The Ninety Eighth One 4/10/24

If you read these please start from the first day or not whatever-it's your life!

Sometimes you may never realize how lucky you are until years later. When I grew up I lived in a house with my dad and Sister in Texas.  My sister is three years older than me. Our next door neighbors are like our same age. The girl was a year older than my sister and the boy was two years older than me. So growing up we always had someone to play with, have sleep over with, get rides to school, and overall just have  people out your own age to live the greatest 1980’s kids life one could imagine. By no means were either of our families “rich" but we were better off than others and we were happy. I remember one time John, the neighbor who was two years older than me, told me “yeah we're rich, rich in love”. And he meant it. Even though we were neighbors our home lives were still different. At the time I had no clue what he was talking about. I didn't grow up in a household where “love” was a central theme.Nothing bad or anything at my house, just different. But we stayed the night at each other's houses all the time. We went hunting, fishing, camping and the funnest part was whenever we got home from school we played baseball, football or basketball for hours until the sun went down, it was great. At the time as children we didn't realize this wasn't how all neighborhoods worked, we just assumed everyone lived like this. It was awesome. 

Then I had my daughter and we purchased our first house. We happened to be neighbors with someone who had a son about the same age as our daughter.  The Moms name was Debbie and she was great. She looked after our daughter and took care of her just as my neighbor did when I was young. Then we moved.

We moved to an entirely different neighborhood and after about a month realized that not everyone has the greatest neighbors at all times. There are no kids in my neighborhood. If I would have known, I might have driven by the new place in the evening and checked out the neighbor/kids situation. Not that it would have made a difference, my wife was buying this house no matter what-she had her heart set on it. 

So the entire point of this post. Sometimes you don't realize how lucky you are until waaaaay later. I didn't realize how lucky I was growing up with the best neighbors in the world and as an adult I didn't realize how good I had it with awesome neighbors to help watch my daughter. My next house you ask? There will never be a next house. My next house will be a one bedroom condo or a tent in the middle of nowhere-but that's a different story. 

The Artwork-Don't judge me-Im not drawing a child in his undergarments. Its Captain Underpants!That's some big underpants but whatever. I like how the cape he is wearing is tied in front and kind of flowing behind him. His hands on his hips and awesome looking smile convey what he's about. Not a lot of colors on this one. 

Just a reminder-if anyone wants any of these pictures to hang in your house I will send a framed original for free. We’ve already given away like three. 

Keep reading for another chance to win a gift card, I have a feeling there's a big one coming up in the next few days.