Throwback Thursday

This photograph was taken in the early 1980s. This is me (looking a bit like John Lennon)  with my nephew Mitch and niece Amanda and we are in Forest Park in Noblesville, Indiana. I do not recall who took the photograph but they did a fantastic job! I love how the background is out of focus and shows that we are in motion.

The photograph was taken in the fall. You can see the trees in the background have golden leaves and some of their leaves are on the ground. We are also in jacket vests to ward off the coolness in the air.

A handful of my siblings were also at the park that day. It was fun to take the kids to the park. Forest Park was a park that my siblings and I would visit at least once a year when we were young. The parochial school we attended (grades 1-8) would have an annual school picnic and it was always held at Forest Park in Noblesville (11 miles NE of our hometown and school).

The entire student body of our school would go to the picnic. The annual picnic was held near the end of the school year, usually in May. The average temperature for that time of the year is around 73 degrees. We were allowed to wear shorts...what a treat for kids who had to wear a school uniform...actually the boys at our school did not have a set uniform. The girls had to wear a school uniform of a plaid jumper similar to this:

Image from Internet

When a girl reached the sixth grade, she then wore a plaid skirt similar to this one:

Image from Internet

We girls could not wait to be able to wear a skirt...it made it easier to shorten the skirt by rolling over the waistband and then concealing the roll-over with our green or gold sweater. The nuns were always on the lookout for skirts that were too short. Remember this was the mid to late 1960s and early 1970s and mini skirts were all the rage.

So....being able to wear shorts around your classmates and especially around a boy or boys you may or may not have a crush on was a treat. Plus, shorts made it easier to slide down the curly slide at the park. The line for the curly slide was always so long.

Image from Internet

I haven't thought about those school picnics for many, many years. I remember them as always being so much fun...except for that long line at the curly slide!

Wordless Wednesday

Throwback Thursday

I believe this photograph was taken in late March of 1967. It is our traditional, line-up-on-the-couch Easter photograph. We are missing one sibling. My brother Samuel would be born about 68 days after this photograph was taken.

Left to Right: Kathleen (Kit) is holding baby Michael, Andrew, Me, Jennifer, Lori and Lucinda (Cindy).

The Easter Bunny always hid our baskets around the house. We had to search for our baskets on Easter morning. We all knew which basket was ours, but just in case, our name was written the basket's bottom. In our Easter grass-filled baskets would be: chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, malted milk robin's eggs and the Easter eggs we dyed the day before. We usually got the solid chocolate bunnies (it seemed the ears were always the first to be eaten) but one year the Easter Bunny put white chocolate Easter crosses in our baskets.

Image from Internet

They were pretty but like unicorns,there is no such thing as white chocolate. I discovered that fact when I first bit into the cross. I was very disappointed and did not enjoy the candy (but I am sure I ate it all). White chocolate is a derivative of chocolate and is made of cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids. Nowhere is there any cocoa powder in the list of ingredients...hence no real chocolate. There were grumblings from all of kids that Easter and I don't think white chocolate ever made it into our baskets again.

One year, my brother Andrew ate nearly all of his candy in one sitting. I remember he threw up on the couch. I do not think it was the year pictured above because the fabric is not the same. The year he threw up I believe the couch was a grayish-green material (Could Andrew's vomit have been the reason for the eventual material change?)

Look back at the photograph and you will see I have on a pair of saddle oxford shoes. They are not the traditional black on white (like my sister Jennifer is wearing) but are yellow on white. I remember shopping for those shoes. My mom would take us to Bargain Bob's to buy our school/dress shoes (it seemed to take forever to get there). I saw those shoes and fell in love with them. They were the only ones (my size...or near my size) in the store and I just had to have them. When I tried them on they were a bit tight. When my mom asked if they fit of course I said yes. My mom knew that they did not fit me well but bought them for me anyway (probably a teaching moment for me because when I did complain that they hurt my feet she said she did not want to hear about it...vanity, vanity...). That is really not a smile on my face in the photograph but a grimace of discomfort because of my pretty, yellow, saddle oxfords shoes.