List 43 of my favorite Childhood Memories

20. Coming home from vacation and finding a ton of mail for me.
I had a subscription to an educational magazine that I loved, and I had a lot of classmates and penpals who’d write me postcards.

Since summer vacation in Germany is only 6 weeks long, everyone goes on vacation at pretty much the same time, which is what caused the mail to get there all at the same time. Awesome!

18. Playing with my grandma’s music box
I remembered this when watching Black Swan, because they had a similar one. I don’t remember what the music was that played from my grandmother’s, but I remember it making me a little sad every time.
We were also not allowed to touch the ballerina, because it was very fragile.

19. Watching my dad sing and dance along to the Rolling Stones
My dad is a fantastic dancer, and whenever the Rolling Stones came on the radio, he’d give an ear shattering STOOOOOOONES!!! cry and turn it all the way up, drop whatever he was doing, and dance around the house. Crazy awesome.

16. reciting multiplication tables really fast. I was really good at this. Only thing in math I could ever do well. Our teacher would time us all and the fastest one would get a prize. This was of course more of an exercise in tongue dexterity than math.
I also remember perceiving certain numbers in different colors. When reciting “28, 32, 36, 40” for example, I always saw a dark blue place, getting darker the higher the numbers got. Weird! Anyway.

17. Going on freaking vacation in a car!
My mom would always pack a sweet care package for my sister and me in the back seat, loaded with new magazines, books, puzzles, tapes, and candy (there was a certain kind of candy she only bought for summer vacations for some reason). That may very well have been my favorite part of any vacation.

11. bath time! Because I had soo many toys. I remember I was always sad when I had to get out.

12. Special toys on Christmas. My parents always put up an old dollhouse and an almost as old toy mom-and-pop store for Christmas and kept them up for only a few weeks. My sister and I would get so excited about them, definitely way more than if they had been there all year. We’d also always get little gifts for them, like a new… bathroom sink for the dollhouse or whatever.

13. Running around the apple tree screaming our heads off until it got dark.
I don’t know why this was so much fun, but it was. Barefoot in the cool grass. Yes yes.

14. Making apple pancakes with my grandma on the toy stove.
I need to learn how to cook a lot more dishes from her.

15. Laternelaufen :P
This is totally German, I don’t think anyone else does this.
In fall, kids craft colorful paper lanterns, put candles in them, and attach them to wooden sticks (see http://www.almutundhendrik.de/blog/uploaded_images/laterne_01-763299.jpg)
and then the families walk around the neighborhood, singing specific lantern songs, sometimes by themselves, sometimes in large groups.
I’m guessing this was supposed to have the same effect as making jack-o-lanterns, but I don’t know for sure.
Anyway, it looks really pretty, and coming up with new lanterns every year was so much fun (I had a 3D dinosaur once, my mom always went all out on those), and of course the greatest thrill was when someone’s lantern caught on fire :P

I had such a wonderful childhood, I could easily come up with hundreds of happy moments :)
(I’m gonna say childhood ends when you’re 12 btw.)

1. When I was too little to brush my teeth myself, my mom and dad would do it and sing songs to me to keep me entertained. My dad sometimes even recited funny poems.

2. Traveling to the states.
We went on family vacations there a load of times, and it always felt so different and luxurious. To this day, flying and staying in hotels gets me all excited. I could probably list 43 things about each trip alone, like how bad the geysirs at Yellowstone Park smelled, and how my mom gave me a handkerchief with her perfume on it so I could hold it in front of my face. I ended up acting like smells bothered me a lot more after that, because I loved smelling her perfume so much.
I also remember being terrified of all the bad things that could happen at the national park, because of all the warning signs (bears, forest fires, and all.)

3. Preparing gifts for my sister’s first birthday.
I was two and a half years old then, but I remember distinctly how I was wrapping the gifts with my mom. One of the gifts my sister got was a ball, and I wrapped it and put a smiley face on the paper. I was really proud of that idea for some reason.

4. Doing somersaults off the back of the couch.
My sister and I did that for hours. Until we got too tall.

5. The little paddling pool we had in the garden.
My mom is a very practical lady, and she’d always fill up the pool early in the morning to have the sun heat up the water by noon or so. She’d say there’s no reason for wasting energy to heat up water, and if it was too cold for us, it probably wasn’t a warm enough day to go in it anyway. (It was always okay once you got used to it, though.)

6. Creating pretty things in school.
From first through 4th grade, we always had a project every one or two weeks where we had to write a poem on a blank piece of paper and draw pictures around it to decorate it. I always got an A+, because I always put loads of work into it.

7. Going to the movies.
I rarely got to see any movies when I was a kid, not on TV or video either, so going to the movies was about the most special thing I could imagine. I highly recommend raising a movie-depraved child, they will appreciate them much more later :)

8. Making Christmas cookies with my mom and sister while singing carols.

9. Going on camping trips with our dad, and a bunch of other kids and their dads.
Fun, fun times. Us kids would spend most of the time telling each other jokes. I think I knew about 5000 at one point.

10. Having sleepovers at my grandparents’ place. They lived in the same building, but it was still super exciting! I got to eat a lot more candy than usual, and I could stay up late. Or at least as late as them :P