Mom & Dad’s House, New London, WI

Stephanie & Bailey, New London, WI

Mom & Dad’s House, New London, WI

Max, New London, WI

Mom & Dad’s House, New London, WI

After the scrimmage in Green Bay, we went to my parents’ house outside of New London (Bean City), about a 45 minute drive. We stayed overnight there and spent the morning around the house before driving back to Milwaukee to get some lunch and see Amanda off to work.

I took a bunch of photos of the outside of my parents’ house (I meant to take some of the inside too but forgot) mostly because it looks so different than when I lived there. When we moved in the grass was dry and rusty and there were barely any trees or bushes or anything. Then my dad did his best Johnny Appleseed imitation and here’s what we have now, about 17 years later. The outside of the house isn’t all that changed. A few years ago my mom worked with an interior designer to redo the inside of the house too. So now my brother and my bedrooms are an office/music room and a spare bedroom and all of the other rooms look much more put together than when we lived there. I’m sure part of that is because there aren’t any kids in the house any more.

A secondary reason for taking a lot of photographs is because my parents are toying around with the idea of moving to Waupaca, where my mom now works and where many of their friends and favorite restaurants and stuff are. And even though I live a lot closer to them now, than I have in the past, not having a car makes it hard to get to New London, about a 3 - 3 1/2 hour drive from Chicago. So who knows when the next time I’ll be back.

And on a sad note, our poor Max and Callie are getting so old! I remember when we got Max, a springer spaniel mix, for my dad for Christmas. We went and picked him out of the litter and kept him a secret at my aunt’s house. When my family came over to celebrate the holiday we tried to talk loud over any barks from the back room and then gave Max to my dad, wrapped up in a box. Callie is the sole survivor of a string of about 100 cats (it seems) like we had. They just kept having babies and babies and more babies. Now there’s just Callie. Recently, my brother’s cat Bailey, after having many many many accidents all over their house and refusing to be retrained, went to go live at my parents. Outside. He seems to love it and I’m sure he’s giving those old geezers, Maxie and Callie, a good work out. Max seems to have some problems with his back legs, maybe arthritis. But at one point I was across the street in the empty field (where’d the tree with the tree swing go!?!) and Max came bolting out running from the back of the house to come by me. But it was all show.. after he stopped running he was wheezing like an old man with asthma! That guy needs a doggie inhaler. Still it was nice to see he’s still got some spirit in him.

See also:
» Mom & Dad’s House (Flickr Photo Set, 27 photos)