Revisiting My Childhood

Why haven't I posted lately? We've been on vacation, but we're back home now, safe and sound. I'm going to try and get my blog up to date over the next couple of days. I've got lots of pics to share and fun times to recount!

We left on our vacation on the 30th. We headed to MN to go camping with my brother and his family and then spend a few days at their house. The road we needed to take to MN passed only a few miles from the house I grew up in. We rarely drive this way anymore and it had been years since I'd seen my old house, so we decided to make a detour.

When we turned off the main road, the kids asked where we were going. Josh told them, "Off the beaten path." The kids had never heard that expression before and kept asking, "What's the beaten path? Are we off the beaten path now? Is this the beaten road?"

The house I grew up in was next to a church and school, both of which I attended. The school is now used as a daycare. Since it was a weekday, the daycare was open, so we walked in. I told them who I was, and they let me look around. The house I lived in is now part of the daycare, too, and the workers even let us go into my old house and show it to Josh and the kids. It was interesting to see the changes and how it was all being used now. I even got to see my old room. The trees are bigger, but why does everything else look so much smaller than I remember?!

Here's my childhood home. The two upstairs windows that you see were my bedroom windows.

This is a view of the hill across the road. The hill used to be called "Old Baldy" because it was the only hill around that had very few trees on it while all the others were covered. I wonder if the people who live in the area still call it by the same name.

After we finished walking around by my house, we drove into town, planning to stop and say hi to a family friend. I had her address, but didn't know where the street was since she'd moved since we lived there. However, I knew that one of her daughters lived in their old house with her family, so we stopped there to see if she could tell us where her mom's house was. Unfortunately she said her mom was out of town, but another of the daughters happened to be at the old house, so we got to see both of them.

After a brief visit, we got back on the "beaten path" and headed into MN. More to come ...

(Day 180 of 365)