Throwback Thursday: Family Reunions

When I was a kid, we would have the most amazing family reunions. As an adult now, not so much. A mysterious uncle building his own carnival rides with stuff lying around his property now sounds extremely sketchy. Ah, the early 2000's - to be so lax about my own life... makes me sort of wish that I could ride the Shetland ponies and the homemade tilt-a-whirl forever.

In the picture above, I am in the green cart, very middle, side ponytail and all. I had probably just finished making myself an amazing bead necklace... or 30. I would soon be getting off of the train ride to go spend an hour on the tilt-a-whirl; until a parent forced mystery uncle to shut it down for a little while (probably because their kid had hurled).

The funniest part of these family reunions is that Mitch's grandma and my great aunt (who I call grandma) literally lived 3 houses away from each other our entire lives. Mitch could very well be in this picture... in fact, that little girl in the red cart could be Ciara. Who knows! All I know is that I was too busy getting my fair share of carnival rides in before we had to go back home. I didn't have time for boys. All that was on my mind was convincing my Aunt Lisa to give me a professional massage while I greedily snuck her beads into every pocket and ziplock bag I could snag.

Finding this picture has convinced me that I need to put Mitch's engineering skills to work and make some fun country toys like this for when Zane and his cousins are a little older. Except for me too, cause you know I'm definitely up for a Shetland pony ride again.