TTTh 1) My parents still live in the same house I grew up in - a 1930's Spanish style ranch. The hasn't changed much...gotten a bit older, and it somehow seems much smaller when I visit now.

2) We used to have a bunch of different trees at my parents house: lemon, lime and orange tree (mmm, fresh squeezed limonade!); apricot (my lab Sebastian would get sick from eating so many fallen apricots); almond, date and walnut (the walnut tree was huge - 50-60 feet tall and I would climb up to the top branches and sit and watch the neighborhood around me); camelias and gingkos and flowering eucalyptus (horrible, messy red flowers and sap drip over any car parked beneath -- it's better than crazy glue) and a huge squatty palm tree. The almond, date, walnut, apricot and palm trees are gone now.

3) They took down the walnut tree to build a carport, along with a big rec room, office and storage room out back. They laid a huge (25 x 60?) cement slab for the outbuilding, so I had a skate party for my 5th grade birthday party. All my friends brought their roller skates and we had the one and only roller rink extravaganza on the cement slab before the walls went up.  ¶ 12/15/2005 05:06:00 AM