current events

I propose a weekly space for us to say what is current with each of us. what do you think? Would it distract from the history focus of this endeavor?

Illumination

Our first trip to Assateague Island was memorable. Christine was a baby and Bill was two and Jon was four. When Bill got to the top of the dunes he squealed with delight. We camped and had a great time. We got hungry and went to Ocean City to see if we could find anything to eat. We hunted and hunted, only to find an overpriced skinny awful pizza at Bombarino's. We did not have much money so that was the only thing we could get. We will never forget that pizza was a bomb at Bombarino's.



We had many other wonderful memories of

 Assateague and wild ponies and mosquitos.

Trying to get everybody to go to sleep was a challenge. On Sandalwood boulevard Christine, David, Catherine, Jennifer and Michelle all slept in the same room. Jon and Bill were in the other bedroom. After brushing teeth and prayers and drinks of water and back rubs and stories and songs, when Dad and I would finally climb into bed, there was the beautiful music of Good night Mom! Good Night Dad! Several times over.



We always enjoyed Ring around the Rosie in Family Home Evening. Especially Brodie. Brodie often would try to get Bill.

Brodie protected Jennifer and Michelle from the basement stairs. He would keep them in line by nipping at their hands. He did it so much that the girls walked around with their hands held high above their heads.



For several years, all the children int he neighborhood would come to our house after trick or treating, to listen to spooky stories. Janice Youbagy, a neighbor down the street, arranged with Mom to scare the children by tapping on the window and she was all dressed up like a witch. So, in the middle of The Box scary story, Janice showed up in front of the sliding glass door. Everybody jumped and screamed. The boys all ran in

 every direction and some of the girls cried were all scared too. Mom laughs, it was so much fun.



We did not have a creek in the back yard in Columbus, but we might as well have. We had a terrific sand box and tree swings (right Michelle?) The hose was running in the sand box most of the time. We called it ocean side property. We took the faucet key off the faucet and hid it in the kitchen. David quickly got the pliers and remedied that. 

Catherine and David made the coolest C130 pontoons out of hangar w

ire and styrofoam. 



And that room had a window hatch to climb out on the roof. There were so many excursions on the roof that the roof leaked.



When Christine was just six months old, in the dead of winter, Jon, Bill and Christine were the best of buddies. When Jon and Bill wanted to play out in the snow, they had to take Christine along. So Mom bundled her up and put her on the sled, and the boys pulled her up and down the sidewalk in front of the house. She never cried, she loved it. She loved playing with the boys.



On a snow day off of school in Woodbury we had deep places on the side of the driveway where we dug a tunnel in the snow. In Woodbury in the winter it got so cold that your pants would freeze to your legs. Mom would go out and regularly get stuck in the snow.

We went camping in Minnesota and a bolt of lightning struck the trees right over our tent. Dad heard the boom and stretched himself over the family to protect them from the tree branch, should it fall. It never did. In the morning, you could see the broken trunk leaning down, captured by the branches above.

In the beginning (Well, more of like the middle)

Half of you won't even know what I'm talking about.

The sandbox on Sandalwood Blvd was big, but it wasn't the first.

The stream ran through our property in Delaware, but it wasn' t the biggest body of water our house ever faced.

When we moved to Minnesota, we stayed at the Ramada Inn, our home away from home. Then we moved to a neighborhood so new that we didn't have neighbors. There weren't even houses next to us.

The lake was across the street, and the mosquitoes kept us in at night. In the winter it really snowed.

I liked it when the big machines came and dug holes next to us. It was a lot of fun to go into the pits, climb up to the top of the dirt hill, and run back down.

We would also dig in the streamlet that ran next to our property. Mom didn't like us to use the garden tools to dig there, but we did anyway. Sometimes we dug for gold. Sometimes we tried to dig to China. Sometimes we just played with our toys in the mud. I half believed we'd find gold or make it to China, but we never did.

Maybe that's why Dad built us a sandbox.

Brilliance, or the lack thereof

"The thing about blogs is that they do not have to be brilliant."  that is what Steph said after I erased what I had written for the third time.  "They just have to be you."

Kind of like an Oreo cookie in that way.  the Oreo cookie is not a great cookie.  it is bad for you, it is not terribly clever or delicious but people eat entire packages of them at a sitting.  Not because they are amazing but because they taste like Oreos.

Once Dave and Christine and I were playing in a wagon down Jessie's driveway (MUCH steeper than ours) I was driving the wagon and Dave was the passenger.  I thought that it would be pretty cool if I rolled off down the driveway while Dave was still hopping in the wagon - it would be like all those getaways you saw in the movies (you know, the ones where the heroes are riding red wagons down driveways).  I pushed off down the hill just as I saw Dave start to leap toward the wagon.  From the corner of my eye I saw that he had one good foot in and by golly that was enough!  

I think I was twelve then, which would have made Dave eight.  At that point he was a skinny little stick figure with an explosion of yellow where his hair should have been.  He was way into GI Joes, especially mine, and pinching.  Good old Dave.  I was starting to fill out to become a very fat child, and in some way I was already starting to see the difference between skinny and me.  And David pinched.  For all of those reasons I pushed off down the hill as fast as my twelve-year-old legs could carry me.  

Even at twelve I had some pretty strong legs.

 Dave started to yell.  Christine who was watching started to yell.  I was dragging Dave down the driveway.  he had one foot in the wagon while the rest of his tender eight year old skin was subject to the relentless savagery of asphalt.  

When I got to the bottom of the hill, Dave and Christine ran sobbing into the house.  I sat in the wagon trying to come to grips with almost killing my younger brother.

"Then what happened?" Steph asks from beside me.  I do not remember.  I will just have to leave the young Brodegard sitting there in the wagon while I figure out the details.  Mom probably fixed Dave up just fine with some colored band-aids.  Christine probably told me not to ride away in the wagon until everybody was solidly inside.  Dave probably stole my GI Joe's systematically over a period of weeks.

There is a moral here, but it would be too boring to draw it out for everyone.  Including me.  So instead I will post a picture of Steph riding a bike down a beautiful bike path. 

Love you all!

Oh, PB&Js

5675 Sandalwood Blvd.  That house was amazing, but the Columbus neighborhood was not as fantastic, besides mom found this great piece of property in Delaware, Ohio. So we moved.  

Wayne Homes could not build our new house very quickly and so we spent our summer vagabond style.  We gratefully stayed in homes of friends who were enjoying their summer on vacation.  There was this one with an in-ground pool, and one with a jetted tub, but the most memorable one was peach.

We call it "peach nasty."  That is exactly what it was, peach and nasty. Similar to soft pink toes when one is trying to eat cheesecake, kind of nasty.  It had a pointed smell of foamy stain remover and only had one bathroom.  I remember standing in a line in the hallway, bladder about to burst, as I and the rest of the children waited for Dave to finish. 

The kitchen was small and the menu even smaller. Every night we had spaghetti, the Brodegards love spaghetti.  For every breakfast, lunch and snack, we would have Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches. The brand of Peanut Butter and Jelly varied, but we always had the same hard, dry wheat bread.  That was how we grooved until Wayne homes got on top of things.

Eventually our house was finished and we moved in.  That was around nine years ago and finally I can eat Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches again without my nose tingling from memories of a foamy stain remover smell. Oh, good old Peach Nasty.

the one, but not the only...

I've been inspired.

The other day I was talking to Dave. I told him I was considering a name change; Cindersteens. It had a nice ring to it, and described at least, the menial portion of my current career.

He laughed out loud and said it would never work... that I have never been, nor ever will be a Cindersteens.

This peaked my curiosity. I asked him why he felt so strongly about this particular moniker.

So recalled the following story for me, of which I have only a vague recollection, yet no doubts regarding its integrity:

One summer day, Dave and I attacked a watermelon. True to our unique style of attack (think Tyrannosaurus Rex), there was nothing in the kitchen left untouched by watermelon, except perhaps the insides of the kitchen cupboards. Our dear sweet Mom, (who will be remembered in Heaven simply for raising us) came roaring into the kitchen and asked us in her nicest T-Rex voice to clean it up. Apparently, I refused and scampered off to the living room (a behavior my two children have efficiently rid me of), while Cinderdave was left to clean up the mess.

After laughing my head off, and then recalling several episodes of one-sided hilarity (30-seconds-of-truth for those of you who ever witnessed the game) I said goodnight and went to bed.

At three in the morning, it hit me. Lets put the blogging world to good use.

I have a library full of stories that have only been lived, and not yet told: and I'm only one of nine.

So- here it is.

The first family blog: Dedicated to the telling of our childhood.

bLoG aWaY!

BlOg To yOuR hEaRtS cOnTeNt!

...and for my sake, post at least one post, so that I can read it and laugh my head off.

...or cry my eyes out

...or fall to sleep.

I love and miss you all tremendously!

love,

Cindersteens