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Growing Up Part I Ever think if you were raised differently you would be the same person? I think everybody has certain characteristics that they are born with. But if you were raised from a style that conflicts with those characteristics I'm almost certain you will be a different person. Our parents, teachers, mentors, and friends have some to play on how we turn out. This isn't the theme of my topic today but is related to who I am today. By popular demand, a few have asked about my life growing up. Rather than tell a story in a PM I will share it with everyone. I'll start with some of my early memories and move along to the rest of my childhood. I'll talk about past my child hood in Part II. Immediate family So before I started elementary school our household contained both of my parents, two older half brothers and 1 younger sister. My two brothers were 5 and 8 years older than me. My sister is 2 years younger than me. Both of my brothers grew up in New York/Massachusetts before coming to live with us in a small town in South Dakota.

Kindergarten My first day of school ever I remember very well. My teacher's name was Ms. Valentine. We only had class every other day for Kindergarten. My class was made up 5o students. Basically everyone in my class would be with me to the end when I graduated from high school. There were about 1/3 of us that lived in the country. Our home I grew up in the country, our home was built in 1900. My parents moved into the house in 1975 after living in the city for two years. The property was used as a dairy farm in the 194os. So there were still a few out buildings on the property. Oldiest brother leaves Right after kindergarten my oldest brother moved back to Massachusetts to live with his mother. My other brother decided to stay. I would see him again because every other year we go on vacation there. The brother that stayed acted as my protector, I only had to use him once though. I was a big kid for my age, not only was I the biggest kid in my grade I was the biggest in the grade above me too New sibling That summer I was introduced to a baby sister. I often remember the words be gently she is so fragile from my mother. I didn't really fight with my sisters that much when we were of elementary age. Definitely not with my brother, lol. Sports I was very active with youth sports. I played baseball, football, basketball, and wrestling. I believe I was in 5th grade when the original film, "The Karate Kid"came out and that inspired me to start karate lessons. My older sister and father joined as well. I lasted the longest though I did it for almost two years. Another thing I did related to sports was collect football and base cards. I new all players for the teams. Once high school started I only did football, wrestling, and track.

Summer/Winter Activities Summers were spectacular growing up. My father liked to throw all his change in an old glass milk container. After about two years he would have enough for all of us to go see all my relatives in New York. We usually spent two weeks out there and it coincided with the family reunion. Oh lots of food, people, and adult beverages. You see it was just my immediate family in the Midwest. Every summer though we would do little vacations. We visited places like Mount Rushmore, World's of Fun Amusement Park, and a few other larger cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, and St. Louis which were within driving distance. We didn't fly anywhere parents originally had a truck with a camper on back, than upgraded to van, and one last upgrade was a full sized mobile home. Each one I remember thinking this is cool and the experience was a little better each upgrade.

When we were a little closer to home we went camping, fishing, and would even go for a family picnic at the park or nature preserve. The best advice I can give to parents is celebrate somewhere other than just at home with your family. Your kids will have fond memories as well as everyone else. Let's talk about winter. You might be thinking winter in the Midwest what can you possibly do? Well we didn't do any vacations but to answer the question there is quite a bit actually. Since we had a big lot of property we did a lot of small game hunting. I'm respectful of the animal lovers so I won't go into it. I will say to those animal lovers we always had a dog and several cats. I'll say we were blessed with snow, us kids loved it while our parents didn't 🤣. We made snow tunnels in banks, snow men, snow igloos, snow angels, snow men, snow forts, and snow balls. My favorite times were driving the snowmobiles. We had two of them one larger one and one mid sized one. Oh the large one could hit 120 km/h. The smaller one could hit about 70 km/h 😢 I was younger and I always wanted to drive the larger one. I still had blast with the smaller one even though my brother would drive circles around me. I did get to ride on larger one though. Being in the country we seen a lot of wild life and would chase them with the snowmobile, we never told my mother though 😊

Well that's it for now I'll reveal more in my part II. I enjoyed my child hood and had a blast with my half brother that stayed. For descriptive reasons I call him a half brother but for real I couldn't have had a better brother. To be continued....

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