Summer Fun in 2015

We were so lucky to have company last summer.  Will and Fallon came to stay for 2 weeks.  Rachel and family came as well.  Here they are at Aunt Grace's house playing outdoors.

Growing Up In Long Beach

As I said in a previous post, I grew up in Long Beach, California.  My family moved there when I was about 4 years old.  I lived there until I was in high school.  Long Beach was a wonderful city.  I have so many lovely memories.  The weather was wonderful.  My parents had jobs and worked and were very happy.  We lived in a succession of houses which we rented. 

We started our tour with the first house I  remember.  It was on Kildee Avenue and I lived there 3 years, from the age of 4 to 7.  It was a modest little house with just 2 bedrooms.  My sister and my brother and I shared a bedroom.  My oldest brother, Richard, slept on a day bed in the dining room.

 This is the house where I learned to ride a bike and to roller skate.  I loved this house and this neighborhood and it broke my heart to move away from it.  The Bromleys lived next door--an older couple who I adopted as my grandparents.  I was sad to leave them behind.

The next house on the tour was the house on Charlemagne St.  I lived there 2 years and have many happy memories playing with the children on the block.  We played kickball in the street and we set up lemonade stands.  Most of the children attended the nearby Catholic school and I remember waiting for them to walk home down Wardlow Road.  In the summers we spent most of our days at the park just around the corner.  See below.

This is Wardlow Park.  We played in the sprinklers, played hide and seek, played on the equipment including the swings, and even attended the recreation center where we did arts and crafts.  I took baton lessons in this park as well.  We played there unsupervised for hours and loved our summer picnics in the park. 

The summer between 4th and 5th grade we moved across town to a house on Lee Street where we lived for 9 months.  It was across the street from Helen Keller Elementary school, and that became my playground.  I loved rollerskating past all the school rooms and up and down the sidewalks of the school when it wasn't in session.  We played kickball and dodge ball on the playground.  And I had lots of friends to play with there as well.

The next stop on the tour was the house we moved to when I was 10.  We lived there until I was 15.  It was across the street from John Marshall Jr. High school.  This house has been remodeled to add a 2nd story and the A framed entry.  (I edited the picture to remove the 2nd story.)It was just a flat roofed 2 bedroom house when we lived there.  But it had a nice backyard and a step down family room.  I liked living so close to the school.

We ended our tour with a stop at the high school I attended.  Grover was surprised at how big it was!  Of course.  It had nearly 3000 students attending it.  1100 in my graduating class.  The town of Lovell only has 2300 people in it.  Here it is:  Robert A. Millikan High School.

 You can see the gym in the background.  Off to the left the white building with windows was the cafeteria.  The area in the front is just walkways between the several buildings.

This is one of the 4 buildings of classrooms at my high school.  All 2 story buildings.  It was built in 1954 and was brand new when my older sister attended it. 

I consider Long Beach my home town.  I have many good memories of it. 

I hope you enjoyed the tour. 

One year later

I last posted in April of 2015.  I don't remember why I stopped posting.  But today my son, Jess, asked me to share more info and pictures of our projects.  I so enjoy looking at what his family is doing in South Carolina.  It seems reasonable to reciprocate.  My biggest problem is I almost never take any pictures of what we are up to.  Is it pure laziness, or is it being "in the moment?"  But I will endeavor to dig up some.  Emily prefers blogs with pictures over wordy blogs.

I went to my picture files to see what I did last year.  It looks like I had a lot of fun!

 In April I flew out to visit my sis and her hubby.  We took our annual sister pic.

 And of course a picture of Aunt Diane and Uncle Glenn.  We had a delightful time together, relaxing, shopping, going to the movies, and catching up.

I got home and turned right around and went on a trip with Grover. It was really different going to CA this time because Jess and Rachel weren't there.  We went sightseeing instead of visiting family and grandkids. 

Grover had been patiently waiting for his visit to Catalina.  The last 2 times we planned an outing to Catalina, there were difficulties with the weather or some such thing.  So this time we set it up and made it there.  We invited Martha and Richard along.  It was a beautiful sunshiny day.  Dad was happy to enjoy the ocean views.  We had some fun food and looked in the shops.  It's a cheery little tourist stop.

 While we were in L.A. we visited a couple of museums and took a few pics.  The first one is our stop at Forest Lawn to see the reproduction of Michelangelo's David.  It is definitely worth a visit!  Especially if you don't think you can make it to Florence, Italy to see the original.  You can see by the size of this sculpture what all the fuss is about! 

Our next stop was a museum event at the LACMA!  An evening of food, music and exhibits.  This one was interactive--you could be in the picture frame as living art!  It reminded me of that old Woody Allen movie scene where the actors came out of the screen into the theater.   Was that Annie Hall?

I liked goofing off with Martha and Grover.  We also had time to visit our good friends Jack and Vicky in Ojai.  And midway to CA I realized that we were there the weekend of the annual Santa Barbara Italian Chalk Festival at the Santa Barbara Mission.  Here are a few pics from that day.  We took Martha and Richard with us to it as well and enjoyed more music and food and fun.

We finished off that day stopping at the Santa Barbara Pier for ice cream cones and beach views.

We had such a great time on our trips to CA!  The next stop we made was a brief tour of Long Beach, the city where I grew up.  I told Grover we've spent so much time on Kane (his home town), maybe I would take him on a tour of my old homes and my early life in LB.  I will post those pics tomorrow.