I used to love coming home from school and finding fresh baked bread, cinnamon buns and other goodies waiting for me. We rarely ate out either and then it was usually the White Spot where they brought your food out on those long trays that sat across the windows in your car. I was an ADHD kid so it was less stressful on mom if we did that rather than eat in the dining room.
It's not that you might have eaten better but you did eat better than today's kids for the most part. Unless the parents are food conscious most of their diet is highly processed franken foods. Even the fresh fruit and veg from factory farms only has half the nutrition as the stuff our mothers grew in the family gardens because the soils are so depleted from decades of use. We always had a big compost heap that got tilled back into the garden at home every year. We never used weed killers on the lawn but I remember using one of those sticks full of weed killer to spot squirt a little on each dandelion as they popped up. Dad would pay me a penny for each dandelion flower I picked off the lawn too so I wasn't very thorough with the spray stick.
All our vacations were road trips and camping until we got the lake property then we'd spend most of the summer up there. Dad would go home for work during the week and leave us there for 3 or 4 weeks. I'd take a friend up but after a week they were itching to go home so dad would take them back and bring a different friend up the next Fri. I loved it and never had a problem staying for most of the summer. A lot of trips to Stanley Park in Vancouver a half hour away or beaches where the only expense was gas money and maybe an ice cream but we took food for the day. My mom's sister and hubby had a cabin at Pt. Roberts we could go to fairly often then bought the one next to them for a rental so when there was nobody using it we could scoot across the line and stay for free. It's US territory but attached to BC so the only access by car is from the BC side thru Tsawwassen by the big ferry terminal to go to Victoria on Vancouver Island.
I'm on my second house now and the biggest thing we've bought for it was a brand new bed just a couple months ago. $1500 worth but damn it's a nice bed and we both sleep so much better and wake up rested. Less than two years left on the mortgage and we only have that because we borrowed against it when we had serious financial problems 20 years ago. Only $125/mth now but we're paying double to get rid of it faster. I have been racking up some bills on the CCs but screw it. I want to enjoy what I have left of my golden years and pay a little extra to have the debt life insured so the wife so the wife isn't stuck with it if I drown my ass out fishing. Got some 'sudden death' insurance thru the bank too for both of us. $52/mth for both and get 100G each if one or both of us die suddenly for any reason other than suicide. If it's both of us, like a car wreck, then her daughter gets it and the house. My sons will get any inheritance from my mom if and when she passes.
Totally different world than what I grew up in these days. I'm glad we didn't have all the gadgets kids grow up with these days and lived life in the real world. Sure would have loved to go to the moon or at least up in space at least once but if a lotto ticket pays off, who knows.