Interview with a Green: Outside Memories

May is the time when most people start coming out of their hobbit hole hibernation states of winter to enjoy the warm weather and sunny days.   We both grew up spending a lot of our free (and not free time...) outside playing, which seems to be becoming more and more of a foreign concept for kids these days.  We thought we would share a few of our most memorable experiences during these carefree days of childhood playing outside.   Disclaimer: moms and dads cannot freak out over things they did not know we were doing.  Jokes, jokes!

Dallin
I grew up near a little creek that ran just outside of our front yard. We would watch the beavers build their dams and occasionally catch some stealhead trout that lived in the deeper parts. On one occasion my Friend Matt and I, were playing with my brothers Danny and Jason in the creek, and we had the brilliant idea to throw rocks at each other and try to splash water on one another. Everything was going great up until I heard my friend Matt cry out.......Jason (or Danny) had hit Matt in the head with one of their rocks. He was holding his head as I walked over and asked him to see where the rock and hit him. When he took his hand off, a gush of blood ran down the front of his face. Not only was he crying, but do to the tragic sight I started to cry too.  It was kind of embarrassing looking back on it.

The things we liked to do outside:
Run around the house - As boring as that sounds, if you time the person running we found it to be very entertaining.
Throwing a baseball over the house - There was some sort of thrill about being able to throw something over the house. Another weird one I guess.
Biking - We would build little dirt jumps in our front yard and jump our bikes and dirt bikes. Basketball - Many summer nights were spent playing basketball with the brothers...and the mosquitoes. 
BBQ's - Hotdogs, burgers and smores cooked over an open flame burning out of a washer bin.

Kelli
Dallin's experience is so innocent!  A couple of the ones that stick out to me from my past may have included cops.  Luckily, Napa is a small town and we knew a few of the officers.  The first one was when houses were being built in the lot across the street from our house.  We thought it would be fun to go and play in the wood structure since it had such nice beams to swing from as well as practice balancing on, not to mention how much more fun running through a wallless, roofless house made tag!  As many of you know, this is not safe, nor legal which leads to why we were brought home by a police officer.   Another event that comes to mind is when we thought it would be fun to see if we could launch potatos from a potato launcher from our block to the next block.  Seemed perfectly reasonable, until we realized that we had no way of really knowing if the potato ever made it.  I am sure many people were startled by a sudden thump on their roof or perplexed as to why a potato was in their backyard, on their car...who knows where.  If a cop was around at that time, I am sure my mom would have had another friendly knock on her door.

We also enjoyed:
Rollerblading - I used to pretend I was a professional figure skater and the mailbox was my partner...don't ask.  I'm sure any neighbors who saw me talking to a mailbox thought that I had mental problems for sure.
Jumping on the trampoline -  hours of entertainment, day or night, rain or shine (including a few times in lightening storms).  We would do talent shows, trick wars, seat wars, break the egg, height jumping contests, music videos and lay flat when airplanes went over due to the fact that my dad told us we would get bombed if the planes saw us jumping.
Riding bikes - What kid doesn't love riding bikes?!  One of our favorites was to go down the steep hills as quickly as we could, attempt ramps and maybe split open a chin here and there by flying over the handle bars.
Water fun - We would put the sprinkler under the trampoline, have the slip 'n slide going on the lawn with the swing set slide leading into the kiddie pool.  Summers were hot in Albuquerque as well as in Napa which elicited many different ways to cool down with water.
Stands - you name it, we attempted to sale it at a homemade stand.  Lemonade, cookies, dog washes, car washes and oh so many more.  Most of the time they stayed up for about 20 minutes at which point we would get caught up in the imaginary business scenario we started up and drink/eat/wash everything in order to play the rest of rapidly progressing story line away from the office.  We had very active imaginations!

We always had a good time outside growing up!  We are grateful that our parents basically locked us out and that we lived in areas that were safe enough to run around without constant adult supervision.  We hope that our kids will get to enjoy the same luxuries simply because an ipad or television show could never replace the memories and experiences that were had outside the walls of our homes.