If you followed my pulses last week you'd have correctly concluded that the family and I went on a short jaunt to Hershey, PA.  (Not a hard thing to figure with a pulse that read, "Going to Hershey tomorrow.  Whoever thought of a theme park based on chocolate is a mad genius in my book.")

Next door to Hershey Park (the amusment park) is a place called "Chocolate World".  The admission is free.  You get to go on a ride which is a simulated tour of the real factory.  But the main purpose of Chocolate World is to get you to purchase chocolate (and other Hershey's products such as Twizzlers and Jolly Ranchers) at exorbitant prices.  You should see people get swept up in the frenzy of being at Hershey.  People paying $1.25 for a Hershey bar that they could get for 50 cents at Wal-Mart.  People stuffing bags with pounds and pounds of chocolate.  Chocolate which must be consumed at some point.  Chocolate World single-handedly upping the country's BMI.

My kids are not impervious to this madness.  We let them indulge a bit.  Christian was fairly restrained; I was most impressed.  He got two regular sized candy bars and a bag of Jolly Ranchers in flavors we can't find here.

Elise is in love with Hershey's Kisses, so we let her get one of those 7 ounce ones.  She was floating on a cloud (after consumption, she was bouncing off the walls).  I told her about how they made the candy right across the street at the big Hershey factory.


It's cheaper to make it there and ship it up to PA then to walk it across the road.  Sad, isn't it?  Adios to The Great American Chocolate Bar.

On July 18th my parents will be celebrating 50 years of marriage.  Consecutive and to each other, even.  It's an incredible thing, rarely heard of nowadays. 

As part of a gift for them, my sister and I conspired.  She sneaked out a box load of old slides ("color transparencies" the boxes proclaim) and shipped them here to me two states away.  When I have a few moments, I scan as many slides as I can, upload them to the computer, and name and organize them as best as I can.  The ultimate goal here is to get all of them digitized, to put them onto an photo memory card and stick them into one of those silly little digital frames.  When they open it up, the photos will be scrolling away.  Teary eyes all around.  I will also burn all the photos on CD for them and for my five siblings.

I must confess, this project has brought me a lot of happiness.  Who wouldn't love unearthing treasures such as this:

Mom and Dad shot slides primarily before I was born, so I haven't found any of me.  This can be a good thing, since I can taunt my brothers and sisters with certain pictures without fear of retaliation.




Here, my mom is many years younger than I am now.  By about 14 years, actually.  Yet, she looks older.  Were people of that generation just born looking 40?  Leafing through their high school yearbooks, I think so.

I'm having too much fun with this.  Thought I'd pass on the gift idea.  Though most of you probably don't remember slides, even in 5th grade science class.

And if you see these two little lovebirds: