Today I would like to reminisce about some good times we as a family have enjoyed in the past. My parents were the best. We always had a happy time together doing many things and even when we were poor, we always found fun ways to do things together. We once went to California and Disneyland when Disneyland was first built. My brother and I both loved the ocean. I could not wait to get to the beach and dodge those waves. My brother loved it so much that he got really badly sunburned and we had to put Disneyland off a day so he could recover. Disneyland was OK but I loved the ocean much more. We would stay with my mother's relatives when we went to California to save money. Sometimes we stayed in motels and the motels back then had kitchenettes. It only cost about $8.00 to stay one night but we thought that was a lot.
We also enjoyed going to Fisherman's Wharf once when we were there. We went to Knott's Berry Farm and The Hollywood Wax Museum and to The Forest Lawn Cemetery where many famous people are interred.
Our family would play softball every evening in the summer after dinner. We just used an old board and rubber ball and it was a blast. We also played hide and go seek when it was dark and my parents did too. All the neighbors came to our house. Their parents were dull.
My dad always took us on vacation no matter what. He even built a homemade camper once. We even stopped to eat our lunch in the camper and if there was room, we played softball before we journeyed on.
After I was married, we often continued to travel with my parents. I remember going to the Grand Canyon and John almost falling down in the canyon. We took moving 8 millimeter movies of it and the kids enjoyed watching those home movies more than watching TV. Alex would set up the projector and put an old sheet on the wall and we just sit back and watch and play the film backwards sometimes.
We once went with my parents to the Oregon coast and stayed at a sand dune campground. Alex laid the kids down in the sand and buried them up to their chins. We took pictures and it was a blast. We visited Lake Powell with my parents and toured the dam there. My dad thought it was so funny, he would say: "This is the Dam elevator" when we were going up to the dam and "this is the damn dam." He would laugh. It gave him the chance to say a bad word.
Our family may have traveled on a budget, but we always went someplace and always enjoy ourselves and being together. I will write more about our family vacations later. There are so many experiences that it would take hours to jot it all down at once. But as a family, we were truly blessed.
