What were my favorite hobbies and pastimes in my chidhood?

#52weeks

When I was young I took gymnastic lessons and dance lessons from the Borgo Sisters in Royal Oak.  I was never great at gymnastics, but I did love the classes.  I liked the parallel bars the best.  I thought the uneven bars were the hardest.  At the end of every year we got a different little china doll for participating.  That was way better than a trophy in a little girls mind.

We went camping a lot when I was young.  There are a few things from camping that really stick in my mind.  I remember on one camping trip some other kids came over to our trailer and we played games.  It must have been cool because it stands out.  There was a tornado warning one time...that was scary.  One time we went fossil hunting.  I found a honeycomb fossil.  The leaders were so excited because they said that was a rare find.  I still wish I knew where that fossil was!  By far our favorite activity was gathering sand from the lake bottom in buckets and bringing it back to the picnic table to play with.  It was like playing with a thick gooey clay.  We made some pretty cool things, it was so fun.....until my parents realized it dried as hard as cement...oops!

Probably my favorite pastime was during the summer.  I loved to go across the street and play at the parks and rec.  In Royal oak I loved to make lanyard keychains.  They had a huge box that sat in the park to keep all of their supplies in, I loved to sit on the box and do keychains.  When we moved to Pleasant Ridge I liked to play bumper pool.  I also played t-ball with the parks and rec.  One time I was playing first base and caught a ball that came at me hard.  It bent my whole middle finger nail backwards.  It hurt!  After that I did not like to play t-ball.  I must have been ok at the game because I remember my coach being upset that I did not want to play any more.

Finally, who can forget the 12 hour days spent at the Pleasant Ridge pool.  I swam, I flirted with the life guards, I swam on the swim team doing breast stroke (I never came close to winning but it was fun) The best part of the pool was synchronized swimming.  Every year we practiced and put a show on at the end of the summer.  This lead me to doing it in high school.