Write down 50 of my favorite memories.

We had a Sega Genesis and my brother and I used to play Madden ‘93 at least once a week. I never once won (what else is new), but we would play and it was a fun bonding time. My brother is 6 years older than I am (and now he doesn’t live at home anymore, but we did play a game on Thanksgiving when he was here).

Back in the days when Whalom Park was around.

Whalom Park was a small family amusement park. Every summer a local radio station would give away tickets to there, and we would get buckets of tickets. My mom is one of 9 so our family and her siblings and their children would all go to Whalom Park. We’d have a blast. I was younger so I rode on the little-kid rides and the train and ate cotton candy. Whalom Park was one of the coolest places ever.

Wow, that’s so cool. I just googled it and although the park shut down in 2000, there are people looking to rebuild Whalom Park- aw! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d6EnxAZ-tA

In my younger days- up til the mid-90’s I believe- we used to go on family vacations each summer.

My dad would take a week off from work and we had an old pop-up trailer and we would load up the car with food and bedding and bikes and hit the road. It was only a two hour drive down there, but when I was younger it seemed like so much longer. I’d pack my walkman and a few books and a notebook to keep track of what states the passing cars on the highway were from- I’d try to get all 50 in the week we were down there.

We stayed at a campground near the bridge and set up camp. We’d spend our days at the beach and make sandcastles and go boogie-boarding. We’d visit my grandparents who lived on a boat during the Summer. We’d go out bowling and have campfires and my dad would go fishing. It was just a real nice experience- something I looked forward to every year.

We haven’t done something like that in 10 or so years, but I’ll always remember those times fondly.

When we were younger (I have 3 siblings), my mom had a number of things to try and keep us busy.

One thing we loved to make was called Colored Toast.

How do you make colored toast? Well, you take a slice of bread (white, for this). And you get a bunch of little dixie cups and fill them half way with milk and then get out some food coloring and put a few drops in each of the cups to create fun colors (fuschia, purple, bright blue, green, yellow, whatever colors we wanted that day) and we would stir the mixture with [unused] Q-tips.

Then we would take the Q-tips and, dipping them in the mixture, we’d create a picture on the toast. Sometimes it’d be a smiling face, sometimes it’d be a house, sometimes our name, sometimes an animal- whatever we felt like creating. After we colored the bread, we’d toast it and then cut it into fun shapes after showing everyone our creations. We’d eat it and make more. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon and could be done alone, but was always more fun when siblings and cousins were involved too.

...speaking of which, I haven’t done this in a long long time. Hm.

This started very young, when I first learned to read.

Every night before I would go to bed, my mum and I would read a story together. In my youngest years, she would read to me. As I got older, I read to her or we’d take turns.

The books we read varied throughout the years. We started with The Duck Who Loved Puddles and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and a kids version of the Bible… and worked our way to more elaborate fifty page detective mysteries and fun things like the Bailey School Kids and Charlotte’s Web.

Reading with mom was how I developed my love for literature. I loved it. I would get ready for bed early just so we could read together for a little bit longer. Reading allowed me to enter a different world, to explore and to learn about things, and hear about stories. I loved stories and reading about how people reacted to different situations.

Also around the middle school time period…

We live out in farm country and our house is surrounded by apple trees. We pick the apples and one of our favorite things to do with them is to make apple pies. So my dad would always be making apple pies in the fall. Each time he did it, I would sit at the kitchen table opposite him and watch him make the dough, the roll it out and shape it into a crust. He would give me the extra dough and I would dip it in the sugar bowl for a super sweet snack.

I love the smell of a fresh apple pie baking in the oven.

So wonderful.

My grandparents moved next door to my family when I was in middle school. Every week or two I would go visit my gramma and we would sit down and do a jigsaw puzzle together. I was a quiet child and so we would often do the puzzles without talking much. It was the quality time we shared together that mattered. A few weeks ago I saw my gramma and she asked if I remembered those times, because they were some of her fondest memories. Of course I did; I always looked forward to it.

She also mentioned the time I hand-made a puzzle for her for Mother’s Day. I drew a pretty picture with lots of colors and hearts and then cut it up and put it in an envelope for her to decode. She said she still has it and treasures it. :)