40 Years Revisited

I've had fun reminiscing over the last 40 years. Some of it boggles my mind like:

10 Houses, 3 States, 7 Communities.

I'd like to just say here, I hate to move! I would have made a terrible military wife. Even though we have lived in 10 houses, once we settled in a community we usually lived in one place for 8 years, and we even lived in our last house for 16 years!

I've worked as an Avon Lady, a pre-school teacher, but mostly as a Children's librarian in both the public library and the public school media center.
Larry has been a Prison Guard, a Cop, but mostly a great Sporting Goods Salesman.

We've always had a dog, but at one point we had 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 2 large tropical aquariums!
Then came kids. We had 2 of those as well!

When we married we had an oven that could be programmed to come on and go off at a certain time so my meatloaf and baked potatoes were ready when I got home from work. Our TV had 3 channels plus PBS and we had 2 phones in the house. Land lines of course.

Now we have a microwave, Flat screen TV with 400+channels and a DVR (I hope to never have to give that up!). Cell phones have replaced a need for land lines and we have 2 computers to keep us connected to the world.

Our favorite toys were the bass boat, swimming pool, and finally a corvette--when the girls were off our auto insurance!

Just a few of our Favorite Memories
Camping on our honeymoon
Water Skiing on the Alafia, Fishing every body of water in Florida,
Learning to live with Alligators, snakes, but never spiders!
Those annual 3 day drives to the Connecticut cabins and the blueberry farm, with picnics at Mt. Tom or Kent Falls
Watching the Space Shuttle every chance we had
Swimming with the manatees; a once-in-a-lifetime experience!
A Hot Air balloon ride
The Christmas Larry and I gave each other bath towels with similar, but different mallard duck patterns on them
And of course, family dinners ending with the chocolate giggles

So many trips: (How lucky we have been!)
My first view of the Colorado Rockies
Jamaica
Alaska
Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein
Seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time
A House Boat trip on the St. Johns with 2 daughters and 2 friends
Larry's Wilderness Fishing Trip down the Rogue River
The Redwood Forest
My Trip to N.Y. with Jen after 9/11
My Trip to Canada with Jan for Canadian Thanksgiving

(I wonder what the kids will add to this list?)

Is it possible to wrap up the memories of 40 years in a blog?
No. That would be called a memoir and would be at least 200 pages!

All I can say here is that in 40 years we've had some good times and a few, but only a few, heartbreaks. There were ALE HOUSE nights on Thursday's when the week was long and the day had been longer and we were enticed by the $5.00 bucket of beer that awaited us. But more often were the nights we all sat down together for dinner, even if it meant waiting for daddy to come home, and then going to bed as soon as dinner was done.

In 40 years we have had dinners end in uncontrollable giggles only for someone to say "OMG, it's the chocolate!"

In 40 years we have kept in touch over the phone when one parent or another was traveling and:  a child stayed out too late, a horse had to be put down, through broken legs (plural-we have 2 kids), or a computer crashed and "my whole report was on that disk!"

On Sunday we exchanged Anniversary cards. As we read them we realized that although the design of the card was different we had selected cards where the message was identical, word-for-word! It reminded us of the "Duck Towel Christmas" 22 years ago.

Yes, In 40 years we have grown, changed, but managed somehow to stay in tune with each other.
It's been a good 40 years.