Moving On

I volunteered to go on Eli's school field trip. I love the zoo and I couldn't wait to watch Eli in his element, running with his buddies and checking out the animals. It was fun but let's just say I may not volunteer for this event next year. We spent 4.5-5 hours at the zoo which may be a bit too long for 4 year olds. It was COLD. Windy and COLD. I was in pain, my toes numb. Luckily the kiddos didn't complain about the cold. There were enough parents that I was only in charge of Eli and one other kiddo. Thank goodness. This ill man that came along with Eli and I is cute and sweet but definitely an only child. He didn't understand what it meant to wait for someone else to stop looking and didn't follow the rules of sticking together. I was on my toes. We visited most of the indoor exhibits twice (to stay warm) and even ran into another group and let the boys play hide and seek in the giraffe house so we could warm up a bit.

It was quite tough to get a good picture of both of these goofballs.

You can tell they are in their glory together.

I wonder what another mom would have thought about Eli's behavior if I hadn't been there. Next year I will watch the weather report before volunteering. A few days later we ventured back to the zoo with Hugh, who was also a challenging kiddo to be in charge of at the zoo.

Do you remember when you were little and went on a car ride and you stared out the window? And I'm not talking about the short ride to church. I'm talking the 4-5 hour car ride to go on your family vacation, where you camped, in a tent and collected rocks? There was no tv to watch and your mom didn't hand back her phone for you to play Templerun. It was just you and a disc man, a book (or if you're lucky a Teen Beat magazine) and hopefully a piece of gum to chew.

Times are different now.
Before my Grandpa passed away my mom, my brother and I went to interview him. We asked about his childhood and my dad's childhood. He had a hard time jumping through the decades and couldn't give us as many details as we wanted. Don't get me wrong, the interview was incredibly special...but he did mention "picking stones" quite a few times...must have been the one thing that really stuck in his mind. I realize now that he wasn't keeping anything from us. It just gets hard to remember how the times were. Ever since I had kids myself, my memory has been shot. I used to be able to remember everything-all the new procedures and guidelines announced at every work meeting and every little piece of gossip I ever heard.
But now....I'm forgetting stuff. All the time. All over the place. And it's scary.
So I have to write it down. And some day I'd like to be able to pull up my blog and explain a few things to them about life before they were born. Just in case I can't remember....

-Can you believe I went to college without a cell phone? My parents had them, but only for emergencies. In college-I showed up when I said I would, didn't call to tell anyone I was running late or lost and used Mapquest before I left so I knew where to turn.
-I remember when our tv didn't have a remote control to change the channel. There was an icky brown colored box under our tv with a white strip of numbers on it and you moved the slider to the channel you wanted. We only had 1 tv for a long time and no video game console until at least middle/high school.
-growing up we didn't have the Internet.
-We did have a computer once we lived in Wisconsin. I don't think it had a mouse and we used discs. Internet came about in high school but I only used it to chat with random people I didn't even know and never even met.
-When I went to college I had to introduce my friends in the dorm to Hotmail.
-I used calling cards in college to make long distance phone calls to my boyfriend who lived 1/2 an hour away in a different area code.
-Before cordless phones we had the regular phone mounted to the wall with the long cord. If you were going to make a phone call-the whole house could hear to who and about what. We didn't even have an answering machine until probably high school. There was no caller-ID so picking up and saying Hello was quite chancy. Call waiting was the next big thing.
-In college I shared my answering machine with all my roommates. You had better hope they were responsible to write down phone messages and not delete anything on the answering machine. The longer you were out of the house, the higher your chances were that the "guy"in your life would call. Now with cell phones you can see how many missed calls you had and you can save your messages for as long as you want. You can also check how long that "guy" has been active on Facebook, which means he saw your status post/picture too and didn't comment on it.
-There was no social media when I was in high school. Thank goodness. Rumors traveled by mouth only. Much slower than updates posted to Facebook these days. Scares me.
- I don't think I would have survived high school. Girls dress "up" every single day. As an athlete when we dressed up for school I wore black pants with black shoes. That was as fancy as I got.
-Do you remember VHS? We used to tape tv shows if we were going to miss a show. We would actually program the VCR so as to not miss an episode. Then hit rewind and fast forward. And hope nobody tapes over it. Now you can watch almost anything online and most people have some type of technology (DVR) with the option to just watch back any show.
-Who remembers using a cassette tape to record the Top 9 and 9? Sit and listen to your radio and try to hit RECORD at just the moment your favorite song started. Sit by the radio so you can hit stop. Then rewind and play and listen again and again.
-No texting. If you go shopping with a friend and split up-set a meeting time and place. No option to just "text me" when you're all done.
-Grandma didn't get to see babies 1st haircut, first roll over, first meal, first word, first steps, first first first anything until she actually showed up at the door. No video messages, snap chat, instagram, tweet etc.
-Who remembers the library card catalog. If you want a book-you go to the library and look it up. If you want to reserve, you probably had to write something down and who even knows how they contacted you that it had arrived.
-I work in a hospital and when I walk through the waiting room everyone is looking down at their hand or their lap. They have their smartphones out, or their tablet out-reading, chatting, playing, learning, watching.....
-If you missed the big game (or even your local high school game) you waited until the next day to read in the newspaper how many rebounds your favorite player had.

Currently Andy and I are a little behind the times. When was the last time you left someone in your family a written note? "Went for a bike ride" "Went to the store quick". Who even has a pencil in their junk drawer anymore? (I know you do mom!! we do too!)
We do not have DVR. Or TV-O. We watch live or online. We have a very old, slow desk top. We have an aged lap top and an Ipad. We both have a cell phone but they are the cheap 1 cent phone that we can text, call and take pictures with. We cannot access the Internet and are one of the last ones we know in this spot. Even Grandma Barb and Grandma Roeder are ahead of us there. But we are not cavemen. We are able to check in with the babysitter at a moments notice and can let the other know we forgot garbage bags on the grocery list.
My kids still love books and puzzles.

But they know ALLLLL about ipads too.

So times have changed. And it's scary, but fun, and interesting and amazing. And it makes me wonder where things will be in another 10, 20 years. I can't imagine things getting better, faster, easier. But they will. And we will live in disbelief that we ever lived this way for so long. I pray for something that shuts cell phones off when you get in the car so that when my kids are driving I don't have to worry about texting and driving.

What do you think will happen in the future? What did you live without for so long that you don't now-can you believe it?
What do you hope happens? What will make your life better-faster-more efficient?