Describe 3 significant memories from your childhood.
(For those of you as OCD as me: yes, I did skip post number 19 because it asks how you felt the moment you became a parent and I'm going to save that one until after Gabi is actually here because I've already talked a lot about how I felt when I found out I was pregnant)
I have a lot of significant memories from my childhood. I have been trying to figure out what three memories I was going to include in this and I came to a decision: I'm going to do three different groups of memories. So they may have happened more than once, but they fit into the same groups. I know...I have a tendency to bend the rules, but it's my blog so I get to.
1. Family vacations: For as long as I can remember, and before, we took family vacations. When I was young, we went to Illinois to visit my mom's parents. We would go at Christmas every other year and lots of summers. I remember that we used to stay in hotels when we went and I would always want to stay at a hotel with a pool and whether we did or not, we never actually used the pool. We used the hotels as a place to stay overnight and then we would be on the road again in the morning. As I got a little older, we would add more things to the trip to Illinois. We would stop on the way there and visit different places. There is a picture of my brother and me posing in front of a bull (I think) where we are both looking very cranky because it was hot, humid and there were a ton of flies, but we still experienced Springfield, Ill. as part of that vacation. We also started including trips to places other than Illinois. We went to Florida to visit our family who lived/lives there. We started using a pop up camper and taking a little more time as part of the trip instead of just driving long hours to get there. The nice part of that was that when the campground had a swimming pool we did get to swim, something I have always loved. We traveled through Canada and to New York to visit my aunt who lives there. The common theme of each vacation was that we were visiting family at some point along the way, but we saw a lot more things along the way. Because of these vacations, I have been in almost every state south and east of Kansas. We didn't travel west much because we didn't have family in that direction. I generally didn't get to see a lot of the scenery as we traveled because Steve and I would sit in the back seat and read almost everywhere that we traveled. We did see a lot of places with historical significance, which was really cool. I enjoyed traveling with my family up until I became a cranky, moody 16 year old, who really wanted to stay home instead of going places with my family. I look back at our vacations as some of my favorite times with my family because we got to do so many things that a lot of other people didn't get to do and saw so many great things. There are far too many memories to share without this blog post becoming way too long. However, Gabi, ask Nana about the time she wanted to make sure that your Uncle Steve and I saw the horse on top of the silo. It's a funny story! :)
2. Summers in Hoisington, KS when I was in 1st through 3rd grade: From the time that I started 1st grade, I was what used to be called a latchkey kid, which meant I went home after school and my parents were at work when I got home. It wasn't always that way, but my dad coached football, basketball, and track so he had practice after school almost all school year. During the summer, my mom would still work, because her schedule wasn't based on a school year schedule. Dad would work on different things during the summer and honestly, at that age, I don't know that I ever knew exactly what it was that he did. I knew he wasn't teaching during the summer, but it didn't really affect me to know what he was doing. What I knew was that my brother and I spent a lot of time on our own during the summer. We had chores that we had to do, like pick the beans, wash the kitchen floor, and our regular chores like cleaning our rooms and things like you will have to do. We had to get those things done before we could go and play or go to the swimming pool (yes, swimming played a large part in my summers from a very young age). My brother and I weren't always the best at doing what we were supposed to be doing and tried to find ways to get out of doing some of the work we were supposed to do. Well...not really get out of them so much as find shortcuts or ways to make it easier or more fun. For example, we had to wash the kitchen floor and thought it would be more fun if we could slide around on the kitchen floor to clean it, so we put shampoo, lotion, and conditioner on the floor so it would be more fun to slide on. Then to rinse it, my brilliant idea was to throw buckets of water on the floor to get all the soap off of it. Needless to say, that didn't work and we had standing water on the floor. So we got towels from the cabinet and mopped it all up, put the towels in the dryer, and put them back in the cabinet when they were dry. Gross, I know. We didn't always use all the brains we had been given. Another strong memory, we how we couldn't go swimming until it was at least 100 degrees outside. The thermometer that was outside was in the shade and we thought that it wasn't showing what the real temperature was, so we took it and put it on the dark red picnic table that had been in the sun all morning. Imagine that, it suddenly was over 100 degrees and we could go swimming. We had water gun fights in the basement and then tried to hide it by saying we were pretending it was raining on the toys we were playing with. Again, so many memories that it would take forever to share them all. Please don't take any hints on how to behave during the summer from your Uncle Steve and me. We weren't good role models...but we did have fun.
3. Trips to my dad's parents' farm: My dad's parents lived in Moundridge, KS, which you will probably visit even before you are old enough to realize you are there because my Uncle Ken and Aunt Barbara live there now and we will go there for some family get-togethers. For a lot of holidays and weekends during my childhood, we would go to my grandparents' farm either for family get- togethers or because my dad was doing some work on the farm. It was a fun place to spend time when we were young. We got to roam all over the place. There was a pond behind the farm with frogs and tadpoles. There was a creek near the farm that we would play around near or in. We could play in the red barn or the milk barn and there were almost always kittens to play with if we could find them. We wandered around in the fields and played on the junk that my grandpa would have in some of the fields. He had some old cars out near the combines and tractors - we never got to play with the combines or tractors...ever. But the old cars were available for play. We actually broke out a couple of the windows and discovered what safety glass was and how cool all the little pieces of glass looked. At one point, my grandpa had what looked like an igloo in the yard and that was a fun playhouse...until we discovered the spiders inside. The boat out behind the house was fun to play on until the hornets decided it was a nice place to build hives. As you can tell, things weren't always perfect, but we had a lot of fun, most of the time. I remember when I was wearing a sling on my arm and was running to catch up with my cousins, tripped on a dried cow patty, and fell hurt arm first into a fresh cow patty. Not a fun day for me. One day during the summer, my cousin Angie and I walked along the creek behind the house and followed it to my Uncle Ed and Aunt Doris's farm and they gave each of us an egg to take with us when we went home. Angie put hers on a pillow and sat on it to keep it warm until the adults figured out what she was doing. We played softball in the front yard and set off tons of firecrackers on the 4th of July while my grandpa would set off quite a fireworks show at night. We played with my grandma's jewelry and tried to see how much we could put on at one time. We played cards or board games. That's where I learned to shuffle cards the way I do now. Sometimes I would play the piano as long as no one was watching sports on the TV. We always had wonderful meals when we were there. So many memories from spending time at the farm. I never really did anything with caring for the animals or actually working on the farm, which probably made it even more fun for me.
Those are the three groups of memories that were most significant from my childhood. I really had a great childhood and got to have a lot of fun. I'm going to have to work on making your childhood as much fun as mine.
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