What are your HAPPIEST and most VIVID childhood memories?

[FrannyandZooey]

Things that really stand out for you? Were they with your parents, other kids, siblings, by yourself? What were you doing?

Some of mine are:

sitting by myself under the willow tree in our front garden making designs for cars in chalk on scraps of paper

going for long walks in the woods with my parents

having sleepovers with friends, highlights including bouncing on the bed, 'streaking', and midnight feasts

looking at the stars at night with my dad

running along the beach by myself and exploring all the places around my home on my bike

Oh - going on holiday in my parents red VW beetle. We used to set off at about 4am and have a bed made up in the back (imagine that for safety!) and have bacon sarnies for breakfast in the car. Sadly also v.v. vivid memories of having a crash in that car when i was about 6.

Also v. vivid memories of being in hospital when six, all alone because parents weren't allowed to stay. V. scary at the time.

cupcakes - making rose perfume is one of those things that every child does I think. DD and DS#1 spent a very happy afternoon last year doing just that in my parents's garden,

Long summer days spent at Ilkley Lido where we ate smokey bacon Seabrook's crisps and drank cans of shandy.

Mimizan I love Seabrooks crisps. Cheese and onion are my faves.

Bottle hunting with my Brother at the old tin mine slag heap at the top of the lane.

We went back a couple of years ago, and it had'nt changed a bit, except may be getting a bit smaller

Making a snow fort with my sisters, brother and cousins ('Fort Worthless')

Playing Narnia in the field with my sisters and brother

Sleeping in a tent outside the house

Learning to milk the cow with Granny

Dad taking us swimming and teaching me to float

Our lovely labrador

Wanting to marry my cousin when we grew up

Throwing tennis balls up REALLY high in the back garden and learning to catch them.

My little brother coming to school to pick me up wearing only his red wellies

Watching big rain storms out of the lounge window with my brother and my Dad.

Doing play with my friends and lining our parents up in the garden to spectate.

Having my own bed when I was 15

Long walks by myself in the woods (would never do it now even as an adult).
Would sometimes take my brother and we would build dens out of ferns and took along an old frying pan and some bread/butter and made ourselves some tea.
Nest hunting through the spring, only made a note of where each nest was and what species and made maps of the local area.
Would not be allowed to do that now of course.
Looked after an orphaned Blackbird chick until it fledged, my bedroom was a right mess and it was fed on dog food!
Building little houses for freshwater shrimps in the local stream.
This was all in Switzerland by the way, once back in the UK my parents did not let me wander as much as over there.
Snow was guaranteed every year and we had lots of steep hills around our flat and some evenings when it got very cold we would have ice in our hair.
One year the snow was so bad (late 70's) that for a whole week we had to go shopping with a sledge.
Ahhh, those were the days.
AB

Message withdrawn

Gardening with my granny
Helping granny hang out her washing
Watching a soap with granny
Going to baseball games with granny

Spending time with her in general

coming in soaking wet from lashing rain off the school bus and my mum having freshly made soda bread for me with dripping butter.

Going to the country for my summer holidays and being spoilt by my auntie

making daisy chains with my sister in my grandma's garden
going to visit my brother after he had been born and being cross that he was up later than me! (i was 6 )

I meant melting butter

Going for a walk with my parents and sister and another family every Sunday afternoon, either along the beach if the tide was out, or through the woods if it was in.

Long summers spent on the beach - we shared a beach hut with several other families, and all the children always had the flat brown sandals from Mothercare so we all had our names written in them. Huddling in the beac hut in the rain, or bveing allowed down to the beach before Mum had finished doing her work to meet up with one of the families, but no going in the sea until she was there! Dad could never take time off in the summer so he always came down to the beach for his lunch and dug us huge castles with a garden spade.

We never actually had a summer holiday, (started having holidays in October half term when I was about 10), but my parents always took us to Great Yarmouth for the day on the very last day of the school holidays, and we went on the rides, had chips and candyfloss, played on the 2p falls and other amusements, and Mum and Dad paid for it all - they did this until I was in my late teens, and is a special memory - we have started doing a day out at the end of the summer hols for our children as it is such a special memory for me.

Thanks Franny, I often moan about my parents but thinking about this has shown me that they did make a real effort to create some happy memories.

Lovely long sunday lunches
Walks in the evening with mom after supper - no TV in those days!!

Loads of happy memories

Earliest ones are running through a water spray on a sunny afternoon, swinging on a swing and feeling that I was swinging into a deep blue sky, making mud pies, my grandad's garden....

Breakfast on Sunday morning - half an orange sliced across the middle (dad did it for me because I didn't like g'fruit),home-made milk rolls and butter and the smell of ground coffee in a stove-top percolator. I used to love grinding the coffee beans.

Breakfast at grannys was different and very special - lapsang souchong tea, unsalted buter on very very thin sliced bread and thin cut smoked bacon

my parents took us to portugal and i used to climb on my dad's back (wasn't a strong swimmer) and he would point out colourful fish and i would look at them thru a mask with a snorkel. can remember the rubber smell as i am writing this. am desperate to do it with my own daughter, tho she is only 2 so am waiting a bit.

Playing Newmarket for money with my Grandma and auties around her dining room table aged approx 8

Riding my bike down the hills on the rec with my friends - we colected the plastic tags from loaves of bread and attached them to the spokes on our wheels

Holidays on a farm in small village where we were allowed to feed the chicken, pigs, cows etc. and bring in the potatoes in the fall. Then we would burn the (potato) weeds and roast potatoes. Yum.... My parents let us run loose (probably enjoyed that as well !) but were always there when we wanted/needed them. I really had a very happy childhood and that includes many happy memories with my dear parents, but also many without . We spent several vacations on that farm (I am hoping to go there when dd is older!!), and one time, I was quite young, I met a boy and in the early evening the two of us would go for a walk (hand in hand) looking for bats (there were tons). How romantic....
Doing girly stuff with my Ma....
Going to the station with my Pa on Sundays every now and then where he would get the Sunday paper and then stopping at Burger King on the way home....
I could go on and on! Thanks for this lovely thread, makes me feel all wooshy...

Sorry, one last one (again, the farm!). There were some ponies there and we were allowed to feed them the fallen (!) apples from the apple tree next to their pasture. They so loved that, so guess what we did when there were no more apples on the ground.... yep, we made sure some more would fall!
It was years later when I realized they could have gotten colics without end.... Hopefully they didn't though!!

Have only read the beginning of the thread but it has prompted me to tell you this, Franny. A couple of weeks ago we were on holiday in Crete, the ds's had gone to bed and dp and I were sitting on the balcony; we suddenly saw ds1 (4) appear in the doorway, it was about 9pm and he had woken up. We let him come out and sit with us while we watched the stars come out one by one and I thought at the time that this was the sort of thing that could become an early, special memory for him . So I'm really glad to read that watching the stars was an early, happy memory for you.

My early memories are also happy - mainly just messing about in the garden, the street and the waste ground behind our house with my brothers for hours on end during the summer holidays.