I heard this song a couple of weeks ago (posted on Karen Russell's blog) and loved it! The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert. You have to watch this video....very moving for those that have fond memories of the home they grew up in. Made me cry the first time I watched it and every time since.
This is the house that built me below. I have such fond memories of this house. My parents raised 10 children in this house and I lived there for 20 years before moving out with my younger sister into an apartment of our own. Sometimes I think I'll stop by the old house and ask the folks that own it now if I can look around, but then I think, it won't be the same and maybe I just want to keep my memories the way they are and not clutter them with the current feel of that home.
This sandbox was in our backyard. My Dad built this sandbox for us kids. I remember those benches we are sitting on in the photo below. The tops lifted up for us to store our sandbox toys in. We spent hours upon hours in this sandbox, building sand castles and trying to dig our way to China. When we would get to the black sand I think we pretended we had hit China. But I also remember when we hit the black sand we had better stop digging or else we'd be in trouble for mixing the black sand with the beach sand of the sandbox.
This is the swing set we spent many hours playing on as well, trying to pump as high as we could so we could be horizontal with the ground. The slide on this would be mega-hot on those hot summer days. I can still feel how hot the back of my legs would be if we dared to venture down that slide on a hot summer day. See that little white fence in the background of the swing set shot? That was the border of the veggie garden my Mom kept every summer. I remember loving those fresh veggies fresh out of the garden!
This is the house we were celebrated many holidays & birthdays - Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, & Christmas, and birthdays for all. I'm sure it wasn't easy for my Mom & Dad to cloth us all in our Sunday finest for these holidays that required it. I remember my Mom used to make the dresses my sisters and I wore. I remember how I couldn't wait to see how they would turn out every year and how I couldn't wait to wear my new Easter dress every spring. I mean seriously.....look at how cute we looked!
I remember Halloween every year. How we couldn't wait to bring the storage boxes up from the basement and rummage through trying to find which costume we'd want to wear that year. I remember the plastic face mask of a man and how I hated how that felt on my face. Look at this photo below of my three youngest brothers. I mean how cute it this? Mom came up with the idea of doing a "theme" this particular year. A firefighter, a hydrant, and of course, a spotty dog. How cute!
How can I not mention Christmas? Can you imagine what it took to pull Christmas off at our house every year? Santa coming for 10 kids? I just can't even imagine. I do remember our Christmas trees and how as we got older we had to help decorate them. I HATED the tinsel - just hated it. We couldn't clump that tinsel together and put it on the tree. We had to take piece by piece by piece and hang it on the tree. Do you know how many individual pieces there are of tinsel in each box? I think it has to be somewhere around a million, don't you? I just hated that job. Seriously - look at how much tinsel is on that tree? Did we really need that much? Oh - maybe that's why I never used tinsel on my own trees once I moved out!
This front porch was a gathering spot on many hot summer nights. Dad used to love sitting out there when a thunderstorm used to move in. You know, now that I think about it, Dad loved any kind of weather. He always watched the weather broadcasts and we had a barometer thingy in our house. I remember him checking it each morning when he went to the thermostat to turn up the heat. Anyways, we would sit out on this front porch and watch it pour and watch the lightening as it hit the river not far from our house.
I remember sleeping down there on that front porch years later when it was screened in. How much cooler it was than up in our bedrooms. I remember that stone planter - I LOVED the feel of the cold stones on my hands as I sat out there some days and just ran my hands over and over that stone.
We used to have our first-day-of-school photos taken out by this front porch. I must have been going into 4th grade in this photo below because my hair was short. I had it cut the summer between 3rd and 4th grades. There I am on the left with long hair in July of 1971 and the shorter hair 2 months later. I still have the braid from that haircut. Don't ask my why - I just saved it. 
I remember this kitchen where we must have had thousands of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. What a chore it must have been to plan meals for 12 people. I don't even want to think what a chore it was to pay for that food for 12 people! In this left photo below I believe we are having our eggnog and cake maybe for Jesus' birthday. Mom used to make a cake every year for us to celebrate. In the right photo - celebrating Mom's birthday one year. Not sure when - but it must have been in the 70s as those two boys are my youngest brothers and little Michael was born in 1971 and he looks about 2 or 3 in this photo. Oh and the wallpaper and glasses? Need I say more? 1970 something!
This was our living room below with all the stockings "hung on the shelf with care". This photo below only shows 6 of the stockings...the others where tacked to a shelf similar to this one on the other side of the room. I remember those stockings. I loved the appliqued trees and candy canes my mother sewed on them. So cute! I remember this particular Christmas below when my sister and I got these cut little coffee pots. When you tipped them they looked like they were really pouring out the coffee, but really it just stayed inside the double layered plastic. But oh I remember how much we loved those coffee pots!
The front room - I think that's what we called it at first until it was turned into the dining room. Here below we've having a "pig pile". I have no clue where that term came from, but we LOVED to pig pile on our Dad! It was just so much fun pinning him down on the floor and all piling up on top of him. There I am in the second photo, lower left in the yellow/gold shirt, pumping my fist in the air at victory! Guess I wasn't into actually getting on the pig pile that day.
Our basement where we had so much fun as kids! I remember that table & chair set and that toy box. (Sorry little brother, I won't mention your name, but this was the only photo I could find of our basement. Maybe you just shouldn't have peed your pants.) As we got older this place turned into a teen hangout for the "older" kids, and when I was a teenager I eventually moved my bedroom down to the basement as my sister and I always fought in our shared room. I was the slob; she the neat freak and we just could NOT share a room any longer. Funny though that we ended up moving into our first apartment together and lived together for 5 years after moving out of our parent's home. This basement was a fun place to hang out. I wonder how they use it now?
This was an awesome house! The house that built me.
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