As summer draws to a close, I'm reminded of all those summers growing up.  My mom was a stay-at-home mom of 5 until I was about 16, and during those summers she would babysit other children - so there was always a house full of kids.

We had our regular chores to do everyday, but those were mostly done after dinner when all the other kids had gone home.  We would spend the day playing with our friends - outside when it was nice.  There was a small park with a wading pool a few blocks away that we would go to to cool off.  We had an unofficial baseball diamond in our front yard where we would play quick games.  I can remember at least one time my brother Jim getting hit in the eyebrow with a tossed-aside bat and my grandfather comin over to "diagnose" whether he needed stiches or not, then putting a butterfly bandage on it.  We would sit at the edge of our lawn near the sidewalk and sell lemonade (or whatever flavor we had), sell rocks that we excavated from our gravel driveway and then drew faces on, or play red light green light.  We walked or rode our bikes everywhere - my mom was not a taxi service!  We would tell her where we were going in the morning and sometimes we wouldn't come home until the streetlights came on. 

On rainy days, mom always had stuff for us to do.  She always had coloring books and crayons, construction paper, pipe cleaners and glue and a million and one other artsy things to occupy us.  We could read books, write a letter to a friend/penpal/relative, listen to the radio or play one of our records (yes vinyl!) on the stereo.  We could even take over the kitchen and make pudding treats, cookies and other snacks so long as we cleaned up after ourselves.

We didn't have a lot of money growing up, but we always managed to have fun and were always busy doing something.  Where did that get lost?