Flashback Friday!

A little late. This week's theme is by Lovely Button, best and favorite toys. I had a lot. I remember loving my Glamour Gals doll house, my friend Jared would always want to play it with me - he just like "undressing" the well endowed mini dolls. I loved playing with many different dolls and stuffed animals. I loved my Cabbage Patch Dolls, my 3 (yes, I only owned three) Barbie dolls - Cowgirl Barbie, Cowgirl Skipper and Cowboy Ken. Then there was the Fisher Price record player. We would listen to "The Smurf's Sing....", some album of Sesame Street and a couple others, in my basement and dance and dance. But, I don't have any pictures that I can find of these great toys. Instead, I have tons of pictures of me in my backyard. I've already told you how much I LOVED my backyard. It was so big. Part of it was cement - a huge covered patio, then the "track" - a figure 8 like area. It was a big plot of cement with two round gardens in between, making it a figure 8. We would ride our scooters, big wheels, trikes, bikes or just run around this track all day long. Races, skill tests, whatever, all day long. Then there was the area just North of the track area, 3 steps down to the pathway that led through some dense oaks to the sandbox with the climbing dome. The path wound through to the big grass area where we would play soccer or run through sprinklers. My friend Brookie and I would always be captured princesses, trapped in the oak forest. There was also a ledge the was where the cement area dropped off into the grass. We would rake all the leaves in the fall and jump into them over and over.

We also had a basketball hoop, which I never really had the skills for. I could do most things sport, just never a jump shot or free throw. I was a really good dribbler. We had a little rope swing attached to the basketball standard, I think I fell right on to me head a few times.

So, I had lots of great toys but most of my memories were outside, in the backyard, running between about 3 houses in my neighborhood, being gone from morning - eating lunch at one of these three houses - and then home for dinner. And then until it got too cold and too dark, out again for games with kids in the neighborhood.

Both of these pictures are of me at almost three years old. Both in my backyard. When else can you post a picture of yourself in a bikini, with a shadow underneath your belly, and not cringe?