Reliving Childhood

When I was younger, Cath and I made up a lot of games. Steph and Jenn would play Barbies and dolls but we weren't into that. We were Charlie's Angels, Nancy Drew, and any other thing that we made up. Our favorite game was "Neon Leon" and we would play this game for hours and hours. Growing up we lived in a split-level home so the top floor was my dad's office, my sisters' room and the playroom. My sisters, Jenn and Steph, shared the room and it was in the roof area so the ceiling was slanted and it was long and skinny. At the end of their room was our playroom. There were no windows in these rooms so the game Neon Leon was born.

For Christmas one year, one of us girls (there were 4 of us and my little bro) received some glow-in-the-dark bracelets and necklaces in bright neon colors. These were even better than the ones you can buy now because they were rechargeable. One Sunday afternoon, we chose to play regular hide and seek upstairs but noticed those bracelets glowing. Thus they were added into the game and became the name of it. One sister would be "IT" and stay at the front of the bedroom with a lamp on charging the bracelet. The other sisters would run and hide in the playroom. When the lamp went out, the game was on. The object was to sneak past "IT" and get back to the bed without getting caught. Since it was pitch black in those rooms we could only see the glowing bracelet so we knew where "IT" was and could crawl, run, tiptoe, etc. to Home Base. The last person back was "IT". We loved this game so much and would seriously play for hours.

I have introduced it to my children. The first time we played was in St. George with my sister, Stephanie, and her family. It was a little difficult because Carlee kept talking to me while we were hiding, Jake kept telling everyone where he was, and Madi kept gooing and babbling. So we had to improvise and the young ones are now "IT" every time and do the seeking. Now my kids want to play this all the time. Our house is very open and we have a spiral-type staircase that goes up with a catwalk-type hallway connecting one half of the second floor to the other half so it is really fun. While "IT" is in one half of the house, we can sneak down the stairs to homebase. It is now our favorite FHE game and we play it on the weekends.

Another fun childhood memory is watching the movie, "Bye Bye Birdie". When my mom rented it and made us watch it we laughed our heads off and made fun of the entire thing. When it was over we watched it again and probably watched it at least a dozen times before taking it back to the video store.

My children were introduced to this movie today. I told them about it and the boys were NOT going to watch it. They wanted to go upstairs and play Pokemon. So I said, "That is fine. Katelyn, Carlee, Dad and I will watch it." I turned it on and they walked upstairs. Pretty soon, I see their heads peeking over the loft down at the TV and a few minutes later they came downstairs carrying all their Pokemon stuff with the excuse that they would play downstairs so they "could be with the family". I don't think Pokemon was played once. Every time I looked over at them, their eyes were glued to the TV. I have turned into my mom. She said we would love it and we did, eventually. I told my kids the same thing and when the movie was over, Kate and Jake were heard humming and singing, "One Last Kiss."

Awwww, memories . . .