Yippiiii!

I'm almost up to date with the dreaded To Do List! At the moment I have the tumble dryer squealing like a stuck pig downstairs drying some t-shirts I just washed. Don't ask me why it squeals. Apparently it does so in the start, or so the former owners told us, but it seems to work since I tested to dry my jacket in it when I was in a hurry the other day. I would prefer it not to squeal of course but what do you do? If I get someone to have a look at it and they charge you for shaking their head saying I might as well by a new one I will stick to the squealing thank you very much! I've done two loads of washing, cleaned the fire stove out and tested it with a small twig of wood and plenty of paper. It works, part from that the stick didn't burn, still too wet! I've also changed knobs on my desk since the other ones had one broken when we moved and it already had two odd ones in replacing others that broke.

Oh bliss, pig has gone asleep! Or at least the squealing has stopped even though it is still drying. I can now understand why she said they didn't use it much...

It has been very heavy frost here in the last couple of days so everything is looking quite limp and almost all the leaves has dropped. We did tidy most of the dead summer flowers away on Monday and dug over the flower borders, all prepared now for next years planting season. We also had the car tires changed to studded winter ones on Wednesday. Good thing we did because it was quite slippery this morning when I drove to work in heavy fog even though it still was -6 so just about everything got a nice coating of ice. Including the road. But I took it easy and no one was really in a rush, quite sensible as well since you could just see about 8-10 meters ahead of you and sometimes it just fogged in completely so you crawled at around 30km/h. But as soon as the lake Runn freezes we will be rid of this cold wet fog and by the looks of things it shouldn't be long now.

James' mum should stop reading here and hop to the next paragraph.




They are predicting the coldest winter for decades due to the Atlantic being warmer then usual and not sending the warmer westerly winds this way so we are to put up with the Siberian Express earlier and for longer and they are already scaring people that there wont be enough electricity around. If they do cut the power I want my tax money back! I am not paying tax for the pleasure of freezing my butt off!

I hope it snows soon. I just love winter and snow and now we'll have a whole yard to play in when it does start to snow. James has threatened to build us an igloo and an army of snowmen parading the backyard. Well I don't mind, I'm sure I will indulge in a few snow lanterns of my own and we are thinking of putting some lights up in the trees for Christmas. I have a little idea of having a mini Christmas tree on the porch dressed in my colorful mini lights and putting up nice white lights around the bushes where all the bird feeders are hanging. Also got to invest in a good snow shovel or two, one bigger and one smaller.

But before all that I have to start finishing my hobby room. The wallpaper has arrived and I don't know what it is keeping me from doing the plastering in there and sanding it down all ready for the paper to go on the wall. I just don't have the energy for it at the moment. Or something...

Tadaaa!

New luscious guest room completed this morning with the curtains going up and the sunscreen in place. It took all in all 4 days to do it, 2 days hanging wallpaper and 2 days for the preparations. But now it looks very nice and very...white!

This is the result for all the hard work though and I must say I am pretty pleased with myself for being able to do it mostly myself with hints and tips from Lotta and mum.

I've had a change of heart...

It is quite a radical one as well. From a nice rusty red to pale white and beige floral for a feature wall and striped one to match. But I think we'll like it for longer then the red one. I wasn't so sure when I saw the red one in the shop and I got lots of help from the staff at Flugger Färrg with different suggestions to whatIi could have instead. In the endIichickenedd out and took the sample book with me back home to see what James thought of the different options before deciding. He actually agreed with me straight away on my favorite one butIi showed him some of the other options.

This is what we are having. Went and bought it this afternoon plus everything else needed so we might start doing the room tomorrow. Depending on the weather. If it is nice we are going to help mum turn her allotment for winter and cut the grass since it is our turn in the rota. If it is pissy and rainy weather as predicted this morning in the news Lotta will be coming over to help us out with the wallpapering. Keep your fingers crossed about it being rainy! Want to get started now when we have decided.

Early bird and such..

It is still pitch black outside, James has gone off to work and I am still perky as anything! It is very weird getting up at 4 in the morning voluntarily! Don't ask me why but I just woke up when James did and thought, hmm cant be bothered to try to get to sleep again. I'm sure I will suffer later on today but at the moment I am ready to do anything. Cant really go out in the garden just yet though since I wont see a thing and I think the neighbor's will think me slightly mad if I wander around with a flashlight while weeding out summer plants and stuff.

We have plastered and prepared the guest room for wallpapering this week. Lotta came over to help me do it on Wednesday and I finished it off yesterday by sanding it down so it is all nice and smooth now. I am going to go and order the wallpaper today and I might have a change of heart in what wallpaper to use. We were thinking of having a rusty red with a medallion pattern in a deeper red but I am not sure at the moment. Will have to see if I still like the one we decided on before. Anyway, I got carte blanche by James to choose which ever one I liked instead. Dangerous that, you know, I might come home with a lovely deep lilac aubergine colour and then what would he do... ;)

At the moment it is hovering around 0 degrees outside and things are turning more and more like autumn. This is what the view out our bedroom window greets me with every morning

Lovely isn't it.
It will soon be time to plant our hedge as well. Hopefully we will get them in the next week or so depending on if it gets colder so the leaves drop. James is sawing the planks for our vegetable raised beds boxes. I think they will work very nicely with what we have planned for next year in the vegetable garden patch. Still have to decide if we are doing the big dig next year to improve the drainage around the house. I think I'll ask Rosies dad what he thinks seeing as he is in the construction business and if he knows someone who could have a look and see how serious it is. If we do the Big Dig we will probably re-do the front drive as well while we are messing about. At the moment the weeds and grass are creeping ever closer into the gravel and its just not looking nice. I thought about some sort of paving, possibly cobblestones if you can get them cheap off a reclaim yard. Lots to do and plan and think about. But first we will get the guest room done in time for James parents visit at Christmas time. We will probably take down the wall downstairs after that and lay new floor and wallpaper downstairs before they come as well. It is just a matter of cracking on when you get the time at weekends.

Season of plenty.

The only vegetable growing well in our garden are my yellow pear tomatoes. Hopefully (crossing fingers) they will still have some time to mature on the vine before the frost nights start if not they will make do with my window sill in the kitchen. It is looking very hopeful at the moment weather wise though. Something else isn't looking hopeful though, I've picked only 12 runner beans from my 6 (!) plants so as you might imagine I'm not a happy bunny. Thank the gods that mum has plenty at the allotment this year. Even though we fertilized and watered extra when it was warm and dry the beans haven't really liked it here. Possibly the soil is very poor and needs a major injection of manure/compost/extra peat next spring to be able to sustain any sort of vegetable. I've had a closer look at the soil and it seems lacking of something. It is nice and light but feels... starved, cant find any better way of explaining what I mean. The new soil we bought will boost it somewhat but I think we will be buying manure in bulk next year to get any sort of structure into it..

The flowers like it here though....

Planning the garden

It seems to be coming together bit by bit out in the garden. It's much slower inside. Still haven't decided on wallpaper for the guest room or what the new floor is going to look like downstairs but I'm sure as soon as it gets to cold to do much outside it will get into full swing inside as well.

We staked out our vegetable plot last night before it got too dark to see what you were doing. For the ones who have seen it, it is somewhere in the region of 2 allotment plots or 7x8 meters. I have a hunch James will be eager to start digging it since he was the one dragging me out late last evening to get it done. The plan is simple. A large rectangle set between our biggest apple trees divided into 6 smaller beds with walkways made out of mulch roughly 50 cm wide in between. We are going to build frames of planks so it will be a bit raised and offer an option of having a grid of plastic tubes attached on top to hold up some fleece for those early vegetables to be protected from frost in spring and late autumn. The new hedge will be delivered within the next 2 weeks so got everything ready for that. Also the Mount Everest of soil has disappeared onto some tarpoling underneath one of the big fir trees we have. Plans are taking shape as what to do after we have dug around the house for new draining and seen that done. We had thought about putting down paving around the house to minimize all the weeds that now are growing very well in the sandy gravel closest to the house. It would work out much better I think and also the rain would drain away from the house as you would tilt the paving a bit. We are almost sure of that the 3 big fir trees have to come down. Right now there is a huge amount of space in our garden that is just sitting there in shadow not doing anything really and it is a bit gloomy as well. The trees are magnificent I agree and most certainly around 80 years old or maybe more but still.. Besides, on days like this, rainy and very windy, they are a bit scary. What if they are rotten inside and give way? Not such a pleasant thought.

Other garden news, the tomatoes are finally starting to ripen and I could pick 3 (!) for our salad yesterday. They are very sweet tasting yellow pear tomatoes. But they would have done better in a green house so I don't think many of them will be able to ripen on the vine since the weather has turned most significantly more autumn like the last couple of days. Nice and sunny, warmish yes but colder at night, much colder at night. I think there must have been a slight frost because my lovely Busy Lizzie on the porch had gone all limp one morning so it was off to the compost heap with that one. The others seem alright. The apples are getting tastier according to James. Got to see what we will do with them. I cant eat them raw and James usually gets tired of them after a few weeks of apple eating. And there is just so much you can do with them part from apple pie, apple sauce, apple cake, apple strudel and then you start all over again. Wish I'd now how to do cider or at least some apple juice, but it think it would involve a press and I don't have one. Things to wish for from Santa?

Little Mount Everest

That is what we now got on the lawn after we had a truck leave 10 cubic meters of lovely garden soil. We have tried to make a dent in it dispersing it into the hedge row to be and at least it shrunk a bit. We are going to add some to our existing hedge as well since there seems to be no top soil whatsoever left in it. Not even weeds grow in it!

At the moment James is dreaming sweet dreams happily snoring away in bed but I cant get to sleep. I think that big bold full moon might have something to do with it as well. Isn't it just lovely seeing how everything turns different in moonlight? It is light enough so I can see all of the garden without any help from the front porch lamp. You can tell it's a Saturday night. Slight screeching of car tires and an occasional acceleration roar beyond the railway track, but it is very calm on our street. At the moment..

We have decided to dig a little vegetable patch anyway this autumn. I really want somewhere to grow a little bit of vegetables next year. A few bushes of tomatoes really doesn't do the trick and I doubt there will be any runner beans this year. The soil was too poor for them to grow well. They are spindly little things not even a meter high even though I did fertilize the soil before planting them. Have to see what will grow well and what don't like it at all. At the moment the summer flowers are doing very well and the rose we bought earlier is now flowering with light pink semi filled flowers. The red sunflowers are all flowering looking quite stunning and my pink Silkesblomma is lovely when the sun is out but quite boring on a cloudy day since the flowers don't seem to open up then. We got some seeds from James grandma and we did manage to set one sort of them since we got started so late. I cant remember the English name for them but in Swedish it is Indian krasse, but they are out and have started to flower and shoot of long strands which are filling up by the wall of the old shop.

I think I might have a second go at this sleeping thingy or I'll be no good tomorrow when we are going to see my sister in Ludvika. God natt.

Long time no write and all that jazz..

We have been busy elsewhere, James too even though he is permanently declared a mini zombie by me after his 3 weeks long stretch of working early mornings and not going to bed when falling asleep on the sofa. Go to bed! I say and poke him quite violently and he says, in a minute, soon, and falls happily asleep anyway half laying over me making my watching the telly very uncomfortable indeed. We definitely need a bigger sofa and a lounge to house it. Good thing we are going to knock down a wall then isn't it you think. But by the time James has mustered the courage to knock it down with me we will be old and grey, or so it feels like at the moment. It's just a wall, not a load bearing one either but a thin pathetic partition one where they thieved a bit of the lounge to make a big walk-in-closet. But I think it is the cleaning up bit afterwards that have him scared. Not cleaning cleaning, but the getting a new flooring in and wallpaper the lounge since the wallpapers didn't match in the two rooms. He wants to wait until we know what the chimney chappy is billing us for fixing our trimmings and a rain cover that looks like a hedgehog and what the ventilation chappy is billing us for coming here taking a quick look saying he cant see anything wrong and we should call him again if it starts smelling of burnt rubber from the air outlet. So we are waiting and waiting and you all know how impatient I can be at this waiting malarky don't you... *grits teeth*

Oh, pictures are coming as soon as the batteries are charged enough and I can get my head around a picture view program with tantrum troubles. It wont let me see the thumbnails of the pictures in the camera or to download them to the computer! I'll be looking for a hammer in a minute..!

Our final corner section to the new wardrobes came on friday and we have just finished putting it togheter. The last door will go on in a bit. But what a bugger it was to get in place! I hate our leaning floor by now because it didnt fit to put it togheter as it suggesteed in the manual so we had to improvise as how to do it and in which order so all pieces would line up in the end. It was a lot of huffing and puffing, swearing 'till your ears went red and an exess of banging them togheter using your feet, hands or you name it!

And now when you think that it will all fit nicely the bloody middle door hinge is one hole too high up! And yes i did measure it!!!! Calm down, breeeeaaatthh.........!

Part from all the hiccups and exsessive swearing the new wardrobes looks fantastic. Now theres just a trip left to return 2 damaged doors and get some shelfs and pull out drawers.

Sauna anybody?

It is warm and sticky outside today since there is spurts of rain in between the sunny spots. Feels like walking in an outdoor sauna when in the garden. I did bake some bread though earlier this morning when it still was cool outside, but now I don't think I want to be in the kitchen at all but got to make some dinner for James when he gets back from work in a couple of hours time.

I've had a go at carpentering today and fixed the upstairs loo door that was very tight to close. Now it works like a charm and glides close with a smooth swoosh sound instead of the crackling screech it had before. It still hasn't got a door handle though so it is still a matter of getting your finger almost caught when hooking it in the hole where the handle should be when closing the door. But once we find some nice old-fashioned door handles I think we will be replacing all of them so no point in just buying one odd one is it. There are just too many odd ones already! I am also going to start stripping the doors before it gets too cold outside. I thought I might be using paint stripper and it doesn't work so well if it is too cold. For maximum effect it needs to be above +15 and you really have to be outside since it does smell very VERY foul when gucking it about.

We are off for a quicky to IKEA tomorrow to buy a corner section and new doors for our wardrobe upstairs. We had a peek to see what make the wardrobe was because we wanted extra shelving and by luck it was from IKEA's range so we bought extra fittings and shelves the last time we went to IKEA and now we are thinking about expanding it along the wall and corner. We are aiming to empty the downstairs wardrobe so we can take down the wall and get the space back that they used from the lounge to make it in the first place. It is only 1.5 m but it will make all the difference since you will gain an extra doorway as well into the lounge.

Hopefully the man from the chimney shop will get in touch early next week so he can come measure what size our chimney is and fix the odd little jobs needed to it and also fit a slip stop for the roof ladder before we get our chimney swept this autumn. I also phoned a big garden center outside Ludvika about planting Syringa vulgaris (Bondsyren in Swedish) as a hedge and what it would cost and when the best time was to plant them. I also asked about our existing hedge towards the road that is looking very bleak and thin and it seems it is best to cut it in spring so that is what we are going to do. Planting the hedge is best to do in September though. So we have to decide what kind of Syren we are having and how many to get. You have to order in august to get them in September so got a little while yet to decide. They had 3 varieties that suited as hedges, one mixed coloured one where you get white,pink and lilac flowers, the old sort Bondsyren and a new Russian variety that had dark lilac flowers. The nice chappy recommended the Swedish Bondsyren for hedging since it grew very well and thickly so that I think is what we are going to get. The bushes cost from 200-400 kr for a bundle of 10 bushes and you would need 2-3 bushes per meter.

I also called the council to ask about putting up a fence towards the road and if there were any restrictions. Apparently you can put up a see-through-fence 110cm high without permission but if you wanted it higher and non-see-through you needed to apply for a building permission. I also asked about hedges and if we needed the neighbours consent to plant one. We only need them to agree if we want it smack on the border but we could have it well in on our yard and they would have nothing to say about it as long as it didn't grow into their yard. But considering the big stump of an old maple three that they have cut down just in the border I don't think they can argue that much. We'll just have to see. Mum has offered to come with us encase they start talking Finnish behind our backs just to listen in on what they are saying, no need in telling them she will understand is there...

I think, yes i think B,C & O is back in business.. But got to remain calm it could just be a trick of my eyes that the Blog Goddess is back and writing!

Now if only James would get his ass in gear and start writing again it would be perfect... :)

Wandering benches..

Woke up this morning at 4.30 by James saying that our two new garden benches were missing and that he found one of them all broken up a bit further up the road. I got up and went around the block to see if I could find the missing one. I asked a passing neighbour as well but he hadn't seen or heard anything even though the bench was found just outside his house. James went the other route and found the other one in one piece at the railroad crossing

I called the police later on and reported it, got to see if we get anything from our home insurance, doubt it will cover the risk though. When I was out putting the table and the rescued bench away I saw that our neighbour across the road was looking agitated and on the phone so I asked if he had something broken too last night. They'd smashed his car rear light in and he was on the phone to the police. We talked a bit while waiting for the police and while waiting our neighbour across from us came home, still drunk... He asked a bit what was going on and we said what had happened and he looked a bit blank. Bet you it was him and his friends going to a party who did the damage but was too drunk to remember, because he couldn't for the life of him remember how he ended up sleeping in a forrest 10 km from here...

Anyway, the police came round, they parked in our drive way and looked at our bench and Olle's car and walked around looking mighty important. Hopefully it made the drunken neighbour a bit nervous and that his dad had a look outside the kitchen window to see what was going on too. Whoever did it left behind an empty cart of Finnish strong beer so it is a bit touchy whether or not it was neighbour or not. We'll probably never know.

The adventures of living in a house has just started! I've calmed down now though..

Some things don't need an explanation..

This is what greets me every time I need to go and get a garden tool. And it smells absolutely divine... And on the right hand side of the door there is a small golden honeysuckle adding to the scent as well. It's not as big as the rosebush yet but give it a couple of years and it will cover the wall behind it and the doorway. I'll make sure of that!

Right now inside the old paintshop there is a very pungent smell of wood oil since we have given our patio furniture their first coat. It didn't help to have both doors open and all windows wide open, I still got a headache from the fumes.

We've celebrated midsummer here in Sweden and we had my mum and sister with bf over to stay. We had a bit of luck with the weather being very nice and warm so we did manage to have a bbq. Much laughter and a game of boule on the lawn after the bbq made the evening complete. We didn't have a midsummer pole to dance around and neither did we bother about going somewhere to have a look at one being raised. We might have one next year and I'll make sure that James does the frog dance as well! Everyone stayed the night and we had a very late night game of TP. The next day was very chilly after a early morning downpour which actually filled all the water butts! We were all very tired so we just relaxed and had a nice lunch before people started to set of back home.

And today it is back to the grindstone but somehow I don't mind anymore, because I can just leave it all back in Falun when I go home at night. It does make a difference with a bit of distance between work and home. Anyway for me and it also helps to know that I can just sit out in the garden and relax if I like when I get back home.

Some pictures from our new house and garden. These are the lovely pink roses in their new pots on the steps.

I just love these flowers. Gazanias they are called here and they only open when it is sunny.

Finaly done with the new hall downstairs and upstairs!

And this is what we are considering having on our kitchen wall, it's just a little bit of wall by the window that will have it if we decide on it.

A young brunette goes into the doctor's office and says that her body hurts wherever she touches it.
"Impossible," says the doctor.
"Show me."
She takes her finger and pushes her elbow and screams in agony. She pushes her knee and screams, pushes her ankle and screams. Everywhere she touches makes her scream.
The doctor says, "You're not really brunette are you?"
The girl says "No, I'm really a blonde".
"I thought so," the doctor says.
"You have a broken finger."

Time is a flying...

Where do the days go? I cant believe just how quickly the days have passed since we moved in with boxes, furniture and fishes. Thing is, it is only 3 weeks since we did move in and we already have some flower beds going and a bit of a vegetable patch started. Plus we have managed to almost agree on a wild kind of wallpaper for the kitchen and paint the hall a very nice shade of green. Today we went and bought some more good soil and 3 pale terracotta pots for my intense pink patio roses I bought earlier this week. They are now sitting nicely on the steps up to the front door.

I also managed to connect the water butts together with this brilliant set of tube and washers that James dad suggested we get. I still cant believe that we Swedes haven't come up with something similar so James ordered them online and had them sent to his parents and they sent them on to us. Might be a good import idea there...Hmm. I got a bit of assistance from Lotta when assembling them so if there is rain tomorrow as they predict with some thunder included we will be set with rain water in hopefully all 5 butts for another spell of nice warm summer weather as we have had for 3 days now.

I planted my beans today and put up the bean poles. All I need to do now is sow some marigolds and weed and water. Until this autumn that is. We have to see if we will get started on a bigger vegetable plot, lots of digging involved there though so we'll have to see, I would like to be able to grow potatoes at least!

I had a nice little chat to one of our neighbor's. We can call her Liz. She has lived here all her life and took over her parents house. She used to know the first people who owned this house and she could tell me quite a lot about how it used to look like before. They had big garden beds with summer flowers and vegetables in them, but they were all on the wrong side for us as we intend to dig up the lawn closer to the house rather then the old shop. They had pebble paths inbetween the beds and now I understand where all the pebbles are coming from when we have been digging up our new flower beds. She also said there used to be a one room and kitchen upstairs and that the 2 brothers lived in the house with their parents and one brothers family. It would be fun to get a hold of some pictures from how it looked like then. Maybe I'll ask our Liz nicely if she has any.

I cant believe how many shades of green there is!

We are trying to decide on a nice apple green for our hall that continues on up the steps and the landing upstairs. We contemplated lots of different colors before settling on some sort of lime green or apple green. Not knowing how many shades there were that looked nice on paper and horrible on the wall we are now into our fifth tester pot and still it doesn't feel right. Well one of the new ones we got today feels better then the darker olive green we decided on yesterday. The olive is nice in daylight but makes the hall look very dark at night time. What to do, what to do..

In other news we have finished digging two flower borders and have planted one up but got some left to do in the shady one. The tomatoes have gone in the short end where there is sun all day and they are really sprouting on now. We have also got rid of the big mound of dirt that they dug up earlier when fixing a leaking water main. We also shifted the big lilac bushes they uprooted at the same time.

We are doing a wee bit of planning for the future as well. We really do want a green house in the garden or a conservatory added onto the house and if we did the latter one we could have a patio area next to it with steps down to the garden we thought. Still have to decide where the vegetable garden is going to be dug this autumn though. I dread that because it was hard enough doing the little flower beds with all the turf that had to be removed and all the weeds that left all their roots if you weren't careful with the fork. Maybe we could have a digging party? Anyone interested?

I think I'm going to have a look if the paint has dried yet, they tend to dry darker these green ones..

So here we are then..

The new house.

And we all are a wee bit bushed really and in need of a few nights good sleep but who got the time for that when there are things to put in place and boxes to be taken out and the garden to tend to and lots and lots more stuff. We cleaned out the apartment today and took just about everything that was left there from yesterday when the big move was. We had some good weather yesterday but today just rained in really. The next adventure for us is the hunt for a new lawn mover and we will have to venture into the land of DIY at one pint or another and I'm sure it will be a fun trip but a bit scary since there is a house to tend to now a days. As soon as the weather eases off a bit I'm going to have a good poke around the garden and see what can be done in there. I'm tempted to get started but I really shouldn't until the house feels a bit more finished or at least until we have some curtains up and not a box in sight.. good thing there is some storage to tuck boxes into isn't it?

It's short and sweet today since i really am longing for bed, so tired..

4 days remaining...

The moving crew (James mum and dad) are arriving tomorrow. They will be staying until next Saturday and help us with bits and bobs and driving the van. We are getting to borrow my sisters huge Mercedes Estate as well so we'll have an extra car to take the boxes in. And boy do we need it. At the last count we did, including all the prepacked ones in the storage and the ones under our bed we are now up to 64 banana boxes filled to the rim with our home. And still we are functioning quite well without everything that is packed. It sure makes you wonder why you have so much stuff doesn't it. And perhaps if you really need everything you got as well...

12 days remaining....

Got this in my mail today and laughed at the last little paragraph, nice pun.. :o)


TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.


Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!