Tagged by the Queen

I got tagged over at Treading Lightly on Powdered Sugar, and have already been yelled at for not doing it yet.... Here are the rules: Remove the #1 item from the following list, bump everyone up one place and add your blog's name in the #5 spot. You need to actually link to each of the blogs for the link part to kick in.
1. Thirdworldcounty
2. BTW
3. It's Raining Again
4. Treading Lightly on Powdered Sugar
5. LadyBoyd
Next, select four unsuspecting victims, list and link to them.
1. Hummingboyd
2. AshelBug
3. Julie Cohen Julie, I know you don't know me, and may not find this, but Im a writer and I love your blog! Helps me get going on things after work when Id rather just read....
4. Woodsidesprite

Now - the subject of "this Detestable Meme" is Five Things I Miss From My Childhood, so here goes:

1. My mother. This may sound odd to some, but it really is the one thing I miss most. Mama died of heart failure when I was 18. Some of the things about mama that I miss... her silly poking at electrical boxes such as the stereo when she didn't really know what the buttons did, or if she had the right button to do what she wanted to do, etc....reading out loud between my room and my sister's room when we were sick to keep us entertained, and doing all the voices....pretending to be scared when Ash and I snuck out of my room, down the porch rail, around the front of the house, and popped up under her kitchen window whooping like banshees, even though she knew the MOMENT we left my room.....her pleased embarrassment whenever Daddy kissed her in front of "company".....her silly way of unconsciously mimicking someone's accent when she talked with the natives or some of the other missionaries in Tanzania.... I could go on....

2. Ignorance. Not of the school variety (see #3), but of the stress variety. I hadn't lost my mom, had my heart broken, got into debt, etc. It was just me and my family and friends and homework and the most stressful thing that happened was when the ONE boy in my class (small town) decided he liked me and I had to tell him I didn't like him (He later [in high school as opposed to grade school] called me a *itch and Ashley gave him a black eye...). Of course, now that Im thinking about it, I also didn't know my husband then, and I wouldn't want to lose him for anything! BRING ME BACK MY LACK OF IGNORANCE!

3. School. Yes, I was one of the weirdo geeks who LOVED SCHOOL! I didn't love my grade school experience, mostly because I was kind of an outcast coming into school after living in Africa for 3 years (you'd think it would be the other way around!) and I felt very socially awkward, but I always loved the studying. I was one of those who DIDN'T wanna graduate from high school, or from college (although for other reasons I was VERY glad to leave WWC....), and I just recently told my husband that if I could, I would go back to school for the rest of my life. Homework. WOO WOO! (Don't worry, he DID know I was nuts when married me.....)

4. Family sleepovers. When I was a tween, my mother was best friends with my best friends mother, and my father with her father (although my sister and her brothers always avoided each other. >sigh<). Some Saturday nights we would all get together for a movie or something and it would escalate into a sleepover. An all family sleepover with snacks, popcorn fights, pillow fights, movies until 3 am (amazing now that I think about it, since mama and 2nd mom both were early-to-bed people....), and then a HUGE breakfast of homemade waffles the next morning, with fresh fruit, syrup, applesauce, peanut butter.... anything you can think of. Even ice cream once!

5. The holiday season: Now, this sounds weird, since the holidays still come around, but we had some traditions when I was growing up that we can't do now because of distance, etc. Every Thanksgiving, the Wickwires would come to our house (or us to them, on alternate years) for the big feast, the watching of the rose parade, and the post-dinner nap. The Saturday night following Thanksgiving, we would all congregate at the house that hadn't hosted Thanksgiving dinner (with me still?) for The Birthday Party. Usually, this party was kept rather small, celebrating only the 5 birthdays in residence at all times (Dad, 2nd dad, me, ash, 2nd mom), but occasionally we would add the extended family and then the number would jump to as many as 9.... all of the birthdays celebrated occurred within a 3 week radius of the Party. 2nd dad would make his homemade angel food cake with homemade caramel frosting and we would play Fictionary (not a typo, is a balderdash type game we made up when I was about 5), shrieking with laughter at the definitions people came up with (including my father's 16 pomeranian puppies... although I don't remember the word he was supposed to be defining)...The trend above continued through the new year....

Ok, I could have made this MUCH longer, but I figured I would stop for the eyes and head of my devoted readers... NEXT!