Fun Monday - Child's Play

Our lovely hostess, Molly, has given us the following assignment:

I would like you to describe a happy memory from your childhood. If possible, include pictures with your reminiscing. Perhaps, for some us remembering the past may bring back some unhappy times too. But, for today, let us remember the good times.

I was lucky, I had a wonderful childhood. Some of my best memories revolve around my family. I remember nights at the dinner table laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. These conversations usually involved talk of "eyebungers" (bees that only sting the eye) and how one of us had "skun" our knee.

I was the youngest of four kids. There were only four years between the first three kids, and then four years between the youngest of those three and me. So, I did get picked on a lot and called the "baby" a lot. But despite this my brothers and sister and I had a lot of fun together. There were nights playing Tripoley, peanuts or Boggle with our parents. The TV would be turned off and we would play for the entire night. We went on lots of great vacations when we lived in England for five years. We went to Scotland over Christmas one year and all agreed that it wasn't the same being in a hotel on Christmas morning instead of at home. We travelled to Italy with my parents and grandparents and went to the top of the leaning tower of Pisa while my Grandma and Grandpa worried constantly about our walking around the outside walkways on the tower. (There weren't safety railings). We teased my sister when the Italian guys hit on her. We went skiing in Austria and laughed at my brother because every meal he would order Wienerschnitzel (sp.?).

I remember spending hours with my best friend Angie. She lived down the street from me and we were always together. We played hospital with our dolls. We'd keep detailed records as to why they were in the hospital and either apply or remove cheap red nail polish for blood to the doll's skin. We built an actual clubhouse in Angie's backyard with the help of her brother and my brothers and sisters. We used old six foot fence pieces from a neighbor who was replacing their privacy fence. We even waterproofed it with garbage bags and put a gutter on the back of the sloping roof. We used rubber tubing and a ketchup pump, along with a bucket and an old sink to create "running water." (Don't worry - we didn't drink it!) We even cleaned out a whole area of leaves and tree branches to make a bike or trike parking area.

I remember cooking potatoes wrapped in foil in the fires built to burn the leaves. Not much tasted better than a potato cooked in the coals of a fire and then topped with butter and sea salt.

In the winter we would walk on Angie's frozen pool, without our parent's knowledge of course. Her brother, Jeff, would use a hammer to break off pieces of the ice and we'd look at how it broke into little pieces we called "shivers."

I remember making sugar cookies at Christmas that we'd decorate with egg yolk paint. I remember the smell of my mom's tea ring she'd make very Christmas. We had a great tradition where the kids would give each other their Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve, after midnight mass, and then in the morning we got our presents from Santa.

One of my best memories is Christmas carolling with our Family Group - five families who met once a month to grow spiritually as family and friends. WE went to Family Camp together every summer and all the kids slept in one cabin and all the adults slept in another cabin. Then in the winter we chose several families to go carolling to and we would load into all of our vans and head out to sing at the different houses. Afterwards we had apple cider and doughnuts at someone's house.

Indeed, I was very blessed. I can't wait to hear about everyone else's happy memories.

(Sorry - no pictures today because I signed up late!)