tried to hide it for a while, but alas, I was discovered and dad pretty much told me to get a job and take care of myself or come home and go to the community college.

Being that I was a stubborn brat and wanted to prove I could make it on my own, I decided to get a job. I scanned the newspaper for job openings until I found the right ad. It read something like this:

$750 GUARANTEED EVERY 2 WEEKS!

Which I interpreted as $1500 a month all for me!? I'll be RICH and be able to pay my $400 rent and bills and have plenty of money for BEER!

So I called the number and went for my interview. The interview was sort of odd. It wasn't just me and an interviewer, it was an interviewer and about 15 other hungry ex-students who also thought $1500 a month would be sweet cash.

The interviewer talked a lot about how much money we could make and how we would even be able to make MORE than $1500 and how we were going to be helping people. I swear butterflies and rainbows began shooting out of his mouth and all 15 of us ate it up.

After the interview I received the call back that I had gotten the job. Rock on! I'm rich!

I was to report to work the following Monday at 8 AM.

I arrived promptly, still really having NO CLUE what it was I was going to be doing at my new job. Heck, I didn't really care, I was going to be RICH and HELP PEOPLE!

After a few days of "training" I learned that this product, this amazing product, could do everything. It could filter the air better than any air filtration product on the market, better than the legendary HEPA we had all heard about. It could take smells out of the air and put yummy smells back in, it could clean the floor, it could clean the drapes, it could clean the chairs. It could suck dust mites right out of my pillow! Holy jack! I totally needed this thing!

The 8 or so of us in the training class kept saying to our trainer, "It's a vacuum cleaner, right?"

"No! Vacuum Cleaners are DIRTY, NASTY, GERM INFESTED things. This is a Filter Queen home purifying system!"

And we all commenced with our brainwashing. By the end of the week I could have sold my Filter Queen to a homeless man on the side of the road (if he could qualify for financing) because I was so darned excited about the thing it was incredible.

It was just before Christmas and our boss told us it was to be our "Friends and Family Weekend." We were to take the Filter Queen home and practice on our friends and family. We were to show them our demonstration, the one we had spent the whole week learning, and just practice so when we went out into the field we'd be pros.

My poor father, who has supported me in everything I've ever done even when he disagrees with me, shelled out about $1500 for the Filter Queen. Both of my sisters became absolutely horrified at the prospect of dust mites in their houses that one of them borrowed the thing for a couple of hours to clean every surface in her house she could manage and the other one called up a week later to buy one. She had been having dreams of dust mites smothering her in her sleep.

Back in Gainesville I actually proved to be quite a good Filter Queen salesperson. I was selling those suckers like hot cakes, earning little gold pins proclaiming me sales person of the month and getting mentioned at our quarterly conventions. Those Filter Queen people sure knew how to throw a party, too. We went to New Orleans and Panama City and there was much drinking and partying to be had. Never mind that I wasn't actually legal to drink in New Orleans... I guess they don't care much about age on Bourbon Street.

Anyhow... at some point I just stopped being so enthusiastic about it. I actually started referring to it as a (the horror!) vacuum cleaner. It was about then that I just couldn't sell them anymore. I'd go to people's houses and I'd show them my demonstration... but my heart just wasn't in it. And so is the way with sales, when you stop selling, you stop making money.

It wasn't too long before I called my dad and asked if I could come home. He was more than happy to have me back.

Now, over 10 years later that Filter Queen that my dad paid so much cash for sits in my house and is used regularly. My mom never really liked it. :) Thanks Dad!

I was a horse crazy adolescent girl

*Pictures for this post were taken directly out of my teenage scrapbook, hence the look. And OMGOSH you have to love the way I labeled them. I used the word "spiff"... seriously, why does no one use that word? Ah, to be 15 again.*

It all began when my friend, Heather, moved into our neighborhood. She was horse crazy. I think one of the reasons her parents even chose to move into our neighborhood was because of the zoning that allowed people to have horses. We must have been in about the 5th grade when Heather's parents bought her a horse. His name was Crockett and we loved him.

Crockett was a Quarter Horse and he let us abuse him however we pleased. We rode him all over the neighborhood (which was a very large and rural place), through lakes, across canals, over haphazard overturned logs in the woods he would jump with both of us on his back. Crockett was perfect.

It wasn't too long, though, before one horse and two girls didn't seem to make much sense anymore. So Heather and I looked for another option. That's when I started shoveling poo. Down the street was a large barn of Arabians owned by a wonderful lady named Pam. Heather took lessons there and Pam let me ride her trusty lesson horse, Rama, as long as I took good care of her and mucked stalls a bit. Thinking back, Pam was a saint to let me do it. If I could find her right now I'd write her a letter of thanks.

I wish I had a picture of Rama, but I don't. She wasn't beautiful, though she may have been when she was younger. She was an old chestnut mare who was patient and kind to me. She could be stubborn, but she was smarter than the average mule and kept me out of trouble. It was on Rama that I took my first lesson, paid for out of the kindness of Pam's heart.

After I had advanced a bit, Pam decided I needed an actual horse to show. That was when I started riding Butch.

The two of us never really got along. He had no respect for me and I didn't care for him much either, but we were forced to deal with each other. Pam insisted I ride in a show and Rama just wouldn't do. So Butch and I dealt with each other.

Here we are at the show. It was a Dressage Show. Butch and I entered the ring and started our routine... but then I'm not sure what happened. I was nervous, he hated me, he jumped out of the ring.

I was so mad I couldn't see straight. I made him jump back INTO the ring and I finished our routine. Pam said she'd never seen me ride so well as when I was mad at that stupid horse. Needless to say I didn't win the blue ribbon.

After that show I started riding Lindo. She was a beautiful black Paso Fino and she and I had a great time together. There was no pressure. The only horse shows I entered with Lindo were fun. She was gaited so she didn't bounce and we won every Halloween fun kid show where we had to balance an egg on a spoon or hold as much water in a cup as possible. She liked to run and I liked to let her run as fast as she wanted to go until sand started to blind my eyes and I'd have to nestle my head down close to her neck to block it. She could fly and I loved her.

I guess it was when I started to become interested in boys... or when boys became interested in me... I'm not sure. I started going to the barn less and less and finally I just stopped altogether. It's one of my biggest regrets. I miss the feeling of becoming one with that animal. I miss Lindo and how I could let her do whatever she wanted, go where she wanted to go, and just see where I ended up.

Some day I'll ride again. :)

For more Sincerely 'Fro Me To You posts, check out We are THAT Family.

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And that was when the geek in me emerged...

When I was a kid it seemed like everyone I knew got a computer. I wanted one so bad I couldn't contain myself. From about the sixth grade every birthday and every Christmas when they asked me what I wanted I answered simply that I wanted a computer. In eighth grade they bought me a typewriter.

Admittedly, it was a cool typewriter...

All of my friends had Commodore 64s or fancy new IBMs. They were playing Paper Boy and Kings Quest. I had a typewriter.

Finally my Junior year of high school, Christmas of 1993, my dad broke down and bought a computer for the family. It was beautiful. I caressed its putty colored exterior as we plugged in all of the components. Windows 3.1 sprung to life and it - was - magnificent.

I knew, I just *knew* I could use that thing to communicate with other people. I knew it had a modem. A 2400 baud one, to be exact. I called the only person I knew who had another computer with a modem who would know what to do... my best friend, Jenny.

She didn't really know what to do, either, at first. We dialed into each other's computers and typed away at each other... but we knew there could be more.

I don't know who discovered it first, but finally we found Screaming In Digital (SID). SID was a BBS back in the days before the World Wide Web. You could dial up and go into essentially a chat room where up to 6 people could be logged in at one time. I was instantly hooked.

I tied up our phone line constantly. I dreamed that my parents might get another phone line installed so I could be on 24/7. When SID was full, I had to let the computer auto-redial until someone disconnected and I would hastily run from across the house to the computer at the familiar sound of the modem connecting.

When someone called my house I was disconnected and had to start the process all over again. It was heart breaking.

Ever since that wonderful Christmas in 1993 I have all but lived at the computer. Going from SID, to my college AOL account, and finally venturing out on my own into the World Wide Web.

I still live here on the Internet, glad you've stopped by to visit. :)

To see more from the Sincerely 'Fro Me To You carnival, check out We are THAT Family!

Some Things Never Change

This is me and my dad circa 1980. This photo is capturing perhaps my happiest childhood memory - being loved and adored by the man in my life. To say I was Daddy's Little Girl is an understatement. He was my savior, my hero, the man who could do anything. Moments like these were the cherry on top of my carefree 3 year old day.

As a selfish 3 year old back then I really didn't think much of how my dad felt about those moments. He was tired, he had worked a long day, he probably wanted to get out of that collared button down shirt. Who would think he'd want a kid to pounce on him the moment he got through the door?

He did. These moments weren't just the highlight of my day, they were the highlight of his, too. After all the stress he felt all day building a business, when he got home this was just where he wanted to be.

Things haven't changed much, either.

This is my first entry for the Sincerely 'Fro Me To You blog carnival held over at We Are That Family.