Flashback Friday: Early Edition, Week 2

We moved off of South Padre Island just before Spring Break. My mom didn't want us to be around all of the crazy college kids that would be swarming the beach. So, we found a little townhouse in the town of Port Isabel which was just across the bridge from the island. I remember living next to a little tourist attraction type of park. {remember I was only in 2nd grade at this point...7 years old....so my memories are hazy} The park had a ship {part of one?} set up in it that you could walk around on and actually go inside. I remember my little sister and I would roller skate over to it and play on it sometimes. There was also a statue of a pirate in the park. He looked just like Captain Hook to me except the statue was ginormous. If all of my stuff wasn't out in boxes, I'd have some wicked awesome pictures of me and my family climbing on Captain Hook. :0) There was a lighthouse there too {not in the park} that we got to tour. All I remember is that there were a lot of steps to get to the top!

Living in Texas was totally different from Utah. The scenery was different, the weather was different {talk about humid!}, and the bugs were definitely different. In Utah I remember playing with grasshoppers and my brother would scare me with daddy long leg spiders. {It's the reason I'm arachnaphobic to this day!} In Texas...there were cockroaches. EVERYWHERE. And not little cockroaches. HUGE ones. Two inches long and fat too. I just had a shiver go up my spine thinking about them. Gross! They climbed the walls, were on the ceiling, in the corners...hiding. It wasn't often that you saw them, but they were there. And it didn't matter where you lived. You could have had the nicest, biggest house in town and had your big nice house fumigated monthly...you'd still have them. They say roaches can live through anything. I believe it. Anyway...what I remember specifically about living in this townhouse was that there was this loft in it. My brother and I were best buds even though he was a jerk. :0) So, we had a set of bunk beds up there and that's where we slept. My parents were gone one night {I'm assuming my older sister was babysitting} and he told me that roaches could crawl in my mouth while I was sleeping. He was very descriptive in telling me how this could possibly happen. Up until that point I thought I was always just safe in my bed from the little monsters. But nooooo, my mean old brother had to ruin it for me. I refused to go to sleep. So, being the "nice" brother he was, and the tomboy that I was, we set up booby traps for the buggars. We found fish hooks and put them inside little chunks of bread and set them all around the loft. You see, we knew that the roaches would see the bread and want to eat it. And once they took a bite...bam! They'd get hooked just like a fish. Brilliant plan! We also sprayed the entire room with roach killer. It stunk so bad up there. :0) But, after all of this, I felt safe enough to sleep. We didn't catch any roaches though.

Next week: Star Spangled Kids!