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This year’s summer giveaway has been my favorite. Reading your childhood memories sparked my recollections of so far gone summers.

• Running through the sprinkler with my sister or wading in our little dark green inflatable pool with a smiling dolphin looking up from the bottom. (I feared sea creatures back then, and would only wade around the inner perimeter of the pool because I didn’t want to step on that dolphin. He looked suspiciously sharky to me and I wanted to keep all ten toes.)
• Loading up the car on a hot afternoon and heading to a local lake or river and coming home with sand stuck to my “everywheres.”
• Picking strawberries with my mom.
• Going to Vacation Bible School.
• Slurping home-frozen popsicles.
• Rambling family road trips.
• Reading outside while swatting away maddening mosquitoes.
• Watching my sister catch tadpoles and frogs in the creek near our house (again, only watching – you know, the whole “sea life” thing).
• Donning PJs and going to a drive-in movie.
• Eating corn on the cob with no front teeth.
• Being bothered by the sound of chirping crickets when we moved from our city house to the country.
• Having a lemonade stand (which was a challenge considering we lived on a dead end street).
• Falling off the jungle gym repeatedly (no wonder I have back issues).
• Wearing a gob of baking soda paste on a bee sting. And calamine lotion on poison ivy bumps.
• Riding my brown Huffy around and around our subdivision.
• Building a fort in the woods with my neighborhood friends.
• Staying with my aunt and cousin (a boy) and playing GI Joes on a sandy hill.
• Watching the lights change on the waterfall fountain my grandpa had built into the side of a hill.
• Going out for A&W root beer.
• Strolling through the sensory overload that was the county fair.
• Eating watermelon and trying not to swallow the seeds. (Who wants to have a melon belly with green vines coming out your ears?)
• Getting to stay up late. Following fireflies. Counting stars.
• Learning to love the sound of the crickets outside our open bedroom windows.
• Feeling like summer was an entire year unto itself. 

See what you started?

So, thank you very much to everyone who shared a memory, a story or a snippet of their childhood summer memories. I enjoyed reading all of them. The winner of this year’s giveaway package was chosen at random, but after you read her submission, I think you’ll agree, she deserves the prize times two. 

My warmest, summery congratulations to Rachel Anderson! You’ve won a prize package filled with snacks, a craft book, a journal, a slinky and all sorts of fun stuff. Be watching your mail box! 

Rachel shared this summer memory: 

As a kid way back in the day, my ultimate favorite thing to do was to ride horses with my sister. We rode for miles and miles, jumping creeks, racing through hayfields and plodding lazily along rivers. Life was good.

Here is part of a poem I wrote about riding: 

Two little sisters, eight and ten,
Dashed up to the farm and then
Jumped on horses for a ride
Raced the field, side by side.
Galloping without a care
Going here and going there. 

What a lovely memory. Enjoy these last lingering days of summer, my little strawberry shortcakes.

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Every summer, like roses, childhood returns. ~ Marty Rubin