My parents have subscribed to all three of the Pathway Publishing magazines ever since I can remember. As a little girl I used to love the Family Life magazine and would search for their children's section as well as any recipes and puzzles leaving the other family type stories for my mother to enjoy.
But as I grew older my favorite became the Young Companion. It focused much more on courtship, teens, and everything else involved with "rumspringa"*
Today I am giving away a one year subscription to Young Companion. If you would like to have a chance to win leave a comment telling me what one of your favorite summer time activities were as a child.
I will be drawing a winner using the random generator on Tuesday July 3rd.
*Unlike the popular myth, rumspringa is not a time when Amish teens are free to choose whether or not to be Amish. It is a time when youth get to spend more time with each other socializing and also courtship. Parents and other Amish families take turns hosting Sunday evening hymn singings for the youth. There may be weekly volley ball games and working bees for them as well. Rumspringa does not end when you become a member of the church. It ends when you get married.
I loved playing in the sprinklers :)
ReplyDeleteI loved going fishing with my Dad who was a commercial fisherman in Astoria, Oregon. Sometimes, we would stop for milkshakes afterwards!
ReplyDeleteGood memories!
Carolyn
We loved going swimming! My dad would come home from work at lunchtime and drop us off at the pool.
ReplyDeleteI loved picking strawberries and eating them while they were still warm from the sunshine.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I loved to play house with
ReplyDeletewhatever I could find outside. As a young teen ager I love to skate on the sidewalks.
As an older teen, of course, I waited for letters from a certain pastor's son who later became my husband.
It seems like we rode bikes all summer long. There were a group of about eight of us in our neighborhood and we went from house to house riding our bikes.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed going camping with my grandparents, some of my best memories are from those days.
ReplyDeleteOh, my summers meant a trip from southern California to my grandparent's farm in SW Oklahoma. It meant going to Mr. Byrd's farm and picking out one of the feral kittens in his barn for me to play with all summer and try to tame. It was sleeping with cousins on the porch surrounded by honeysuckle vines that kept the breeze from being too strong, but very sweet as we listened to the rumble of distant thunder. And, I could ramble on spilling memories into thousands of words. Thanks for bringing them back.
ReplyDeleteswimming, playing kickball and tetherball, sleeping out in the back yard and taking a yearly trip to visit our cousins in California. I guess just about everything was my favorite!
ReplyDeleteEvery summer my mom's side of the family would go camping for the wee end. It was my very favorite thing of the whole summer.
ReplyDeleteWould love to win this. I loved reading the Pathway papers when I was young.
When I was young, I loved to play on a trapeze bar hanging from a tree in our front yard. I dreamed of being a circus star. I would love to win your give away. Thank you for the opportunity.
ReplyDeleteI would, as a 5-8 year old, go swimming in the little snow-melt pools where i grew up in upstate NY. I remember thinking how delightful it was nobody knew what I was doing---though I came home in damp clothing. My parents wisely said nothing, allowing me my sense of childish superiority at putting something over on them...
ReplyDeleteCatching fireflies! :)
ReplyDeleteI loved playing kickball, bike riding and softball. Those were the days. :D
ReplyDeleteRumspringa... that is an interesting subject. I recently read another blog post by a former Amish woman, who basically said the same thing. Her tone felt harsh as she spoke/wrote of her former life, and the misconception the public has of it. Thanks for clarifying... I'd love to hear more about Rumspringa, if there is anything more to tell. I wonder why popular news programs do follow some Amish youth, and we see them on camera speaking of this time in their lives, as well as seeing them in clearly open public places, on cell phones, with outsiders (for lack of a better term) and doing things I can't imagine their parents would approve of. They said it was "rumspringa" yet you tell otherwise. What is that really then? Just interested in learning more....
ReplyDeleteMy favorite summertime activities were spending the summer in the country with my grandparents. We grew up in avery large city, which we loved. But come summer, we went out to our grandparents two hours away. It was the best upbringing to my way of thinking. We swap in the canals, we worked in the garden with my grandfather, helped him with the small livestock (picking our pigs they'd raise, and bottle-feeding calfs). We rode horses with the neighbors, and learned to drive a tractor at 9 years old. We sat in the barn on bails of hay stacked high reading books, and watching the cats hunt mice. We'd watch fireworks from the fields that went off on the forth of July, in a small town about 3 miles away. The warm wind blew through my long hair, and at night we nestle into soft beds, as the cool night air poured in over us. Oh, thanks you for bringing back such fond memories! It's been a long time since I've thought about those fun filled, easy days of summer.
I always loved going to the lake and swimming and boating. My Dad always had a small motor boat. Also family vacations are right up there too as a favorite.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite summer time activity as a child was tent camping with my family. Now my husband and I get to do the same thing with our children.
ReplyDeleteNikole Kestner
rnkestner@frontiernet.net
I went to a boarding school, and my sister and I spent the summer at our grandparents farm. If there was NO air stirring, my grandfather would spread a tarp on the porch roof and my grandmother would cover it with blankets and sheets. Then we would all sleep on the roof! My grandfather slept on one side and my grandmother on the other side, with my sister and me in the middle. It was so magical to see the fireflies in the trees above us. It was like floating!
ReplyDeleteMy Favorite Summer Activity was Catching Lightning Bugs at my grandparents. Ma and Poppy would sit on their Gazebo and watch us run around the yard with our glass jars trying to catch them.. I still remember those days as if they were yesterday and I still chase them around the yard with my kids!
ReplyDeleteI liked my hula hoop and my adjustable metal roller skates.
ReplyDeleteI was just thinking about this very thing a few days ago. My favorite childhood memory was spreading out a big blanket and playing with my Barbies for hours and hours. I loved summer when I was small, I don't remember it being as hot as it is now! Thanks for the chance to win an awesome giveaway.
ReplyDeletexoxo
My brother and I were "latch key" kids (both parents worked) so during the summer months we basically lived at the lake a couple miles away. We would ride our bikes down there (w/no helmets and on the side of a street that was 55 MPH!) and not come home till dinner time. Oh, the things we did! Kinda glad I'm home with my kiddos!
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I were just talking today about how much fun we had as children. We grew up in much the same fashion but in different little country towns. The smell of the night air takes me back to sleepless nights when I would put my head at the foot of the bed, by the open window. The oscillating fan would then blow in rhythmic fashion and I would fall asleep. In the morning, my friends would meet me outside on my swing set and we would play there and then ride our bikes til lunch time. After lunch the girls would gather in my little tent for our "chums club" meeting. We would plan a yearly "variety show" including songs and skits and jokes and make our parents pay to see it. HAHAHA!!! ... and they did! We also had a fort in the woods. Boys had their's, girls had their's. Girls' was better :-) For several years, we had swimming lessons at a local resort .. good thing because our friend Audrey got a pool and we all had fun dunking each other and cooling off. We also had a little brook to cool off in and have picnics by. On REALLY hot days, we would get out the board games and sit in front of the double fan in the living room. We also had the old fashioned "legos" called "American Bricks" ... my brother could build awesome bridges and I could knock them down when he was done! Did I mention baseball? The boys relented and let us girls play (we were outnumbered) because they needed us to have enough players. We were pretty good and by the time we were teens, we were in demand on the diamond...on the sandlot behind our neighbor's barn and if you hit it past the apple tree, it was an automatic home run! I love summer!
ReplyDeletebike riding
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite thing about summer was running through the sprinkler, and using empty dish liquid bottles to write our names on the driveway and squirt our friends. Wow, I had almost forgotten about that. ♥
ReplyDeleteMy favorite summer pastime was taking my bicycle, which had a basket on the front, and packing a picnic just for me. Then I would pedal as far as my Mom would allow, usually to the end of a large block, in this residential street lined with huge beautiful trees, stop on the neighbors grassy lawn, eat my picnic lunch, dawdle as long as I could, and pedaling back. It was the highlight of my day, and I experienced a new feeling of freedom that I had never experienced before. And 60 years later, the memory and feeling are still there.
ReplyDeleteAfter going on a weekend camping/wood getting trip; our dad would take us to a little gas station in Council, where he let us get an icecream and fountain drink; it was awesome.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite childhood memories was from the 3 years we lived in Moss Point, Miss. It was the only time we lived in a town, instead of out in the country - so there were many more children around. On summer nights, all the neighborhood kids came out in force, playing kick the can, or cops and robbers - ranging all over the neighborhood. We'd get together at dusk, and play until 9 or 10 p.m. Our parents didn't know precisely where we were - just somewhere out there. I wish my kids had had that chance.
ReplyDeleteI loved riding bikes and jumping rope with the neighborhood children. We also played a lot in our secret cabin in the woods.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite summer time activities included playing tag or kickball with all the kids in the neighborhood. Also exploring the woods and swimming. Summer also meant my family's annual trip to the South Jersey shore!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite thing to do as a child was roaming in the woods.My brother and I would check to make sure no one was in sight than duck down (as not to be discovered by tag alongs!) and run over the field lane that led us to the GREAT big woods. We would eat berries that grew in the woods and sometimes miss meals.We would also cool off by wading in the creek that ran through the meadow. I have since than gone back as an adult. The creek has dried up and the woods is quite small.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite things to do in the summertime was explore the woods directly behind my parent's house. My younger brother and sister always accompanied me, and we had so many "adventures" and hours and hours of fun with the mossy rocks, trees, and animals.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the opportunity to win. I subscribe to Family Life and love it- would be very interested in reading the Young Companion. :)
We loved to make mud pies,play gray wolf in the moon light
ReplyDeleteThe children in the neighborhood would gather at the school grounds to play baseball until we started hearing our mothers calling us home for supper. After supper we would meet up and play outside in the yards until we heard our mothers calling us home for bedtime.
ReplyDeleteHow could I pick just one? Horseback riding is the first thing to come to mind; then there were the every summer visits to our grandparents' house; camping and hiking with my parents and brother; and spending the day bike riding with a friend.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite summer activity was going to church camp. It seemed like heaven though we were in a rustic old dormitory.
ReplyDeleteI spent my childhood summers crabbing from the pier in my neighborhood. I would get up at 5:00 and take all my crabbing gear to the pier on my bike, crab until midday and then sell the crabs to neighbors. My grandfather was always my best customer!
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