A childhood spent around the world

 Hey everybody~this is me and my mom and dad in the '60s

at the Taj Mahal. Pretty iconic!

I just wished my blue eyes could have 

been able to look towards the sun at

my brother Paul as he was taking our picture...

I remember how the interiors of the Taj 

were filled with the odors of incense,

and I remember all the marble walls  

with floral inlays of colored stones.

It was very pretty inside~and quite majestic outside.

Today is my birthday and this post is to say 

THANK YOU Mom and Dad 

for giving me a great childhood filled with love and adventure.

 My dad was an environmental engineer and had jobs in exotic locations. 

Dad and mom took us all along for the ride~

here we are all dressed up at Logan airport in Boston

ready to get on Pan Am and head to East Pakistan for 2 years!

 Since we were the two oldest out of the five, 

Paul and I got special side trips to see exotic sights 

with mom and dad like when we traveled to the Taj Mahal 

and here to Nepal where we visited a temple with prayer wheels.

 Our birthday parties had elephant

 rides in our back yard! I was loving this!!

 When we lived in Thailand, we visited the 

temples of Siam and posed with the monks.  

The monks were not allowed stand next to a "woman". 

 I will forgive my mom for having my hair cut in 

the Mia Farrow style~which was very trendy at the time. 

I HATED it!!! 

And I have an aversion even thinking of having short hair to this day.

source

 One of the special trips my brother and I made with

 mom and dad was to visit the ancient temples at 

Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  

Look at this huge temple at Pimeanakis.

 You can see me standing half way up on the right, 

while my intrepid brother forged ahead and is sitting at the peak.

  I was scared stiff and couldn't climb any higher, 

and the steps were so broken I was quite convinced 

I couldn't get down either....so I shouted down to my parents, 

who were sitting on a blanket under a tree,

 "I can't get down!!!"...well my wise parents 

shouted back to me the old parental cliche,

 "If you can get up, then you can get down"....

 Ahhhh, that was not the way it turned out. 

 I fell and tumbled two stories down and landed

 in a brick pit moat that surrounded the temple and 

suffered a fractured skull! Well, that would teach them!!  

Being in Cambodia, we were whisked off in a ric shaw

 to find a doctor and ended up in a dark clinic somewhere 

where the doctor only spoke french. 

Dad kept asking me to translate what the doctor was saying 

since I had been studying french in the 4th and 5th grade...

I was not much help. But we could clearly see the 

crack in my head on the x-rays~no translation necessary.

And looking back now, I realize my dad would have

 been quite the blogger, as he was constantly 

snapping our pics, like it or not.  

And finally, my Mia Farrow-do was starting to grow out~

 Here I am in front of a gorgeous beach at Pattaya, Thailand

 while on family vacation with my sister Ellen.  

Sometimes we didn't want our picture taken, like this time,

as dad was constantly snapping! 

We lived in Bangkok for three years, and mom and dad

 would take us to this beach for fantastic vacations! 

This was such a fun place to go

with water skiing and bareback horse riding

 along the white sandy beach.

 Of course our parents took us to regular places too~

like Disneyland. 

 This was a big time treat, as when not overseas, 
our family was based in Boston 

and Disneyland was in LA.  This was before 

they built Disneyworld on the east coast.

 We had fun parents~they did fun stuff with us. 

Every couple of years we would come back to the 

states during the summer, called summer leave.

Me and my little sisters Susan and Ellen in 

our blue pajamas posed for a pic in front of the mini-bus.

Here is the traveling family~taken at my grandparent's house.

  I would later buy this house and plant a 

big perennial garden along the hedges and paint the house pink!

 My parents always let us have pets, I am holding my kitty, Tiger,

 and our weanie dog, Snoopy is cut out of the shot. 

Good parents let their kids have dogs and cats!

Last summer my parents even let my son Colin live 

with them on Marthas Vineyard~they are the best parents! 

They gave me a great childhood and still 

do nice things like let my 20 year old mooch  live with them. 

So thanks again for being the best parents a girl could have.

I love you mom and dad!