Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Summer Days

I love big fluffy white clouds that drift lazily across a blue summer sky. The area where we live hardly ever has that kind of clouds and when these little ones appeared today I had to take a picture.

They reminded me a lot of when I was a little girl. Summer time used to be the greatest. We would lay on our backs in our yard and watch the clouds and pick out various shapes that we liked. On the warmest days Mom would let us drag her laundry tub out and fill it with water for water fights. We would climb our old crab apple tree and read books among it's branches. And there were many things we could do to help with the garden and canning.

One day when I was seven and John was five we kept getting into spats all day. Finally Mom got two plastic clothespins and gave them to us telling us to squeeze the ends while she put a dab of jam on the other end and then told us to sit out in the yard and wait until a fly sits on the jam and then allow the clothespin to snap shut.

We sat in the yard for a long time with our homemade "fly traps" but there were no flies interested. We finally gave up and went to play something else.

It was several years before we realized it had only been a clever way to put us in time out!

17 comments:

  1. wow might have to try that one with my kids lol

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  2. Maybe I ought to try that one with my boys!!

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  3. That's one smart mama. Wish I'd thought of that!

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  4. What a great memory. Beautiful cloud photo too.

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  5. You did have a smart mama. How funny! Your cloud photos are so pretty. I remember doing that, too. :)

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  6. I agree, your mother was very clever....

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  7. Lovely clouds and a funny story!

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  8. I must try that with my children. And I love your cloud picture. I take lots of clouds, but we are flat here. I love your hills. Aaw and doesn't the electric wire always get in the way? But it is nice when you can get a bird sitting on it. I am waiting for the bird convention that should be convening on ours soon.

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  9. Wow. That view is beautiful.

    What a creative way of time out. I never would have thought about doing something like that.

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  10. The view is beautiful and Your mom sounds like a smart woman!

    Last week while visiting our son, our 4 year old grand son kept getting up and coming downstairs. My DIL simply asked him paper or bed? Cade picked paper. So into the family room (away from any action going on) they went and she took a piece of typing paper and he stood on it for about 15 minutes before he decided it was finally time to go to bed. LOL
    It worked without any arguing. Moms are great!

    Happy Fourth of July!

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  11. Clever? I'll say! Even better than the jar full of cream they would tell you to roll around which would turn into butter.

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  12. Very clever mom! I've never heard of that tactic before!

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  13. That's one smart mama!!!! This is clever advice! :)

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  14. LOL, that's a great idea. Smart mom indeed. Thank you for the comment on my blog earlier. I love taking pics for my blog, and the silly things like the stereo always make for great commentary. If my friend had not noticed the moment would have passed us right by. I've enjoyed reading through your blog as well.

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  15. When I was very little - still in a playpen - my mom would put honey on my fingers and then give me a small, fluffy feather. I would sit for ages pulling that feather off one thumb and then the other. (No wonder I'm a little twitchy today!) She said she would also give me a spoonful of the old-fashioned peanut butter, which sticks to the roof of your mouth, and that would keep me occupied for a while. But I DO like the "fly catcher" trick!

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