Old, Comfy Shoes

I hope you had a great Independence Day. Ours was filled with trips back to Ohio to visit family. Yes. I know. We spend so much time in Ohio we should move there. We are working on it.

We spent some extra time at my parent's house helping them clean for the cookout they were having. My sister, Sarah, and I got to go through some boxes full of stuff from our childhood in the process. Whoa. There was a lot of highly entertaining items in those boxes. Lucky for you all I took some pictures before I tossed the stuff!

First up - Self Portrait, Age 7

Apparently I still had blond 80's hair then and had lost a tooth. Also I was rocking the multi-colored turtle necks. It took me a while to figure out what was so "off" on this drawing but Ben helped me out and pointed out that my eyes were all wrong. Which just goes to show that even at 7 I thought my eyes were just that blue.

Next - Illustrated story. Date unknown

The story was something about how I was thankful for my mom, my dad, God, food and flars. Which, from judging by the picture, means flowers. My favorite part of this picture is my mom's chicken feet hands and my dad's butt hands. Not sure where I got that....

Next, I was reminded why I disliked swimming lessons so much. I sucked at it. Here's a report card from 1989 (age 6):

I needed work on everything except for floating and sticking my face in the water, and yet I still got a GOOD JOB! comment. Please notice which class I should be in next - Polliwog I.

Now, let's jump ahead a three years and see the report cards for Sarah and I in 1991:
I am STILL IN THE SAME CLASS. Except now my little sister is in there with me. Awesome. I really enjoyed spending 3 years in the same class. There goes my parent's hopes and dreams of me being an Olympic swimmer. Also, let's read Sarah's comment: "Sarah is a very eager pupil. She will soon be a fine swimmer." Let's read mine: "Andrea tries hard and has a desire to learn...." But obviously I wasn't learning... It took 2 more years for me to make it through Poliwog II and to get an instructor who was tired of trying to get me to swim with my face in the water and just move me on to Minnows. Then we stopped taking swim lessons and there was much rejoicing. Now my idea of swimming involves laying on floating and relaxing. I've got that down.

I also found my preschool evaluation and learned that even back then I had a hard time not interrupting people could only recognize numbers 1-5, 7 + 10. But doggone it, I could share and play well with others. Take that stupid swim class....