The story behind the picture. {vol.1}

The Mom Creative, a blog I've read since before she had her first kiddo (and now her second kiddo is 2-ish), is doing a new series: Throwback Thursday. While this is not anything new in social media, she's taking it a step further and encouraging us to tell the stories behind the photos.

And I love that.

So, here's my first picture, and the story behind it:

This is an Easter-ish photo from 1991. It wasn't my initial pick for an Easter #tbt, but I found it and immediately thought "man, I loved that house."


We moved to Hattiesburg, MS, that year, and I went to Oak Grove High School. That was also Brett Favre's senior year of college, and I watched him play at the University of Southern Mississippi. (Side note: He's now the offensive coordinator at that very same high school. Surreal.)

In this picture, I'm wearing a dress my mother sewed herself, and it was one of my favorites. The flower pattern was beautiful (and very 1991), and the puffed sleeves made me feel older and more mature than the 14 years old I was. (Nevermind the fact that she often made me and my sister the same dress, so I routinely matched with a four year old.)

This house was a rental, since my parents never just moved somewhere and bought a house. That was probably a good thing, because we only lived in MS for a year. It was a huge house, and it had an upstairs, which was something we'd never had before.

My room was long and thin. Both of the upstairs windows in the picture were mine. My parents were across the hall, opting to forego the downstairs master so they could be upstairs with my sister. She had both her room and a huge playroom, but my room was huge, so I didn't begrudge her.

The best part of this whole year was the neighborhood itself. It was two streets, with only one way in and out of the neighborhood, and they forked off at a huge wooded area. This woods was across the street from my house, and it was ripe for exploring. None of the neighborhood houses had fences, but several of them  had trampolines.

This was the time before major kidnappings and bubble-wrapped kids, so when we got home we dropped our stuff off, finished whatever work we had, and then headed outside until the streetlights came on. This neighborhood also had plenty of neighborhood kids, all of which rode the same bus home from the same school, and for better or worse, we were friends.

This house holds lots of memories for me:
- a very wonky kitchen set-up that left the microwave very hard to use
- having to wrap my own Christmas presents because my mom was working
- some kids ding-dong-ditching my house and the consequences that resulted from that
- the afternoon that lightning struck the tree between our house and the neighbors and the resulting loss of half of our electronics.
- exploring the woods
- flying off the trampoline, landing on my tailbone, and thinking I'd broken myself
- watching "It" with my family late one night and sitting up in bed all night, waiting for a clown to show up in my doorway.
- the most amazing backyard, with a deck and pine trees as far as the eye could see....

I loved this house most of all of them.

I love the idea of this, and in looking for pictures, I was completely inspired to tell the hilarious stories behind them. I'm going to try to do this every week, prewriting and scheduling some posts. These are the easier stories to tell, not being bogged down by details or prone to rabbit trails.

The planner in me wants to do one week of childhood pics, one of high school/college, one of adulthood, and one of Daisy or holiday pictures.

The realist in me says "We'll see if we make it past week one."