Sunday Confessional - I still owned my baby blanket, up until last month...

Up until last month I still owned my baby blanket along with a bunch of childhood mementos.  Dr. J and I only had three feet in and ABF truck when we moved cross country eight and half years ago, so we packed up all our childhood memories and stuck them in my mother-in-laws basement.  Then we moved five times, and I've been so grateful they were safe, but with the buying of this house and the settling down of roots we decided it was time to bring our childhood memories home.  I decided to go through my boxes and found tons of treasures.  Shorts my father bought me when I was four, which like all of the clothes my father ever bought me were from the boy's section.  He never got over the fact that I was a daughter.  I also found my baby blanket which for years I slept with, I mean like into high school and an original pillow pet that my mother made me 26 years before the trend.  I was going to daycare/preschool at the time while she finished her teaching degree and they insisted each child could only have a pillow.  I was devastated because I was a stuffed animal collector and so my mother sewed both me and my sister a pillow that looked just like a stuffed animal.  We seriously were the luckiest kids ever, although I'm realizing now we should have patented the idea.  Also floating around in the boxes were all my school reports, report cards, an article I wrote while a cub reporter, all of my art work, letters from every missionary friend I ever wrote, all the letters my family and friends wrote me while I was in college, and what appears to be every note/piece of creative genius given to me by my high school best friend Pamela W.  It was an incredible trip down memory lane.  Like for one, I had no memory of the fact that Eric Lopez wrote me letters while he was on his mission, I thought he hated me in high school.  Also if you had to pick who I loved most on shear volume, it's amazing I didn't marry Pam :)  I decided though that some pieces needed to be thrown out, and so I tossed all the missionary letters that weren't from really good friends, or my high school boyfriend (who by the way dumped me while on his mission because he found someone while out he "loved as well".  I actually got a big kick reading that letter again.) or the letters from the boy I loved in college (52 exactly, one every two weeks from across the ocean), or all of Pamela's stuff (I mean it really was art and she was my best friend, which is why Peach's middle name has double meaning for me), and the letters from my mom and my sisters from when I was in college because that is part of my history.  I also kept all my school stuff, but decided it was time to say goodbye to the shorts that had been loved almost to bits, the blanket that was bits (I actually wish I would have kept it, which is partially why I threw it out, a little concerned the taters would have found their way back onto my bed), and the pillow pet that my mother took from me to take to her classroom.  I of course kept my wedding dress and my college journal,but tossed wedding thank you cards that I couldn't find address for but had been holding on to for years.  Sorry if you were one of them.  Thanks for all your love.  As for doctor J's stuff I hauled it back site unseen.  Who knows what treasures wait for us there, just waiting to be uncovered.  

I used to wear these when I was four.  They are definitely too short for E, but not to lean.

My baby bro showing off my blanket.  Notice the blue.  I told you my dad wanted a boy.