Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It’s Saturday Night again –

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along – cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1) Let’s talk about what we did as children (not teenagers or young adults) on our summer vacations from school.  

2)  Write about your life as a child in the summertime (say, any age between 5 and 12).  Where did you live, what did you do, how did it influence the rest of your life?

While I moved away during junior high, I consider Dodge City, Kansas my childhood hometown. During the summer, my brothers and I would spend the days roaming the neighborhood playing with our neighbors. The children of the Sayre, Edmiston, Lee, and Keeley families often joined us. We were often accompanied by a red wagon and our faithful dog, Susie.

When we were old enough to stay home in the afternoons alone, my mom went to work. On those days, my brothers and I would sit on the front lawn about 5 pm waiting for mom and dad to arrive home from work. We would go swimming for about an hour before supper most evenings.

However, the highlight of the summer was our vacations when we went camping. We always went west – to the mountains. Sometimes it was to southern Colorado. One year we traveled to the Tetons and Yellowstone. At other times we would travel to Sedona, Arizona or Taos, New Mexico where my dad’s aunts lived. One summer we came home from Colorado to turn around and go to New Mexico for the weekend.

So, how did this influence my life? Do I still go camping? Do I still go west to the mountains? The simple answer is most often no. When I do go ‘camping’ it is in a cabin at the lake with my brothers and their families. My husband and I have sometimes gone to the mountains, but our vacations often take us to areas where we can do genealogy research.