4 Stories: Childhood Games

Scary Pillow: Don't ask me how we came up with this game, but Aria and I thought up this game at home while we were bored. We would take turns curling up into a little ball, and the other would pretend to sleep on this curled up "pillow". The "pillow" would start making growling noises and we would scare each other silly with not knowing when the pillow would wake up. It was one of those really crazy weird games we did by ourselves.

Dressup: Ohhhh I think everyone who came to our house played with our dressup clothes. Our Aunty Laura gave us the most glittery shiny clothes from probably value village. We had a black sequin covered mini dress, (could have been a shirt), a gold dress, a red metallic dress, postman shirt (every guy wanted to wear it when they played dress up or house with us) and a bunch of other clothes.  Playing house was so fun. There was a white nightie house coat lingerie thing which served as an awesome princess dress or a wedding dress.

Hide and Seek: Living on a farm for 3 years gave me the best childhood memories. There was a long driveway lined with big bushes. Some of those bushes had been removed before we moved in. This made it so we could climb into the bushes, and kinda creep underneath them to hide. It was one of my favourite hiding places. I don't think it ever occurred to me that there were big bugs everywhere in there. Other favorite hiding spots were the linen cupboard. It was almost like a tiny room. I could curl into a ball in one of the shelves and just pile blankets in front of me. We had wicked awesome games there also because inside the house there were lots of rooms. Little mini bedrooms were downstairs (they were so small they were used for storage) as well as if we played outside, there was a big barn and trees and bushes everywhere. Hide and seek was epic there.

Fort: Using couch cushions, pillows, blanket, chairs and furniture I would make the most incredible forts. I loved making elaborate forts to hang out in, to play in with my sister. Sometimes the books used to hold the blankets up would fall and sometimes it would hurt, especially if they fell on my head. I have instilled fort making in my baby already. She plays fort in her play gym thing on the floor. She gets so excited being in there.

4 Stories: Food

One: Borscht

My Grandma would make this for us when we came over for lunch. It also came with homemade buns, REAL butter and maybe cheese. I didn't care for this soup as much, it had "things" in it. Cabbage, big stewed tomatoes and was not at all like vegetable soup from a can. When I moved away from home, I started craving foods that I would eat at home. I appreciated those foods, especially homemade soups. They are one of my ultimate comforty foods. This weekend we had company over and I made it for them. Kinda wanted to share the foods that I grew up with that are a little different than the norm. I filled my 2 biggest pots full of soup and in the end, we finished the biggest one. That's good though, cause that means awesome leftovers for me this week.


Two: Favorite

Its hard to pinpoint a favorite food, but if I had to it would be mashed potatoes and gravy. I know they are kind of 2 foods, but they are the best. When I was younger, I would eat leftover mashed potatoes and gravy for almost every meal if I could. Usually I would run out of gravy before the mashed potatoes though. That was sad times.

Three: Breakfast

I have never ever EVER been a typical breakfast girl. When I was young, I hated toast. I seemed to remember that we had it a lot and eventually I got to make my own breakfast. Unlike Tony who eats cereal or typical breakfast foods, I went straight for the leftovers. Cold pizza was the best breakfast. I don't even heat it up. In high school I would eat ice cream, or cold meatloaf. Never cereal. The only breakfast food I will eat for breakfast now is probably oatmeal. If I cook Tony breakfast like eggs, I will have some, but otherwise, its whatever is handy in my fridge.

Four: Birthdays

So the tradition is, on your birthday you can ask mom for what you want her to cook you for dinner. For me, this is a pretty awesome deal. Unlike my summer siblings who have to choose foods that are not prepared in an oven, I get free range kinda on what I can have. This is why I love March birthdays. One time my momma asked if I wanted turkey dinner for a birthday dinner. WHAT???? Make my favourite meal not on a holiday???? OH HECK YES! Chicken cordon bleu? SURE! So you summer babies may have awesome weather on your birthdays, but I get the awesome food.

4 Stories: Vintage

One: Suzy Homemaker

This was the first thing I thought of when I thought of the word "Vintage". My mom had this little oven that was like the first "easy bake oven". It was this exact colour and had the little girl's head on it. We used it mostly to play house with, but occasionally we baked a tiny cake or something under the light bulb. Who knew you could cook food using a light bulb. It was so cute and fun. Thing was also pretty heavy...but I was 6 so maybe it was just me. My momma I think still has this thing, and I hope that Sadie can play with it when she's older.

Two: Skipper

I will never forget when my momma brought out 2 floral patterned suitcases (that must have came from the 60's) and inside were the coolest barbies. These barbies had real eyelashes, and black hair, and neat faces. I don't remember what happened to them. They would have been collectible too. The one we did keep was Skipper. She had flat flipper like feet and coarse feeling hair. She didn't really fit any of my barbies clothes. She obviously didn't hit puberty yet, but that was ok. She was the older sister and she really hurt if your sister hit you with her. Her head popped off one day and when we played with her, we would shove her head back on her neck, so she wouldn't have a neck. She was the "disfigured" older sister to our barbies. Poor gal.


Three: Wishfulness

I gotta admit, I struggled with this topic a lot. I am not the type of person who goes thrifting and finds awesome vintage stuff. I read blogs like FreckledNest and I am envious at all the cute little things she finds. I keep telling myself that one day I will make a list of things and then go out searching. Maybe when Sadie will let me leave the house without her.


Four: Toys

So way way before Sadie was born, when she wasn't even thought of, I was on the hunt for vintage toys, or toys that I played with. I worked at eBay, the worlds garage biggest garage sale basically. When it was slow, I would be browsing the site, looking for toys I played with. I found 2 things that I had, a Tupperware Noah's ark set and a Tupperware tea set with cake holder. Tony thought I was nuts, but I told him for our future children, they would need these things. NEED THEM! So they went into a storage bin under our bed. When we found out we were expecting her, I whipped out her toys and set them up in her side of the room. She can't play with them now, but maybe soon the Noah's ark in the tub. When I was pregnant, I also found an awesome set of bible story books that I used to read. I am missing the 4th book, but I shall be hunting for it again at Value Village.

4 Stories: Swimming

So Leigh-Ann at Freckled Nest had an awesome idea to do a group blog thing. Every weekend she's going to pick a topic and we can write 4 stories about it. I am all up for that. I may however pick my own topics if I cant think of anything to write for her topics. She explains more about it here.

This week's topic is "Swimming".
 

Story 1: Pinecrest Lake

Back when I was small, around 5 or 6, we used to visit my grandparents who lived in Pinecrest. This is not terribly far from whistler. Whether it was summer or winter, I would want to visit the lake, to feed the ducks or to swim. 

I remember liking the water, I was not keen on going deeper than my knees or waist. Nope, not going to do that. I didn't know how to swim, so I was not going any deeper at all. My dad would play in the lake with us, and I remember him trying to take us out deeper, probably to teach us to swim. Every time he took me too deep, I would totally freak out. Maybe I should have trusted him more and I would have learned to swim earlier than age 10 ish.:(

Anyways, part of this story that my mom told us later in life was that the lake we went to had leeches. EWWWW! She might find a few on my sister and I and would pick them off when we weren't looking.

Story 2: Aunty Dar's Pool

Every summer the one thing I looked forward to almost as much as camp, was going to Aunty Dar's house. It was hot in Kamloops, and so therefore we would almost live in her pool. It didn't matter if we wore sunscreen, we would always be sunburned because we were in the water that long. In the earlier years (before I turned 10) we didn't know how to swim really, so we would hang in the shallow end of the pool. We came up with synchronized swimming routines that we would show off to the adults. I remember practicing with aria a lot, and it was lots of fun at the time. There were also incredible floaty toys to play with. We played whales and dolphins and used goggles to look under water.

Eventually when I did learn to swim, we would make use of the crazy deep part of the pool and jump off her diving board. The picture above was of Matthew, Chris (cousins), Me and Aria (in that order). 


Story 3: Birthday party


I learned to swim kinda at a friends birthday party. Her name was Cassie. She was the "new" girl in our grade 5 class. She invited all the girls in the class to her birthday party. Everyone got in the pool, and all the girls but me knew how to swim. They all got in and started for the deep end. I hung back all quiet and shy and it sucked. I was bored out of my mind. It was that day I worked up the courage to hang on to the pool wall and scootch myself over to the deep end. I was not going to be left out, and I thought that as long as I held onto the wall it would be ok. Turns out her pool wasn't too deep and I was with my friends and then realized I could go under water beside the pool wall and push myself back to the surface easily. I didn't tell my friends this, but I was so excited to not be afraid of doing this in the deep end that I eventually made it into the middle of the deep end of the pool. From then on, I was even more excited to go swimming. I am not that great of a swimmer, never took lessons, but the fear is gone. 

Story 4: Pool at the Trailer

My Grandparents owned a trailer at a summer trailer park near cultus lake. It had a shared pool. It was great to go and hang out, play in the over clorinated pool with my cousins. Cannon balls, diving for things at the bottom, hang upsidedown. It was great. Soo one thing I will never forget is my dad hoisting me up on his shoulders, and starting at the shallow end, he would walk across the pool until he was completely submerged and all you could see was me sitting just above the water. He held his breath for so long, and it was so much fun. Everyone at the pool would watch. He would also throw us in the air. The best thing was crouching on his knees and he would launch us backwards or forwards into the air. Fun times!