We made it!
Ryan unfortunately had to work late last night (on Good Friday… I know), so we didn’t make it to St. Pete until nearly 9 p.m.
On our mini road trip to my parents’ house, Ryan and I stopped at Starbucks for his and hers Frappuccinos to get a little something in our stomachs since we didn’t want to show up feeling ravenous.
Once we arrived, Sadie practically peed herself in excitement. She made a beeline for every single member of my family and showered them in puppy love.
Yes, that is her butt on our kitchen table. Our family knows no boundaries when it comes to Sadie!
Since we arrived in St. Pete so late, my family was more than ready to eat. My mom and sister prepared a delicious dinner of ribs from Whole Foods, fresh fruit salad and asparagus.
I went back for thirds (maybe fourths?) of the ribs because they were so good! I haven’t had ribs in ages, and let me just say that Whole Foods knows how to do ‘em right!
After dinner, my sister Leslie and I nearly polished off a big bag of Stacy’s cinnamon sugar pita chips between the two of us. Those things are ridiculously addicting!
While munching away, Leslie and I sifted through a big box of our old school papers and random projects that my mom had saved throughout the years.
Check out my chompers! 
Can you believe I never “needed” braces? (I finally hunkered down and got Invisalign after I graduated college.)
When I was perusing my old work, I had to laugh at the comments on some of my report cards.
A common theme? I had “difficulty separating my social life from school.” Oops. 
On thing that remains constant to this day is my love for food… and writing about food…
My propensity for reading and writing still lives on… as does my lack of affinity for numbers and math. Ryan is constantly telling me how to divide up measurements for recipes when I want to cut a recipe in half.
(The little diamond notes where I fell in relation to other students (the black bar) in a standardized test in 7th grade.)
In the box I also found ribbons and my varsity and junior varsity letters from high school.
And my patches from girl scouts!
We had a great time on our little trip down memory lane.
Now I’ve got to go change because Ryan and I have a breakfast date with his dad in Bradenton.
See ya soon!
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baahahhah sadies butt on the table– so cute!.. ah thats so neat to look through old things like that!! i LOVE doing that! esp home videos!
Starbucks is the best driving treat!
Aw, you are so cute in that picture when you were younger! I love the report card comments–too cute!
I remember girl scouts! Those were the good old days!
I absolutely LOVE looking through old school papers!
I love going back and reading my permanent records. So fun to see what teachers thought of me as a kid!
Trips down memory lane are the best! My brother is graduating highschool this year so we dug out all my old work from school, it was super fun to look through!
What a little cutie you were! I am on my last tray of Invisalign and am also excited to be invisible braces free. i feel like such an old lady every time I tell someone I have to “go take out my teeth” before sitting down to a meal. But the results are so worth it, aren’t they?
Lol I said the same thing! And if I misplaced them, I’d be like, “Where are my teeth!?”
Gosh it’s the biggest pain of my life, from cleaning to removing! Can’t wait to be done in July!
OMG I have the exact same situations with my teeth and Invisalign ( I did not HAVE to have braces so i opted not to, but now that im in college I got self conscious). But now that I do have invisilign.. I HATE the little white things they have to put on me teeth soo annoying if you have never had anything on your mouth! But it makes me feel better to hear that they worked for you!! !
Also I am from NC, (Born in Charlotte Area, go to college in Raleigh-Durham area) and I know you are thinking about moving here! I think that you would absolutely love it! Great place to live!
I always say “Why was I given the option to have braces when I was a kid? Of course I was gonna say no!” My kids will not have a choice. 🙂
It’s always so fun to go through old items from school/childhood!!
Have a lovely weekend with your family.
This brought back a lot of memories for me since I pretty much have the same stuff buried away somewhere in my parents’ house! Did you do track in HS? Maybe you were a sprinter…..the distance girls didn’t mingle too much with the sprinters!
I couldn’t keep up with you!! 🙂 I only did track freshman year and I was awful, so I switched to water polo.
Those comments are hilarious! I am a 3rd grade teacher, so they really made me laugh as I can totally relate! Also, wanted to share with you that this morning I cooked some egg whites and topped it with a slice of cheese. Since I am Jewish and we are in the middle of Passover, I couldn’t put it on a bagel thin or piece of toast, so instead I went for the whole wheat matzah. Because of your [many] cheese and jam posts, I figured I’d try to slop some strawberry jam to the sandwich. You are totally right! DELISH!! 🙂
Here’s a doozy: when I was in 4th grade, my teacher called my parents in for a meeting because the teacher had concerns.
Turns out, the teacher thought I had social problems. I never spoke in class. She watched me at recess and I never really spoke…I’d just go play soccer with all the boys.
I just told my parents that the teacher told us not to talk in class so I didn’t. I was a strict rule follower when I was a young one!
That is adorable!
Love that picture of you as a young kid! I like to look at old things too when I go to my parents’, it’s feels good remembering old times and being with your family. Have a good Easter week end!
I love looking at my old old school stuff — my mom kept tons of stuff for me and my sisters and we each have a huge blue tub full of pictures, report cards, old school projects, plus our baby books + other photo albums. I love looking through it all!
How cute! This makes me want to go through my old high school stuff :-). I swear we were the same in elementary school. I ALWAYS got the comments about needing to be less social and talking too much. And math was not a strengths for me either…but writing and talking totally were. I got a gold star in both!
Oh I love going down memory lane!! It is so fun!
My parents are the same way with our dogs, I can only imagine what they will be like with our children (oh geez)! lol!
My grandma lives by St Pete! yay! I love going to vist her there, the weather is so much nicer than up here in Chicago : )
Ryan and I say the same thing about my parents with our future kids!
awww what a lovely trip down memory lane.
Hope you have a lovely visit with your family! 🙂
I love to look at old pictures from when I was younger! It’s funny how some things never change – enjoy easter with your family!
Aww cute picture! I absolutely love looking at old report cards, they’re so funny to see. That’s hilarious, you were quite the talker in class! I seemed to have the same problem 🙂
Awww, I love memory lane! I think if I did it now I would cry since I’m graduating from the 16th grade in two weeks. Yikkkkkes-a-beee. Anywho, one more sweet-less day!!
So funny, I’m teaching first grade now and we’re writing Very Hungry First Grader books! Guess it was a great idea 😉
hahaha, your report card comments really made me laugh, because I know they are EXACTLY the same as mine, particularly the “working quietly on her own” comment. I was way too social! I also always love love loved reading and writing, and wanted math to die 🙂
Your school pic is so cute!
How fun! I love looking through my elementary and high school stuff, such good memories! We’re working on a photo display for our wedding right now and I keep finding the funniest pictures, not a bad way to spend an evening.
Awww I love going down memory lane!! And I love seeing my old girl scout patches too…brings back so many memories!!
Wow you got phenomenal scores for reading and writing! No wonder you’re such a wonderful/beautiful writer and it’s why I love reading your blog so much. I had problems with math and reading/writing so I had to go to this special after school called Kumon to help with it. Writing still frustrates me to this day….that’s why I haven’t started a blog yet, ha! 🙂
I love looking through old memory boxes. I did a lot of plays in high school and I always enjoy reading through notes people gave me and the playbills and such.
I still have so many of my progress reports from elementary school and they all say the same thing! Apparently I was very talkative. 😉
Aw, you were such such a cute little girl!! I have my old brownie sash too. It just made the move across the country with me! I love trips down memory lane 🙂
Awww going through old stuff is so much fun! 😀
Happy Easter!
I love The Very Hungry First Grader book lol
Pita chips are so good but highly addicting! I love looking through my school. I still have my girl scout vest with all the badges too. Enjoy your breakfast!
Awwww, that picture of you as a little kid is so cute! My teeth looked the same way before I got braces!
Loved the trip down memory lane. Have a great Easter!
Isn’t it such a trip to go through your childhood report cards and memorabilia ?! I think it’s the best thing a parent can do for their children, to keep these things for us to come back to see what kind of person we were, and what was important to us at that time of our lives. I don’t have children yet, but I hope to one day have a little treasure chest for them. It gets me thinking thought, these days with the internet, and the children around here (NYC), playing video games, will they have those kinds of things to put into a box for later? I heard that one school in nyc, are trying to get kids to use laptops for their school work, instead of writing in the good old black and white notebooks. That’s just a little bit weird for me…
Enjoy your time with your family!! BTW, what kind of frap did you get at starbucks?? I usually get the green tea frap made with non fat milk! So DELISH!! xoxo
I usually get the mocha light frappuccino. I looove them! The chai creme frapp is also amazing!
I absolutely love going down memory lane by looking at old photos, pictures, and assignments from school–brings back so many funny memories for me!
Sadie is hilarious! My puppy will do the same thins when my boyfriend comes over to visit or when my dad gets home from work. She gets so excited she starts jumping on everything and everyone
Those pictures of Sadie are ridiculous.
My old report cards say things like “emily does not share well.” Definitely still true…especially when things like my food are concerned.
What a cute post Julie!!! I have two sisters, and it never fails…when we all get together, we chat about teachers, friends, funny stories. All of our hubbies think it is hilarious. There is nothing more special than a sister. Have a great Easter Weekend!!!
Your picture is freakin’ adorable!
I’ve never had braces, but I really want to try Invisalign. Is it ridiculously expensive? I’ve looked into it but haven’t gotten a quote!
I love going back home and looking through old things like that! 🙂 The pic of Sadie on the table is too funny! Hope you have a great weekend!
Ahhh I LOVE going down memory lane… i just shared a few in a blog post a couple days ago from my elementary school days… i was a special child, to say the least 🙂
I remember being in 1st grade and trying to figure out the best way to finish up my vocabulary homework. Our class used one of those workbooks that had contextual sentences in paragraph form with blanks for the missing words. You had to pick the correct word out of a word-bank to fill in the blanks so that the sentences and paragraphs made sense. Well, being the efficient smart-ass that I was (and still am) I thought I’d work my hand at beating the system by choosing a word that fit the length of the line of the blank. So naturally, the short blanks got the shorter words, and the long blanks got the longer words. Genius, right?
Mmmm… not so much. All that led to was a parent-teacher conference… and a tutor. Ah, well, I thought it was a good attempt at being effectively efficient.
Another thing I vividly remember from 1st grade is kicking myself up into a handstand on the coach (using the back cushions for support, of course) to learn my weekly spelling words. My mom would sit next to my upside-down little self and help me learn how to spell them. I have no idea in the world why this worked for me… but it did. I remember my teacher gave out extra credit if we choose to learn an extra word that wasn’t on the weekly list. One week I choose to learn how to spell the word “encyclopedia” (probably because I saw my dad and my half-brother reading through them so much…). I think I blew my teacher out of the water when she saw that long-ass word on the answer sheet, spelled correctly thanks to my awesome handstands.
(PS) your hand writing in 1st grade is impeccable! That’s like how my handwriting is now 😛
I love going down memory lane and taking a look at my stuff from younger years! Love that you were quite the little socialite in school!
Your school picture is adorable btw!
Haha.. Those are so cute. I love looking at old things like that. I kept a diary from age 8 to high school and it’s hilarious, especially when I was in elementary school, had crushes, and still couldn’t spell very well. 🙂
I am a fifth grade math teacher near Boston and, let me tell you, I have a whole class of girls who need to “separate their social time from their work time in class”, haha! That is a very nice way to put it 😉
It is so fun to look back at old pictures, report cards, and projects.
Moms are the greatest! Everything so carefully and thoughtfully put away safely 🙂 Mine did the same thing from the very first day and kept doing it secretely until I was done University. Doesn’t just make you feel loved 🙂
Looking through old pictures are so fun! You were so cute! I went through a ROUGH period for a few years. I was an eye sore! haha. i hope your breakfast date was delicious!
Ooh, I had the opposite problem in elementary school. I sat by myself and read way too much (& I’m pretty sure I thought boys had cooties for a long time). No worries though, I’m definitely a social person now! lol
I love looking through my box of grammar school and high school papers and report cards. My mom kept them all which I used to think was a little much, but it’s so funny to look back on now.
awww haha this was sooo cute! I love how every period has the same comment at the end 😛 so funny. I wish I had my childhood work saved up~have a blessed day and Easter!
how fun!! I love trips down memory lane 🙂
Omg, my mom was OBSESSED with those Stacy’s pita chips and I completely agree, waaay too addicting! But oh so good!
I am getting braces fitted to my teeth AGAIN this Friday, I had them 11 years ago ( I am now 27), but my top teeth have moved a little over time, so back to braces for 5-6 months, they will be off right in time for my wedding!! Invisalign was going to cost me about 4 times as much as braces and with all the wedding costs, I will put up with it for the short time that i have to, not looking forward to the pain and ulcers though..