A November to Remember

30 Days of Cherished Memories

November 1

I'm participating in a November project called 30 Days of Cherished Memories with one of my Facebook groups.  I've seen the 30 Days of Gratitude ones and while I have much to be grateful for, I thought the Cherished Memories would be fun.  After all, I am grateful for those memories too!

So, first up is a cherished memory from my childhood (may as well start from close to the beginning, right?).  I cherish the made-up games I played.  Brief background, I have three sisters, but two of them were 10 and 12 years older than I, and my younger sister was born five years after me, so for a while I had to amuse myself.  

Orphanage Game:  This is me, with my dolls, laying on our living room floor.  We must all be ready for nap time after playing the exhausting Orphanage game.

In the orphanage game, I would take all my dolls and put them in the hall closet.  I would pretend I was a nun and I would knock on a table as if someone was knocking on the door.  Then I would go to the closet, take out one of the dolls and pretend that someone had left a baby on the steps of the orphanage.  I would pick up the doll, cuddle it, "feed" it and put it down for a nap.  Then I'd knock on the table and go to the closet to get another doll and start the process all over again until all the "babies" had been found.  Sometimes I would do this two or three times in a row!  Guess this time I decided the nun needed a nap too.

Donut Shop:  My mom collected salt and pepper shakers from different places that we went and we had lots of different ones in a big cabinet in the kitchen.  I have some of them now.

For the donut shop game, I would take some poker chips and spread them out on the kitchen table.  Then I'd take the salt and pepper shakers, which were empty, and pretend they were full of "sprinkles" and sprinkle them over the poker chips.  I'd pretend to get customers in my donut shop and ask them what kind of donut they wanted, use a spatula to pick them up and put them in a paper bag.  I had to be really careful with the salt and pepper shakers though.  This game didn't last as long as the orphanage game, maybe because I didn't have enough "customers."

Finally, there was the Library game.  We had two huge built in bookcases in our dining room area and there were tons of books.  We had several of the Nancy Drew series books and a series called "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." I still have the Nancy Drew books and my niece has the Rebecca books.

Library was pretty simple.  I'd take some books off the shelf, pretend to stamp the date on the inside and then put them in another room.  After I had a few piles, I'd bring them back to the kitchen and "return" them to the library.  Sometimes this game would take a while because I'd actually read the books before returning them.  Interesting side note, my first real job was working in our local library as a "page" putting back the books that people checked out.  Guess I had enough prior experience :).

So, that's Day 1 of 30 days of Cherished Memories.  I'm looking forward to reading about other people's shared memories.