childhood: couch-beds, dimmed lights, plinko, and lawn-service flags

I am, by nature, a very nostalgic person and having recently been feeling especially nostalgic about days gone by, this question is very fitting:

As kids, what were 4 of your favorite things to do/play?

In addition to endless hours of playing with dolls and barbies:

1. sleepovers on friday nights in the family room: I don't really know when these started, but I'm glad they did. My memory tells me that we had a sleepover on, what seems like, every-single Friday night. They usually consisted of me, my neighbor (and best friend at the time), my sister (probably if my friend and I were feeling nice enough to include her?) and my mom. It was something to look forward to every week and I always loved that it was "just us girls." My mom would push the couches together in our family room to make one big bed. We'd get out the sleeping bags (old ones that were my parents and smelled like our basement) and grab our pillows and make a huge, comfy couch-bed. My mom would make us nachos (like a big batch on a cookie sheet) and popcorn and we watched TGIF (remember when Full House was on TGIF?). After TGIF we'd watch a movie (usually Troop Beverly Hills or Overboard -- they were on the same VHS tape, one right after the other). These sleepovers were then obviously paired with sleeping in late on Saturday morning and maybe a homemade breakfast, courtesy of Mom. I don't even know how accurate my memories of these nights are, but I sure do remember them fondly.

2. grandpa and grandma's house: My dad's parents always lived just five minutes down the road from us so we were blessed to see them often. I have so many great memories of spending time with them, but some that stick out the most are from when they would babysit Heather and I for the night while my parents were gone. We would spend the night at their condo (which I always loved because it was clean -- yeah I was a neat freak -- and because it was our home away from home) and basically spent our time entertaining Grandma and Grandpa with our silly little shows or games. One of our favorite make-believe games involved each of us picking out one of Grandma's t-shirts (which we wore as dresses), dimming the lights in their living room, and then having Grandpa put on some classical music. Heather and I danced around the spacious room with couch pillows (the pillows were our "husbands") and pretended we were out at some fancy dinner dance with our significant others. Haha. This memory makes me laugh and smile. We looked forward to doing it every time we spent the night and thankfully, Grandma and Grandpa played along.

3. price is right on summer mornings: This memory is from when I was a little older, but I still remember waking up late on summer mornings and heading straight for the couch to watch "Price is Right". It was a great way to start the lazy, summer days. I always loved the games where they tried to win cars (the one where they rolled the over-sized dice was the best). And of course, one of my favorites, Plinko.

4. capture the flag with stacy and stephanie: During middle school some new neighbors started building a house right across the corner from ours. Heather and I were more than happy to find out that the new neighbors were a family of four with two girls about our age. It goes without saying that we spent tons of time with them (after school every day, every weekend, all summer, etc.). Again, I have tons of memories of activities we did with Stacy and Stephanie, but one of them was Capture the Flag. I forget the details now, but we made up some version that worked for just the four of us to play. The flags were always those little lawn flags that lawn-service places put up when they fertilize. We loved running through the woods around the house and coming up with clever ways to capture the flag.

As I write this blog, I am flooded with hundreds of fond memories from my childhood. I was blessed. I was surrounded with love and freedom and care-free summers and yummy food and fun vacations. I have nothing but happy memories from all my younger years.