Texas Trip Part 2 – Reliving Memories

Hey everyone! Ready for part 2?

WARNING:

Long post with a BUNCH of pictures! It is highly advised to grab a drink and a snack and be in a nice comfortable spot! LOL! I have a nice big overload, so, prepare to be here for a while. Or take short breaks in between sections of pictures – that always works too. :-)

So we last end off with us arriving at our old house! This is where we stayed in Texas. I stayed one night here, but the rest of the time I was at my BFF’s house.

Here’s the tour! This is our property…

The parking lot…

The Fellowship Hall. This is where Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas parties happen and it’s where we used to have church before we moved into the other building.

Oh, there’s the other building! This is where we now have church – well, used to anyways. It’s up for sale now. :-(

Look at the mansion across the street! They’ve been building it for some time now. I pray and pray someone won’t buy this land to tear it down and build it into a hideous mansion too – that’s what everyone’s doing around us. The mobile homes behind us were built into gorgeous houses as well.

Sidewalk!

Um more sidewalk. XD

My backyard. The two swing sets are ours, but we left it here. We’ll get them once someone buys the property.

Why the slide is stuck in Fort Makenzie I do not know. To the left, you see our house! It’s a parsonage, right next to the church.

Fort M & R! (Madison and Russell, my little brother’s name.) And the rest of the backyard.

That’s the door to the nursery, which cannot be opened from the outside.

Past the basement entrance is what we call the Loveshed. It stands with a little bit of love – it’s very worn down.

The old RV. My dad used to travel with our pastor all over the world in this thing! it doesn’t work anymore, but we’ve been in it a lot. My dad used to hang out in here to have alone time with God.

An overview of the main backyard. There’s my brother and my mom in the middle by fort M&R, and my dad is walking to us.

Past the RV is some more land. It’s like a big pasture/prairie/grassland thing. XD

The sun is setting! Which makes everything more dramatic/emotional. I teared up when I took these photos.

When it rains, a little creek is formed between our property and our neighbors. They are very nice neighbors. When we lived there sometimes when they would mow, they would mow our land too.

Backyard photos…

This is a flag my brother and I made before we left. We painted on it, “Fort M & R.” Sadly, it tore in two. Where the other half went is still a mystery.

Yay! Here comes the GIGANTIC overload of photos. Have your drink ready?

I am staring at my old backyard, and am close to tears, is what these photos are meant to portray. This is what I left behind. 

I plan to edit these and post some edited versions later.

Listen to some emotional music while you view this, won’t you? I just love dramatic and emotional things. Music makes everything more dramatized!!!

(The music will stop playing automatically when it is done – It doesn’t loop so you don’t have to scroll back up to turn it off.)

             *There used to be a bunch of random photos of me here* Congratulations for reading this far! That wasn’t so bad, was it?!

The fire escape! :O Never of which, thankfully, we had to use.

It’s fun to climb on though. Not fun when you discover there are wasps nests under it. My dad knows that very well. XD

My swing!!! ^_^

My face… My outfit… Oh dear. :P

….AND JUMP OFF! :D

Can we go inside now, dad?

Home sweet home. NOPE! Not anymore! *cries*

I am not giving Florida a chance, am I? Nope. Texas will always be my home. So yes, this is my home sweet home.

This is the nursery. I met my BFF’s in this place.

See that mini slide? That used to be in the middle of the room. Allie, Piper and I would march around it singing praises to God, the only way we knew how. I can still remember the tune…..it was off some kid’s praise and worship CD.

That’s the door that can only be opened from the inside, remember?

Our laundry room.

It used to have shelves, and obviously, a washer and a dryer. :-)

The Foyer bathroom.

The hallway to my dad’s office…

The downstairs kitchen…

Another entrance to the laundry room, but no one ever goes that way. It was blocked with junk anyways. XD

My daddy’s office. It used to look way different before some nice friends came and totally re-did the downstairs! ^_^

This is the studio. We planned on having ministry podcasts and videos here, but….I guess not? Florida changed all of that. Sigh. God had a different plan for us.

Recognize the green screen? There was also green screen fabric I used, too. This was where I made my stop motions requiring a green screen. I must say, it added some pretty cool effects! Check my old stop motions, like “Deeper Than Any Doll’s Gone Before”, and the “Mystery of the Bastille Ring” series.

I wonder who received this? It’s not mine. Sure does look sweet, though.

Bathrooms and stuff deep in the studio. None of which is ever used anymore. XD

Ah, the stairs. I always run up these stairs really fast skipping every other step, timing myself. My brother and I would race up these stairs practically every day.

The landing, and then the stairs turn.

There’s a window at the landing. A nice-smelling pumpkin candle would be here, and here’s where the rainbow can alway be seen after stormy weathers.

Ah, we just came upstairs!

Here’s the fire exit. It does not set off an alarm, and we have gone through it before.

My sister’s closet.

The hall way!

The kitchen, which used to have a refrigerator and a nice dining table and chairs in it. XD

See that window? That was my mom’s window. She would look out it to see the whole backyard.  She could always keep a mother’s eye on us as we swung. <3

That desk is where my mom’s computer used to be.

Straight through the door, is my room.

There’s my room! Well, if you want to be technical, it’s my little brother’s room too. But…let’s just go ahead and call it my room. XD

There used to be two beds on each side of the room. And yes, the 30-year-old highly stained blue carpet. LOL.

My Aunt Kathy came in one summer of 2011 and decorate our whole house! This was my side of the room she painted. There used to be a cubby under the ‘M.’

There’s my brother’s side of the room, with the “SPLAT!”

I love that window. So many memories…summer nights, gazing through that window watching airplanes and satellites’s tiny little lights fly threw the sky.

Listening to audiobooks or the Bible, slowly drifting off to the wonders of slumber…

There’s my dresser. I let my brother have the 3 drawers to the right. Aren’t I nice? No, my mom ad dad made me share. XD It really was mine at our townhouse we lived in before we move here, though.

I love this dresser! *hugs the dresser*

I kid you not, I opened every drawer and door in this house. Just to smell it.

I love my ‘smell.’

‘RDL’ are the initial of my brother’s full name. :-) There used to be a cubby under it.

The light switch with the stickers on it XD.

Haha, the closet aka the breaker panel. This was the closet my mom, my brother and I shared. 0.o

The shower bathroom.

‘Our’ bathroom. Yes, we called it Our Bathroom. :D

THE LIVING ROOM! So many memories…even the painful ones, like of me sitting on the couch with my mom, me wincing as my arm got poked with a needle week after week, have turned into cherished memories. Every night, we’d come here altogether as a family to either eat Chinese food and watch Little House on the Prairie and other old TV shows or to sip Goodnight Grape Sleepytime Kids tea and watch Andy Griffith. Or movies. Or just family time!

On Sunday afternoon after church, the windows would be open and it would be full of brightness. A breeze would come in a and make the place feel light, floaty, and magical. ,y brother would play the wii, or my mom and dad would go out to eat lunch and my sister would babysit us and we’d watch Spy Kids 4, 3, and 2. (we just recently watched Spy Kid’s 1 in our new house. FAVORITE. SPY KIDS. EVER.)

With the windows open, even late in the day it would brighten up the whole room! The whole HOUSE would be bright and airy.

That’s a tiny TV we pulled out from the studio when we packed our big TV….our big one hangs on our new homes’ wall! ^_^

My mom and dad’s room.

That’s my desk. My mom and dad let me have this desk. I would do everything here. From making American Girl doll craft videos to no one in particular (they got lost, sorry.), to crafting cards or sweet notes for my family and mailing letters to friends. Or stringing beads on bracelets for my BFF’s, or drawing, or just doing school…

I even have a few drawings left up! :O

There used to be a nice big bed there. It was a good bed. My mom and I would trade beds, and I would sleep here some nights in September 2012 to Summer 2013 and my mom would sleep in my bed.

The bathroom (my mom was in it when I took the photo, I’ll show you the inside later. XD)

Back to the living room. Here’s the view you had of the living room window…

OK, here’s the bathroom.

My sister’s room, back in the hallway.

I would have ‘sleepovers’ in my sisters room late summer nights in 2011 and in 2012. I would stay up late on my new iPhone 3GS under the covers and write stories. They were great stories too. I’d make sequel after sequel to them. Unfortunately, when my iPhone battery crashed they all got erased, and so did a lot of photos with tons of memories. I still make sequel to those stories, with new characters and variations.

I have a miscarriaged sister in Heaven named Madeline, would who be a little younger than me if she was alive, and I know it’s weird, but, my stories were about her and me and a few other characters. Whenever I would write the stories on my phone, I felt a connection with her. As if that’s how she would act/be if she was here today.

My sister’s desk and dresser. November 2013 I’d spend doing school at her desk while she was away at Bible college (TBI.)

Uhhhhhhh. I have no idea what happened here. XD

OK, thanks everyone for moving out of the way. Look at her coolio walls. Yup, my Aunt Kathy did that.

Back in the kitchen, here’s our AWESOME oven which my mom loves. We got a new one at our new house, but it’s nothing compared to this faithful old oven.

Our dishwasher. Oh, the late summer mights when the dishwasher would be running and I’d get some tea or cough medicine with my mom….

My mom’s window :3

YUCK! The place where our fridge used to be…

(That is after we cleaned it. Yes, that’s AFTER we cleaned it! 0.0)

Lovely, lovely view. I remember in Christmas 2012 we had our first (and last)white Christmas. My three dolls, Molly, Josefina and Cecile (I got Josie and Cece that day!) were looking at this window watching the snow fall.

Oh, what I’d give to live here again.

There’s me! Hi, Madison. XD

Hi, again.

Back in the living room, this was my dad’s closet.

Any recognize this as Joy’s old room? What do you know, her posters are still up…

Look! This was Molly, Josefina and Cecile’s room when I first got them, which later on became Jasmine and Emelie’s room, which later on became the party room.

Look at this – I put that up there for Mines of Malaysia. I never took it down. :-)

What we call the Black File Cabinet or just the File Cabinet.

Our alarm. We set it off quite a few times at night and early in the morning. Hehehe

Back in my room, my middle drawer in my dresser had pink hearts taped to the bottom of it. :-)

Hey, look, I found a star in the bottom drawer! I kept it, but I lost it later. :-(

I never noticed this until now. I wonder if those people who made this dresser still make furniture today?

Back in my closet, here are the now empty shelves.

Some more photos of the breaker panel and tons of cords.

Back in my desk again, there are still some things left in the drawers.

Nothing in this one…

Some books….phone books….

The basement entrance.

We are going to go to the basement. Our friend Michael Biggs is working for us down in here on something we call the mail-out. It’s, complicated. :-)

Hi mommy! Come with us!

A view of the backyard.

Let us in….please….we don’t have the key…..

(I didn’t know if our missionary friend Michael wanted to his face posted online, so I’m just blurring his face out…)

Yes, our friend Mr. Biggs is very fond of Russell. Let’s make that the other way around – my little brother is OBSESSED WITH HIS BFF MICHAEL BIGGS. He doesn’t care if they are practically 15 years apart.

The basement. It is below the Fellowship Hall. There are actually stairs that lead up to the Fellowship Hall from here.

The mail room!

  Yes, lot’s of equipment. We’ve got a lot of mail to drop.

And lot’s of envelopes to stuff and seal.

And stamp.

I would scooter down this sidewalk in an old Spiderman scooter that is way too small for my brother and I now…I AGSMed on it (Molly and Emelie driving on it in Deeper Than Any Doll’s Gone Before), we played in the water hose in it, etc…

The Fellowship hall, again. My mom and I are out here alone, reminiscing. This is our home….

The Black Top, we call it. Well, it used to be black. it’s not anymore, and  very cracked.

The wind blew our hair, and we sat upon the Fellowship Hall steps and we sobbed and sobbed. This is our home, and we love it and miss it.

Here is some emotional music to listen to as you gaze over the last photos. :-)

It’s OK to cry…I did!

 *some horrible photos of me used to be here* :P
Some horrible, non-flattering photos of me in tears as I sob and reminisce over the memories.

And that ends Part 2!

Stay tuned for Part 3, and sorry to leave you on such a heartbreaking ending like this. Part 3 is not so dramatic. :)

~Madison~