Like Being a Kid Again...

On Saturday, I visited my grandparents' house in Minnesota for the first time in a few years.  It brought out some weird nostalgia in me even though there is not plans for my grandma to move out of there anytime soon.  My mom and my sister were there with her two kids and I had Milo and Tessa and it was like the old days when I was a kid having little kids roaming around there and playing upstairs again.  It's a pretty special and unusual thing to be 34 and still have your grandparents living in the same house they did when you were born and it's even more rare for that house to be the house your parent grew up in. 

This is it, where I spent many Christmas days and summer weekends.  When my grandpa was alive his friend would come over in the mornings to visit and the kitchen would be full of grandkids and the dog barking and tapping around and it was always kind of crazy but fun.  Before that my mom grew up here as one of five kids. When I was really young we were here so often we had a season pass to the public pool.  In the slants of the roof and the garage there are many little doors into storage spaces and my grandpa could always find more old baseball equipment or toys for my brother and where the old prom dresses and baton uniforms and school jackets hung. The rooms upstairs are so small that they don't have closets and everything was hung in built-ins in the hallway.  The tan siding and deck and sliding door into the kitchen were 1990's updates.  It used to be brown with a regular window and the front step is still under the deck. 

It is so enjoyable to return and see everything the way it's always been.  My grandma is a tasteful lady so the décor had been updated through the years and not every single knick knack and decoration is the same but some things never change.  For example, this bulletin board that we all love to look at that hangs by the phone in the basement:

That anniversary picture in the middle is from their 40th in 1994 and that is probably the newest thing on this board.  Actually, the school photo of my cousin in the bottom corner could be from the early 2000s. 

And then there is the plaque wall, also in the basement.  These are just a few.  I wonder if my aunts and uncles were jealous of my mom's overrepresentation on the wall.  In fact, she was the only one of five with any awards on the wall.  It's kind of like that time my brother and sister were both Athlete of the Year and I wasn't.  But I did get a "most improved" trophy one time at basketball camp...

You can't see it well, but that says valedictorian! 

Most of the plaques and frames were my grandpa's however.  He gave a lot to education and high school sports in his time. 

Too bad my kids never knew him...he would have loved these little monsters. 

Before I had kids I loved to look at pictures at both of my grandparents' houses.  I got a few minutes on this visit and found this picture of my great grandma Margaret, which is where I got Tessa's middle name. 

A lovely lady, she was.  I don't know of any other young pictures of her and she died young after having 14 children.  I think this might have been a wedding photo since there was a matching one of my great grandpa. 

Hopefully this place will stay the same for a long time.  It makes me think about how strange it must have been when we moved into our first house after buying it from an elderly woman who had been living their since 1954.  At some point the familiar décor comes off the walls and the storage spaces get emptied. 

OK, enough nostalgia.  I have to go find my kids' sandals now.  It was 90 degrees when we returned home last night (a thunderstorm went through so today is much cooler but the time has still come) and Tessa is still wanting to wear boots everywhere.  Ben wore hand me down sandals at Milo's age and they ended up being worn out by the end of summer so I think I have to (ugh) buy Milo new sandals and I'm sure Ben's from last year won't fit either.