Tuesday 4.....Home Sweet Home

It's time again for Tuesday 4 hosted by Anne from Cottage by the sea. 

This week, let's talk about your home town or home state.

Snoqualmie Falls! Always a beautiful place to visit and right now with all the rain, it's raging! 

1. What was your hometown like?  It's so interesting, I have lived in my current town longer than what I consider my hometown. But I'll talk about where I grew up. I grew up in a small town just east of Seattle, called North Bend. Part of the Snoqualmie Valley. We moved there in the 70's from Lorain, Ohio where my parents were born and raise and where we lived til I was in 4th grade. North Bend was small and quaint. It was the home of the Twin Peaks movie, the popular Snoqualmie Falls  and Sasquatch stories abounded. It is filled with places to hike and explore, though now it is very expensive to live there and has grown into a large tourist area. It doesn't really feel like the same place, though many of my classmates and friends still live there. Or home state or both! I still live in Washington state, though now I'm in the southwest region. I love our state for the scenery and the fact that where I live, within a few hours or less I can be at the ocean, the mountains, even the high desert. I live very close to Portland Oregon (in a small town) so we have often joked that while we live in Washington, we spend enough time in Oregon that we should be dual citizens. However Portland has not been our favorite place recently due to such a huge homeless crisis. It just doesn't feel safe.
2. Did you enjoy where you grew up? Yes, Why? It was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone. It was pretty, it felt safe. We played all over our neighborhood with friends and our parents yelled or whistled when it was time to come home. We explored by the river, railroad tracks and logging roads. 
3. How much did where you grew up shape you? I'm not sure how to answer this one...I suppose that it made me appreciate the simple things in life. It made me love the small town life (I am not a city girl), it made me love a slower way of life, though I know there are "slower ways of life" out there. 
4. What were some of the best and worst things about where you grew up? The best things were how, as kids in the neighborhoods, when we all went out to play games and run around, it didn't matter if you were popular or not. We had so much freedom in our little part of town (you drove down a hill to get to where we lived..it was called Riverbend because it was originally part of the riverbed and cozied up to the river (which was scary during flood season).You knew so many people. 3 towns comprised the Jr. High and High school. It was surrounded by mountains. The worst things? Gosh, I can't really think of anything, except that maybe it's close proximity to Seattle caused many people to move there and thus caused it to become too expensive for many to stay or live there. I about fall over when I see the price of houses there. 

I loved growing up in a small town. I'm thankful our girls were raised in a small town too. We love visiting the city, but give me a small town to live in any day. Though there are times I wish some conveniences were closer, and it's tempting to think of living in a bigger town or city.

Being baptized in the cold Snoqualmie River. 

Small town parades....yes please. I'm thankful I live in a town now that also has small town parades. 

Mt. Si....what the valley is known for, but what my girls always called Nannies Mountain. They knew that when we were driving to visit and they could see it, we were almost to Nannie and Bapas house. 

I wish I had more photos of our town. I know I do somewhere but just don't have the time to look for them. 

With Joy Unquenchable,

Kirstin