Tuesday, August 16, 2011

When I was a Child - the Summer Edition

I don't know about you, but there is something about summer time that makes me nostalgic.  I am more apt to think of my time as a child - maybe because summers as child hold so many great memories.  So I got to thinking that it would be fun to do a seasonal post entitled, "When I was a Child" and I will reflect upon/share memories/highlights from my childhood!  You should play along, too!

When I was a child...
  • My mom would slice up lots of cucumbers and tomatoes from our garden to serve at dinner and us kids would practically fight over who got the last tomato slice!  I miss the days of having fresh produce in my back yard. 
  • I would anxiously await the weekend when our family would pack up the car and go to the lake.  We didn't have a cabin back then - instead we had a really small camper.  I don't know how all 7 of us fit in there, but we did.  It seemed like it would take FOREVER for my dad to get home from work on Friday night.  I think we must have drove our mom crazy on those afternoons!
  • Most of my day was spent outside.  We'd run through the sprinkler or slide down the Crododile Mile (anyone remember that?).  It was very very rare to watch movies or tv or play video games. 
  • I thought I was going to be a world class gymnast some day.  My older sister and I would spend hours practicing our round-offs and cartwheels.  I got to re-visit this passion when I showed my nephews how to do a cartwheel last year - which resulted in me spraining my ankel.  My body isn't quite as nimble as it used to be! 
  • I would ride my banana seat bike down to my best friend's house.  We'd listen to New Kids on the Block and play barbies.
  • I would devour books.  I read anything from Anne of Green Gables to Little House on the Prairie to Babysitters Club Books.  I especially loved the BSB Summer Specials because they were nice and thick! 
Life sure was simpler back then!  Not that I would want to go back, I definitely enjoy being an adult!

Your turn, when I was a child I...

25 comments:

  1. Oh, the BSB Summer Specials, how I loved them. I still own 'California Girls!' And read it every summer!
    (I also have 'Snowbound' which I read in winter)!

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  2. I seriously loved the babysitters club books- I wonder what would happen if I got one now and tried to read it haha? Also I definitely remember Crocodile Mile!!! My next door neighbor had it and we had the best time. I like being an adult too but there is something to be said for those times!

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  3. I also loved the Babysitters Club! Haven't thought about that in years!

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  4. Our summers in the south are too hot to go outside. As a kid we used to go anyway, going to camps and camping out and having a ball.

    Now summertime makes me want to listen to country music. It's kind of disturbing.

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  5. Nice! We often had lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini from our garden(s). I spent hours outside, running through sprinklers, climbing trees, and reading books in trees.

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  6. I love the BSC!!!! Those special editions were THE BEST! I loved the one where they took the cruise, summer camp, and being snowed in. I might have to go dig those out and re-read!!!

    Everything you said about childhood is so true. I was NEVER inside during the summer--always out in the neighborhood with friends. It sometimes makes me sad to think about how much time kids spend indoors--glued to tvs and computers. With our family--we try to encourage a lot of activities that do NOT revolve around tvs/computer when we're on vacation--but I confess---we always get sucked into playing some "ROCK BAND" with the entire fam!
    LOVED THIS POST :)

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  7. I loved this post, Lisa! I, too, have fond memories being a child, but included in them are memories of helping Mom do canning - it seemed like it was every day except Saturdays and Sundays! We always spent one week at a rented cabin on the lake and those were the best times! How fortunate we are to have "good memories" of childhood!

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  8. I really loved this post! I did so many of these same things. We didn't have crocodile mile, instead we just put down some tarps and pulled out the hose, it was our own version of a slip and slide. Life was a lot simpler back then, I'm sort of striving for that again now.

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  9. I, too, thought I was going to be an Olympic gymnast after I saw the 1996 games. I was 8, I think, a bit too old to just NOW start my gymnast career to be an elite gymnast. ;) A girl can dream!

    The BSB super special books were so amazing. I loved them all. I wish I could reread them, but I wonder if the magic would be lost.

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  10. When I was a child I was obsessed with gymnastics too! I was constantly flipping around. My parents even had to make a new rule for me... no cartwheels or flips of any kind in the house. Then, they spread out the furniture in the basement so I could go down there in the winter. Ha!
    Those summer BSB books were the best! I forgot all about those!

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  11. Awh, this is such a cute post! There was something about summer a child! I still love summer now, but it's obviously much less carefree than it used to be.

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  12. Tomatoes from the garden. Yum! I used to put sugar on the slices at dinner. Now, that does not appeal to me at all. We did spend a great deal of time canning in those days. We would pick/can/freeze an entire pickup bed heaping full of sweet corn. The job I liked the least was washing the cucumbers so Mom could make pickles. It seemed as though there was an endless supply. I have lost perspective on how huge our garden must have been! What wonderful meals we had with all of that fresh produce!

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  13. I loved reading when I was a kid too. Babysitters Club and Anne of Green Gables are also both high on my list of books I loved!

    We used to have a pool so I LOVED spending afternoons swimming and floating in our pool, or going camping with my grandparents in their motorhome!

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  14. Loved this post! In the summer, we would be hanging out in the pool, going to the library or riding around our small town on our bikes. Or we would be at my grandparents cottage. Ah to be a kid again!

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  15. Oh my gosh! I had completely forgotten about the BSB Summer Specials! I loved them because they were so long too. LOL... Now I love books for being the opposite, haha.

    When I was a child, I had awful seasonal allergies, so I used to spend a lot of time curled up in a big armchair in my parents' living room plowing through my summer reading books. I wouldn't leave that chair for hours at a time!

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  16. I was that kid who would go to the library once or twice a week and get a stack of books, read them all and want more! I loved the Babysitters Club SO MUCH!!! Anne of Green Gables was a favorite for sure, and pretty much anything I could get my hands on.

    I spent hours in the pool or around the pool with my friends, hanging out with the neighbor kids, having sleepovers that lasted for days, family trips to the beach, and as dorky as this is as well, I also looked forward to back to school shopping for school supplies and organizing them. I know, I said it was dorky :) Something about bouquets of sharpened pencils!

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  17. I LOVED the BSC summer specials--loved that they were like twice as long as the regular BSC books. For me summers meant lots of time reading and going to the library. My family also went on a mammoth month-long road trip every summer that we weren't in Europe for my mom's job. Summer meant travel, for sure.

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  18. We may be separated by some years, but our experiences are much the same! Oh, tomatoes and cukes!

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  19. I loved all the BSC Super Specials! I still have most of them, although went through the "normal books" and weeded a bunch out. Although looking back, I'm thinking I should have kept my collection complete!

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  20. In case there was any doubt we were brain twins I was nodding to all of the things on this list!

    I remember my mom implementing D.E.A.R. time in the summer which stood for "drop everything and read" - it was an hour a day (I think she timed it during the hottest part of the day after lunch so we wouldn't be outside), and she'd set a timer. My brother would be out the door the minute the timer went off, but I would often just keep reading. It still makes me smile to think of it!

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  21. Cute and I still have my BSC Game in the garage. I should really take that school and have some of the girls I see play it.

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  22. I love this!!! For so many reasons.

    I miss sliced produce on those orange plastic plates with dinner!! Do you know what I'm talking about?

    Remember the smell of the campground when we'd pull in Friday night??? That campfire smell is so nostalgic!!

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  23. loved reading, swimming in the lake, pretendingto be a gymnast onthe swing set, riding bikes, building forts..

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  24. You. Read. My. Mind.

    I just went home and OH MAN it reminds me of being a kid in the summer time. We would pick blackberries until our fingers and mouths were purple, we would go rafting/tubing in the river, we would watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind over and over (I have no idea why). We went to the beach and ate ice creams and slept in the backyard and watched the shooting stars...

    And I read a lot! I don't think I ever read the BSB or BSC or whatever, but I read A of GG (recently am re-reading it -- it's still fun!) and CS Lewis and what was that book with the blond twins....Sweet Valley High!? I devoured books!

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  25. When I was a child ... I only dreamed that I would be living the life I am living now.

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