The backyard.  I’m sure I was trespassing when I opened the back gate to take a peek.  Those trees were little saplings last I remember.  They ripped out my old swingset and put in a new one, which is slightly upsetting.  Mine had two swings, monkey bars, a slide, and swinging rings, so much better than the new one.  Our neighbors would jump the fence to play on it.  I miss this yard, lots of running through sprinklers and setting up slip and slides in the summer.

My old elementary school, I was here for 5 years.  Many skipped classes to hang out with the gifted teacher and read at the library.  I also remembered the dreaded school plays and musicals, which consisted of the music teachers making children do horribly embarrassing things in terrible costumes all for the amusement of the adults.

My middle school where I was at for only grade 7 (Grades 5 and 6 were at Chisolm intermediate which we didn’t get to visit).  We were the inaugurating class and picked the name, mascot, and colors for the school.  I remember our US history teacher making a case for navy and gold vs. maroon and gold, saying that the maroon would fade and our football players would be running around in pink uniforms.  The name was extremely creative….the school address was Parkwood Hill and thus our school name was Hillwood Middle School.  They couldn’t use Parkwood because then our initials would have been PMS.  There’s a plaque with my name on it hanging on the walls for being among the top students of our year, that’s right.  While driving here, even my dad exclaimed that I was a spunky kid for biking 5 miles here at 5:30am in the morning for track practice, every single day.  Our house was at the far edge of the zone for bus service, literally only a couple houses down and I could have qualified.

Random tangent: Me sitting in the car under the 121 overpass at Preston in Plano for half an hour.  Accident in the intersection, the firetrucks came and blockaded us in.  I was lucky enough to be right at the front.  The cars were totaled but no one seemed to be terribly hurt.

Bored out of my mind, so what does a responsible adult do in my position?  Break out some of the alcohol.  We brought back two bottles of O’Riley’s Jamaican Rum Cream from our trip, and it’s amazing.  Kicks Bailey’s ass.  To my dismay, I can’t find a retailer that sells it in the states.  I guess that would explain why our fellow cruisers were pushing CASES full of the stuff back on the ship.  There are a couple places who sell it online, but the shipping is ridiculous and we got a decent deal in Jamaica.

Guess I’ll have to go back to Jamaica again.  Load myself on some jerk chicken, Red Stripe, and rum.  And hopefully avoid catching dengue fever like my poor darling boyfriend did.

New fence

Side yard, they killed all our grass storing materials

My turtle. The other one was sleeping.

Making pizza

Making german chocolate cake with strawberries in the middle, covered with cream cheese frosting with the sister