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what we remember

a few weeks ago my dear friend got to fly off to hawaii! i was very jealous, but let her go anyways. they actually flew into san francisco and spent the night. she was telling me about getting to their hotel in the middle of the night and those big hills. while she was telling me about this i had one image fill my mind and it stayed there for a few hours.

fast forward to today....my parents have just returned from about 6 weeks in florida! they had a great time and i think might have even been willing to stay a little longer. but i was talking with my dad today and he asked when they could see the kiddos. he does love his grandkids, which of course i love!! but he followed that with "we have a little gift for you!" do you know what? the exact same image that i talked about above filled my mind again!

you see, growing up, my dad and a lot of times my mom traveled for business. if it was just dad we would wake up in the morning to the peanuts on the counter! i loved those airplane peanuts. the switch to pretzels was a bit disappointing. back to the story. from time to time he'd bring home something from the area he was visiting. i had some wonderful gifts brought back that i'll have to share on later...

but by the time i was a bit older, you know, like 12-14, i decided t-shirts were no longer cool. we had quite an unique selection of t-shirts from a variety of interesting places. as my parents headed off to san francisco one year my sister and i told them rather bluntly we did not want a t-shirt! we asked them to be creative and get us something different. i know that sounds a little spoiled, but in our defense i think they asked us what we wanted this time:) so upon their return we were anxious to see what they had come up with. boy, were we surprised!!

do you see the connection yet??? my parents, gifts, san francisco???? the image is forever burned into my memory!!

they handed us each a bag. we could tell it felt soft but we were unprepared to pull out a cream handtowel with san francisco sights painted on it! mine had a wonderful picture, atleast half of the towel size, of a san francisco trolley! now...i was like 12. what on earth was i going to do with a hand towel that had a trolley on it? they were both very impressed with their gifts and my sister and i were a little well...let's just say we never turned down a t-shirt again!!!

so while my friend was talking about being in san francisco i pictured the hand towel that sat in my room for years. and today when my dad said he had a gift for me i asked "is it a hand towel?" he laughed and said, "see, you remember that one!"

and if you are sibling reading this - i don't know if you have a gift or not, but you must remember this: i am the baby and i did take care of their house, mail, and bills for 6 weeks, and i am the baby!!!!

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