September 20, 2024

Gaylord Party Stores , Don and Debbies Party Store , ha,ha.

AL’S MARKET PARTY STORE OTSEGO LAKE- As a little boy I remember coming to Gaylord to the cottage at Otsego Lake . Just one block from the cottage was a party store called Al’s Market .
We used to walk down and get candy once or twice a day. We had no idea we would ever live in Gaylord someday. Just before I was drafted into the Army, Deb and I drove to Gaylord and eloped and got married at the Gaylord City Hall and stayed at the cottage a couple nights . Even then we never thought we would someday live in Gaylord. We lived in Alma , Michigan . Several years later my folks sold the cottage and we figured going to Gaylord was over.
It’s hard to believe things worked out and we have now lived here for 24 years.
A couple times a year we still stop at Al’s market and get a pop and candy bar and we drive by the old cottage and it always bring back fun memories. Party Stores were so fun for Deb, Nicole and I as we always loved going for country rides in the car and stopping at out of the way party stores all over central Michigan.
But these days we rarely stop at a party store because we pretty much keep our own shelves downstairs stocked pretty full, ha,ha.
Todays picture shows some of our goodies we stock , ha,ha.
It’s hard to believe this actually helped stop the anxiety of junk food for us. We tried dieting several years by cutting out all junk food and it worked for a year , then we went nuts and gained it all back.
Although we are still not skinny, we no longer have that high anxiety of dieting. Just knowing we can walk downstairs at anytime and get things like potato chips, doritos , fritos, cheetos, potato skins, licorice, lindt chocolate, peanuts, cashews, famous amos cookies, or fig bars or oreo cookies, or sun chips, or chex mix, or donuts, or four flavors of taffy, , pay day candy bars or kit kat candy bars or Almond Joy Candy bars, or Pepsi or root beer ot Skirt or Vernors pop, or even beef jerky or M&M’s , butterscotch almond candy, or candy coated peanuts , shoe string potatos , Dove Chocolates , chocolate covered potato chips, carmel corn, and a few other goodies .
Every night I tell Deb I am heading to the party store , and ask her if she wants anything? But the secret is we know exactly how many calories are in everything and it is rare we come back upstairs with over 300 calories . And that is not much , but it is enough to satisfy our sweet tooth and we stop and write it down on our daily calorie list for the day.
We have pretty much stopped eating in resturaunts since Christmas, but the last two days we splurged and ate in resturaunts , yesterday we drove the Corvette to Pestosky and Deb and I split a delicious three piece fish and chips dinner at 1000 calories each. Very good , but it will be a long time before we go back because we know the high calories involved.
Today for lunch I get homeade coleslaw and a half a sandwich.
We started walking twice a day yesterday again back to six miles a day so between counting calories and walking six miles a day , we will be looking good again in no time and feeling good too. There are still a lot of spots the sidewalks still have four or five feet piles of snow so we have to walk around them in the road.
We still got a Lot of snow in spots around town but it is slowly going . The hill in our front yard is now 12 ” tall by 10 feet long ,(:>)
Liebherr – I should get the top parts all done by tonight . Monday i will get going on the front .
HAVE A GREAT SATURDAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!