This photo is of my youngest brother Dylan lounging in the backyard with one of our kitties. I don't remember the name of the cat, or even if we had it very long. We had a history of our cats running away as soon as we brought them home. Apparently this one stayed long enough to nap with Dylan and/or pose for a picture. One particularly scarring animal runaway involved one of the cats immediately running up a tree and onto our roof, never to be seen again. It might have been the sister of the cat shown here.

This area of the yard is also where water from our washer would drain to. There was no tube really, it would just drain right down the hill in our yard. It was always a good chance to take matchbox cars or lego men out there and pretend there was a dam exploding somewhere, causing the sudden rush of water.

And finally, the little door behind Dylan leads to our basement. This little shed was infamous because every winter we would have to lug loads of firewood into this door, down into the basement to where the wood-stove was. This heated the entire "old" part of the house. Thanks to this, all of us kids learned how to start fires at a very early age. The first few times we got to stay home alone, we not only had to learn to keep the doors locked, but also to keep the fire going.