Dirt hills, night games, and sleepovers...

We grew up in an awesome neighborhood. What kids could ask for more than a nearby tree-hut, the dirt hills in our backyard, a trampoline that all the other kids wanted to jump on (and the rules were that they always could, but not with shoes on, 5 kids at a time, and not on Sundays), and a ritual of amazing night-games? It was fabulous!

I really appreciated being able to roam the streets as I pleased. Most of my friends live within walking distance - I just needed to be home for meals. Mom and dad were also amazingly cool about letting my walk long distances (to granparents houses, home from Logana, etc.). As a mom, I have mixed feeling about letting my daughters do that... we'll see.

Sometimes we got to have sleepovers! Oh, these were coveted events. There were only certain weekends that qualified for friend sleepovers, and then you have to wait your turn with all of the siblings. Sleepovers at our house, for each child, were few and far between (although I'm sure my parents felt like we had them ALL the time). Unlucky enough for me, it seemed like whenever my sleepover turn finally rolled around, my friend (Jamie John, in this case) would decide around 11:00pm that she wanted to go home for some reason. When that happened, I knew I was doomed. There was no way I could convey to this poor forlorn and homesick friend that by leaving, she was selling me short of my long-awaited sleepover fun which was supposed to last until at least 10am the next morning, and that the opportunity wouldn't come around again for another eternity!!! She as ruining everything!!! (Sigh) Oh well.

I remember at night we would take turns asking the neighbors if we could play night games in their yard. No one liked asking them, but we sure like using their yard because it had a small hill in the front yard that was ideal for "King of Bunker Hill" and "Kick the Can". And then there was "Steal the Flag", everyone's game of choice, so long as both Wade and Peter Blair were around to be team captains. I had every square foot of the block memorized. I could be so sneaky, army-crawling across the road in front of our house to get near the enemy flag. I liked going for the flag so much bettr than being a decoy ot the front line. Ahhh, those were good times. Then the bell would ring - literally - and the Olsen kids knew it was time to some in.

I have so many memories in the dirt hills, I can't possibly list them all. I will say that I recall watching glorious sunsets from our house before the church was built. I remember sledding in the hills, walking through them to get to school (while being attacked my millions of grasshoppers!), buryung dead animals that we found there, biking, and discovering dinosaur bones (I swear, they were real, but when we told Joseph Kemp about them, he "put them to the test" by hitting them with a hammer" I was annoyed because I was pretty sure that real bones would break if you hit them with a hammer, so Joe didn't prove anything. All he did was shatter my dreams of making a famous discovery!). Sometimes we moved on to where the big guys played - the gravel pit. I was certain that there were magical powers to be tapped there. I would spend hours and hours there, exploring, imagining, playing, thinking. It was wonderful.