Flashback Friday 6.25

The challenge was to do a layout of where you grew up, where you thought you were going to live and where you live now. So....as you know I can get a tad windy on stuff like this. Snort. Not that I can't wax elegant most times. Bwahahaha!!! So the vision isn't what I planned (most aren't actually) and I'm not sure what I think of this. However its out there and DONE. yeah!!! 8.5x11 hybrid layout. Few ingredients - Karen Foster notebook paper, creative cafe, qk hearts & holiday alpha!

journaling: We pulled out the driveway of our beautiful house in PA when I was 15 years old. Moving to FL with what we could take in a VW hatchback. There were 4 of us. My parents and brother. 6 weeks before my sophomore year ended. And everything else was left behind. SIGH!

I had always thought I’d live in PA. For some reason I figured I marry a farmer and live on a farm. WHY when I hated the animal smells I have no idea why I had that in mind, but there it was. And then THE MOVE.

I was sooooooo homesick. Couldn’t take to anyone on the phone without crying. Wrote letters everyday to my gram and best friend (who still is a BFF) Elaine, who’s parents were wonderful letting me call collect when I ran out of money for a pay phone. OH yeah. Those were the days lol!!!!

So I completed my last 6 weeks of school and we were just hanging out in a temporary abode because housing hadn’t really been sorted out. My dad went down a head of time had a job and he had been there for months looking things over. And here we were. I was miserable but I had no idea how miserable my brother was. Until he ran away - back home. To my grandparents house and sadly he didn’t have the best relationship w/them because well he was a boy. He hitched his way back and omg! the ruckus he caused. So it was decided that he would stay up there during the summer and my grandparents bought me a plane ticket to I could come up to. First Class. My first plane ride. BY MYSELF. Until coincidently I ran into one of the gang coming home from leave in the airport that would be on the same plane. A God moment no doubt.

So we turned that corner and a couple of years went by and we graduated. And I always thought I’d move back home then. My grandparents wanted me to live w/them. So not a good move. Really. Don’t get me wrong they were my beloved, but I would be such a brat because they spoiled me rotten. So I made excuses, visit and cry when I had to leave and come back to FL. I got a job, then I got a career job, made friends, had a boyfriend or two and then more years went by. The same pattern. I’d go home for vacation and return - making excuses to stay in FL. Every now and then family would come to FL after we had Disney World by then. And then I stopped making excuses and decided that FL was home and the people living up north - well what were they thinking. All that COLD weather and SNOW.

I don’t visit as often as I used to. I do try to get to the Pennsy side when I go to NJ where Tom’s family lives but I get so involved with them that time just goes on by and we’re coming back home. Yeah home. Where my heart is.......who would’ve thunk. 6.23.10