Those 70ish Girls

Are you old enough to remember opening a box of detergent and digging down to find the free glass inside? The key was to use enough detergent to get the whole set before they moved on to another promotion. Boxes of cereal contained toys, and moms faithfully collected green stamps. I remember getting a set of TV trays with books of stamps. We thought we would never accumulate enough.

Those were the days of catalogs, letter writing, dictionaries, encyclopedias, electric skillets, sixteen inch TV’s, taking baths only once a week, unsupervised play and on and on.

Of course there was also smoking everywhere, yummy high fat, high sodium foods containing lots of sugar, but it wasn’t all listed on the packages or cans like today. Who knew there were 600, bad for you calories in a chicken pot pie? Who knew what a calorie was?

We ate canned spaghetti and meatballs, canned ravioli, and canned tamales. We drank whole milk or Kool-aid with one or two cups of sugar in it. I personally think life was better when we ate bacon and eggs with crispy fried hash browns whenever we got the chance and never felt a pang of guilt.

We rode bikes without helmets and stood in the front seat of the car as soon as we could stand. Our mom’s arm hitting us in the chest was an effective restraint in case of a sudden stop.

In my case, I couldn’t wait for school to start, but the excitement ended when I had worn all of my new clothes, which took about a week.

Much has been written and many comparisons have been made about then and now, but there is one thing that never changes….

Kids grow up too fast.

We went to our grandson’s preschool graduation the other night and as I was watching all of the proud five year old kids getting diplomas, I was struck by the innocence on all of their little faces.

We watched two videos of the kids. One showed them participating in all of the activities throughout the year. The second showed pictures of each child when they were babies and current photos. I’m warning you…the songs that went with them might make you cry. Below the first video you will see a few pictures of the kids we’re lucky enough to have in our lives.

We have four kids who each have two children. We have three great grandchildren. All but Mike and Nikki are pictured above. Below is a picture of them with Mike’s son and Nikki’s two daughters.

So with all these kids, you might be asking what we’re doing with a tiny home? Hoping for a lot of invitations to their houses, I guess.