Category Archives: Flashback Friday

Flashback Friday Hostess Style

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I’m sure most have heard the awful news that Hostess is going out of business.  I haven’t had a Hostess product in awhile, but I have chalked up quite a few indulgences in my 36 years.  How you eat a Hostess Cupcake is more of a personal preference than the underwear you choose to wear under your chinos.  I preferred to peel off the frosting and set it aside.  I would then break the cake in half and lick out the cream filling.  I would eat the cake next and finally the frosting wafer.

I loved the two pack of cupcakes.  Whenever I bought it, I would eat one cupcake with the intention of saving the second for the next day.  Inevitably, I would eat that second cupcake within the hour.  Screw Sprinkles – I like Hostess Cupcakes. Besides the cupcakes, a very close runner up in my Hostess indulgences were the Fruit Pies.  I remember eating these all the time as a kid.  They were so much better than real pie because of that layer of sugary glaze on the outside.  I didn’t like pie crust as a kid because it wasn’t sweet enough.  This solved that problem and made a piece of pie a convenient, handheld delight.

I liked the blueberry one the best, but those were sometimes hard to find.  I made Ryan go out and find me one when I was pregnant with one of the kids and I believe I had to settle for apple.  I had such a huge craving that I probably could have eaten 6 in one sitting.  I loved everything about these pies – the taste, the weight (they were heavy!) and even the wrapper.  Luckily, I didn’t eat 6 because I may have gone into a diabetic coma or had a heart attack.  The “real fruit” pies are absolutely horrible for you.

Fruit Pie Nutritional Information

Another one of my favorites was the Ho Ho.

It was basically just a cupcake flattened and rolled up, but the frosting was that waxy stuff that left a greasy feeling in your mouth.  I always tried to completely unroll the Ho Ho before I ate it, but that was a next to impossible feat.

Hostess held the market on so many scrumptious little pastries like SnoBalls, Ding Dongs, Donettes, Suzy Q’s, Chocodiles and Sweet Rolls.  Each one had their own little qualities and characteristics that was unique to that one product.  The store brand knock offs didn’t really compare to the Hostess brands.  They would do in a pinch, but they just didn’t quite satisfy that Hostess craving.

One Hostess product that I never really liked was the Twinkie.  I didn’t like the texture of the cake.  It was way too spongy for my liking.  I never felt like I fully got it chewed up in my mouth.  Also, the urban legend that a Twinkie had a nearly infinite shelf life never much appealed to me.

I know I’m not the only one that feels like a little part of their childhood is dying with that blue and red cellophane wrapper.  These products really are snack classics.

 

Flashback Friday

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I have been looking for this picture for about a month.  I was talking to someone one – it’s been so long ago that I can’t even remember – about praying manti (is that mantis in the plural form?).  I mentioned that I had taken a really cool photo of one that was hanging out on the tree in our front yard when we lived in Iowa.

I thought I had posted it on Facebook and after searching through about 700 photos, I realized I didn’t.  I assumed it was saved on my external harddrive which quit working about a year ago after it jumped off the table onto the floor.  (If anyone knows a good external harddrive repair man, I would like their number.)

I figured the picture was lost until I could check the harddrive, but since this is the first time I have really wanted to look at something on there, you can understand why I haven’t been in a mad rush to get it fixed.  As it turns out, the picture was on a flashdrive that has been right in front of my face all along.

Anywhooooo, these bugs are so prehistoric looking, I just stared at it for a good 20 minutes.  And, if you look closely, he or she was looking right back at me.  I didn’t notice that until I looked at the picture.

Flashback Friday – Random Feet Stories

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This is Kamryn, about a year and a half ago, eating pretzels with her feet.  I find this completely disgusting.

I don’t like feet.  I don’t have a phobia or anything like that, but I do not like people touching me with their feet or touching other people’s feet.  I don’t really like anyone touching my feet either, but foot massages just feel so damn good.

Ryan’s feet are some of the ugliest feet I have ever seen.  His toes are all different shapes and sizes and his 3rd toe is longer than my pinky finger.  I do have small hands, but even so, that is a freakishly long toe.

You can’t argue the freakishness of Ryan’s feet.

A story I often tell – and just told last weekend involves what I thought was an endearing moment between me and Ryan.  It was very early in our relationship, probably within the first 6 months, and Ryan and I were sitting in our little apartment watching TV.  I was sitting on the floor and he was lying on the couch behind me…running his fingers through my hair.

We were talking about something and I turned and looked up at him as he laid on the couch, his hands behind his head.  He was combing my hair with his feet!  YUCK!  He, of course thought it was funny.  I did not.

What stemmed this whole post about feet was who else, but Rory!  He chose to eat his snack mix with his feet.Since everyone else has had their feet and disgusting activities displayed here.  Here is a picture of my foot.  No one ever tells me my feet are ugly, but they do tell me that they are freakishly small.  And I guess they are, but I would rather have teeny tiny feet than finger toes.  

My toes are so small and close together I can’t wear Vibrams.  I also can’t use those toe separators that they sell to paint your toenails – it feels like my little piggies are getting ripped apart.

That reminds me…Rory and I were reciting “This Little Piggie Went To Market” the other day.  I asked him if he knew what a market was.  He lied and said he did and then retracted it and said he didn’t.  I told him it was like a grocery store.  He changed his rhyme to “This little piggie went to Ralph’s…”

 

Flashback Friday

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My Flashback Friday post isn’t so much about the picture, since I just took it about 15 minutes ago, but a reminder of the made up or mispronounced words that Kamryn and Rory have had.

There is nothing better than listening to kids try and say words that are a little difficult to pronounce or not even difficult to pronounce, but just wrong or made up.  Here are some of my favorites along with their translations.

What My Kids Say Translation
Gobbles Goggles
Hangaburger Hamburger
Matatoes Potatoes
Shmoopy (our cat we had) Zzzzzzzzth
Nunu Milk
Daddy Nunu Beer
Me Mommy
Da Daddy
Uh Come here
Acause Because
Melmo Elmo
Happy Milk Happy Meal
Oatmilk Oatmeal
Bawk Bawk Chicken

All of those little words and mispronunciations are here one day and gone the next.  For instance, Kamryn mispronounced hamburger until about 6 months ago.  They made a little book at school called The Humungous Hamburger and suddenly, she wasn’t saying hangaburger anymore.  That was Ryan’s favorite.

Flashback Friday

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I have been talking a lot about how big the kids are getting and even though Rory is only 3, it seems like forever since he was a little baby.  And Kamryn, well she might as well be 30 years old because I can barely even remember when she was an infant.

One thing that is so shocking is how much both of them have changed since they were babies.  Rory is still holding on to some of his baby characteristics in his face, but I think Kamryn has officially lost all of her baby traits.  In fact, when I look at the pictures side by side, I’m starting to wonder if they gave me the wrong baby at first and snuck the right one in later one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tell everyone that Kamryn was born with a ton of black, curly hair and as crazy as it sounds, here is the proof.  Her hair is so blonde now – with all of the swimming and sun she has been getting.

Poor Rory – he doesn’t have nearly as many infant pictures as Kamryn.  Definitely a second child.  He was in the NICU for 2 weeks after he was born and so all of the pictures of him during that time were mostly taken with camera phones and aren’t very good.  This picture was the day he went home from the hospital.  His hair, or what hair he had anyway, was also fairly dark and he is my little woodhead now.

 

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Flashback Friday

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Ten years ago, right next to the beam on the left, Ryan got down on one knee and proposed.  To me…in case there is any confusion.  We were on our way to a wedding, close to where Ryan grew up and he had picked up the ring on the way out of town.

It wasn’t a surprise that he was going to propose.  Some may call me a bit of a control freak and while I didn’t dictate where or when the proposal would happen, I did know it was eminent.  Ryan didn’t tell me where we were going, but I did hold the little jewelry box in my lap the entire way and tried to guess where we were going to stop.

As it turned out, I had never been to this bridge before so the chances of me guessing it were nil.  The bridge didn’t hold any significance to us as a couple until that day 10 years ago.

We made it back only one other time and it was when I was pregnant with Kamryn.  That is when I actually took the above picture.  I figured we should have a picture of the location in case the bridge got washed away in a flood or something other natural disaster.

I did a little editing on the photo in an attempt to show my artistic abilities on taking a color photo and making it black and white.  Don’t act like you’re not impressed.

Flashback Friday

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I’m going to flashback to about 2 hours ago.  We went to the Safari Park today with friends and the kids had so much fun.  They literally ran themselves into exhaustion by 2:00.

Whenever we go to the San Diego Zoo or the Safari Park, we are obviously going to check out the animals, but I love it when we happen upon some fun extras.  Today was full of them!

There were performers who I think were on America’s Got Talent or one of those shows.  I don’t know if they ever won anything or not because I only enjoy watching the embarrassing performers – these guys (and girl) were definitely not in that category.

I don’t know the name of the dancers, but they did a lot of acrobatics, some fancy jump roping and fire limbo.  I’m easily impressed when people are bouncing around and flipping effortlessly.  I can do a cartwheel.  Or if I’m getting really ambitious, I think I could land a round off, but other than that, I have no skills.  I can’t even do a somersault anymore – I’m afraid I’ll break my neck.  The woman in the second picture literally bent her body in half.  Then she kept her head and torso in one place while the lower half of her body stepped around.  It was one of the most unnatural looking things I have ever seen, but she did with a smile on her face the entire time.  They also were playing the Follow The Leader Song.  When we were in Riviera Maya, they played this song in the night club at the resort we stayed at every night.  It’s so catchy and makes you want to shake what your mama gave ya.

Rory learned how to play the drums – he’ll be able to draw on this when he’s sitting in drum circles on the beach in about 15 years.

And we took our token picture of the kids on the black rhino.

At one point the kids completely drenched themselves in a little water play area.  We didn’t bring along extra clothes so Rory has on a sweatshirt that he had on earlier and I made a tube top out of Kamryn’s jacket.  I just wanted that to be noted that I don’t let Kamryn wear bike shorts and a make-shift tube top in public without a reason.

Flashback Friday

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Last month, after tromping around in some muddy strawberry fields, I found Rory in the bathroom cleaning his shoes.  Kamryn tends to like to clean her shoes as well.  I would always find her in the bathroom with a sink full of water and shoes floating around.

I never insisted that the kids have clean shoes and I don’t even recall ever telling them not to step in mud, but for some reason, having clean shoes is a must for my children.  And then I remembered something.

I had a flashback of my own after seeing Rory cleaning his shoes.  I recalled a time when I was about 6 or 7 and I was cleaning my own muddy shoes.  I really liked cleaning my shoes.  I preferred to let the mud dry and harden in the treads of my shoes and then chisel it out with a butter knife.

During this particular shoe de-mudding, I was scraping away when the knife slipped and I stabbed my left wrist.  When I say “stabbed”, it was more like scraping off that top layer of skin.  It didn’t even bleed, but I thought I was going to die.

Around this time I had heard about or seen something in a movie that had to do with someone slitting their wrists to kill themselves.  I obviously didn’t understand the logistics of how one ended one’s life in that manner.

This is what I find really funny.  I was sitting on the driveway, by myself.  My mom was just inside – I could hear her in the kitchen, but I didn’t run in to tell her I thought I was going to die.  I just sat there, glancing at the door, then back at my wrist.  My adrenaline was pumping and I was close to crying.  Nothing hurt, I was upset at the thought of my impending doom.

After about 5 minutes, I was still alive and I took that as a sign that I just may pull through this inadvertent suicide attempt.  I continued chipping away at the dried mud on my shoes, careful to keep my left wrist well out of the vicinity of the butter knife.

Obviously, I don’t find suicide funny, but the mindset of a child.  Kamryn will come up with bizarre things to be worried about and at times it can be exhausting trying to explain to her that she has nothing to be concerned about.  Having a memory like this is a reminder that kids just don’t understand everything yet and while it seems like common sense to me, as an adult, my kids haven’t quite gotten to that point yet.

Flashback Friday

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This is one of my favorite pictures ever.  I was on a trip to Vegas with my good friends Kellie and Sarah a little over 2 years ago when we happened upon these two fellas.  They weren’t overly thrilled about taking a picture with me – something tells me I was not the first to request one, but you can’t dress up like Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas and not expect people to get excited about it.

Dumb And Dumber is definitely in my top 10 comedies, if not top 10 movies of all time.  I can watch it over and over and it still makes me laugh.  There are countless lines from the movie that you can quote throughout your day.  One of my previous co-workers and I would always use “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.” whenever someone would mention how unlikely it was that something was going to happen.

And who hasn’t shouted, “Kick his ass, Sea Bass!”?  Or, “No, you can’t do that… you can’t triple stamp a double stamp, you can’t triple stamp a double stamp!”  And then covered your ears while yelling “LA LA LA LA LA LA!”  I also can’t go to a baseball game or anyplace that sells hotdogs without saying either in my head or aloud, “Foot long!  Whose got the foot long?!”