collin, the fisherman, leah and me in the carraige
Have I have not been taking pictures like I should be! At least not on my camera... im currently obsessed with taking pictures and videos on my phone. But here is a picture that was taken MANY years ago... probably about 27 years ago actually. This shot was taken us outside of the house that I grew up in in Longwood Florida. My parents bought the house when they had 5 kids, i think, and my mother brought 7 newborns home to this house.This house held many beautiful Christmas dinners that cooked with love by my father, mother and grandmother, Josephine Cassell, and served by my brothers and neighbor boys in white shirts and metallic ribbon bowties.
This house held many birthday parties with brown paper bag and newspaper wrapping.
This house held many FHE nights where my siblings and I, one by one, would bare our testimonies standing on the brick fireplace hearth with our mouths so close to our FHE microphone.
This house was the place where many allnighters were pulled by my talented mother who would work away into the quiet nights on sewing projects like matching speedos for all of her boys made from the same sweet material. Or on a Christmas dress, actually 6, 1 for each of her girls and 1 for her. Or on an Easter present of baby doll clothes, blankets, pillows, crib pads, you name it she made it... for each of us.
This is the house where we would every school year receive a Father's Blessing from my dad, blessing us with good health, good study habits and the courage to choose the right.
This house was the place where friends would come and tell us that there was such a good feeling there.
This was the house where we had dogs, chicken, emus, horses, cows, goats, sheep and 7 boys tending them.
This was the house where my father helped my brothers raise money for their missions by helping them before school and before early morning seminary to water, weed and eventually sell thousands of saplings in the Munns Mission Pine Nursery aka, our backyard.
This is the house where I remember being loved so much by my brothers and sisters and mother and father.
Dang... Who knew I was going there? Not I. But it is what it is. I loved my childhood... I should share more stories about it... like the story of my 3 yr old brother building a bonfire in the front yard, or my bother's calf being slaughtered hanging from a tree in the back, or the time my brothers were doing gainers off the roof in to the pool, or the story of me and my sis attaching my brother to the flagpole in the front yard by his underwear... yeah there is a lot of good stuff.
