Blast from the Past

On Sunday, I went to Kaylee, my "niece's", 3rd birthday party.  For starters, I never recalled being this spoiled.  But then again, I was never an only child, niece, grandchild, etc.  The party was all adults and her, so it's obvious that she attracts a lot of attention.  I don't even want to talk about the issues she's going to have when her new baby brother is stealing that from her come August.  Anyway, seeing that her mom is my oldest, nearest and dearest friend, her daughters childhood is pretty much a recreation of ours.  All of the things that we enjoyed as kids, Jess gets to relive through Kaylee. 
 

Obviously now that I'm old, the childhood memories have a great age ranger than 0-3, but these are just a few of the classics:

Squeeze Its

Jess just told me that she started buying these for Kaylee.  Do you remember these?  For some reason, Jess and I used to think it was funny to pretend to be drunk off squeeze its (though we probably were sugar high).  We would walk back and forth to each others houses and bump into each other slurring our words.  So odd, I know.

 Are You Afraid of the Dark?

I was.  I still am. But I was actually scared of this Nickelodeon TV show.  Good thing I only watched it at Jess's house because we didn't have cable at my house.  What a deprived child!

 Ants on a Log

 

Remember snack time in elementary school?  Well it still exists.  But no snack was ever quite as satisfying as 'Ants on a Log.'  You know the celery, filled with peanut butter and topped with raisins.  Of course I always skipped the raisins because they creeped me out.  I don't think the teachers liked them in the classroom because how could you not smear PB everywhere?? Nowadays this snack wouldn't even be allowed in a classroom because there are so many dang PB allergies.  I mean, survival of the fittest, right?  Let's weed those weaklings out.

Lunchables

 

 Speaking of food at school.. lunchables were another treat.  It wasn't often that I got a lunchable for school, but it was awfully exciting when it happened. It started out with the simple turkey, cheese, crackers and candy.  Then Oscar Meyer decided to really give kids what they want: Pizza lunchables followed by the ultimate, Nacho lunchables.  There really couldn't have been any nutritional value in either of these.  When one of these two precious packages were in my lunchbox, I devoured every last finger-licking-drop.  I wonder what they taste like now?  Probably so gross.

Dress Up
 

So Kaylee has this obsession with dress up clothes.  She was even sporting a pretty purple gown at the birthday party.  At least 5 out of her 32 gifts were dress up clothes.  Jess and I weren't so lucky to receive dress clothes as gifts in our size (or maybe we never wanted them.)  Instead, we had our own chest of dress up clothes that her mom put together for us.  They consisted of her mom's old bridesmaid dresses, and they served as all of our costumes for the bazillion plays that we wrote (the award-winning Meanadella), and put on for her poor family at parties.  We thought we were so talented we even charged them 10 cents admission.  Hmm.. I think we need to dig up those old videos. 

Making Money

As a kid, you are always trying to scam a dollar from someone who wants to buy your crap because you're a cute kid.  Well, at the time, you probably think people actually want what you are selling, but now, we know better.  So of course Jessie and I created a few lemonade stands in our day.  We really thought we were going to "make a living" selling lemonade that our parents bought for us.  As we got older, we moved onto friendship bracelets and "rats" tails.  We could definitely do some good work with some colored floss, but we always just ended up giving them away.  I think our "rats" tail business went down hill when we offered to put them in the girls' hair at Jaci's birthday party.  We might have gotten it stuck in Jaci's hair and had to cut it out.  Bad for Business.  Is it sad that I still have all my floss and beads?? I still have my skills.

Snow Forts

Without fail, every winter, Jessie and I tried to make a snow fort.  An igloo, if you will.  We used the same brick molds.  We would pack snow into the mold and lay the snow-bricks side by side.  The first layer was obviously the easiest and then the second.  I don't remember ever really getting to a 3rd layer because we questioned how the damn Eskimos got the igloo to become round on top and still balance. I still don't know to this day.  Most times, the snow melted before we could ever finish. I can say that neither of these ever stopped us from starting our igloo every time we had good packing snow.

Bikes--"The Road"

Obviously, this is not the road.  It's scaled down a bit.

Speaking of things getting ruined before you could really enjoy them... Every summer we created "the road."  Essentially it was a "street/ town" we created on the sidewalk with chalk that led from Jessie's house to mine.  We never went all the way to my house because it was too far so somewhere around the "boat-house" (what we referenced the house that always had a boat in the driveway, about 10 houses up) "the road" turned into a highway to my house.  Pretty clever and lazy.  Regardless we work all day on this road.  building in stop signs, the drawing the sidelines and the dotted middle ones, and of course we had to include McDonald's and gas stations.  We put our younger siblings and neighborhood kids to work, of course.  Sometimes we didn't finish the road before it rained and that was it.  Other times we'd ride our bikes for days. 


Boy Meets World

Has anyone noticed that they are now showing reruns for Boy Meets World.. all day, every day? I used to watch this show everyday.  What kind of name is Topanga?  Good thing that never got trendy. 

Play Dough

So, I might have got Kaylee a play dough set for her birthday.  What kid doesn't love play dough?  What parent does?  I have to admit, I really wasn't thinking about the hassle this would be for Jess when I bought it.  But if you can recall your play dough days, when you asked to take out the play dough, your parents thought of any and every other activity that they could entice you with so they wouldn't have to bust out that nasty smelling and all-time messiest play dough.  Even I make excuses now when I'm babysitting.  But you can't deny that kids just love their play dough.

Posters

Remember when your room looked like this?  My walls were always covered with posters of NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, JTT, etc.  Was their any other purpose of buying a Teen Beat magazine than for posters to hang up in your room.  And boys, I know there's a few of you that had WWF or Superhero posters on your walls.  Maybe I have that wrong.. Pamela Anderson as CJ on Baywatch??

Cookies & Milk:

I will end this trip down memory lane, the same way I ended every childhood night: with cookies and milk.  3 cookies, a glass of ice cold milk, and a napkin to knock the crumbs off the cookie before you dipped.  If I was lucky, I'd talk my mom or dad into a 4th cookie (what a pig). I should start this tradition up again  (if I ever have the metabolism of my childhood self again.)

Okay.  Can I just have a day or month and be a kid again?  Life was so simple.  How do kids have so much time for TV, video games, and the computer?  The world is their playground!