What are your earliest memories of family leisure times?

The family cabin in the mountains…magical!

All of us sitting in my grandmother’s garden and eating her fresh grapes and drinking her real lemonade. I was allowed to ride my grandfather’s Great Danes and swim in a little play pool. I got to listen to his talking parrot, Adolph, who knew my uncles’ names.

I was allowed to hang out the wash on a pulley that ran from an upstairs window to the house next door. I picked and ate mulberries off the trees.

I think my earliest memory (I’m not sure – there are some others that are close and how am I supposed to know which happened first?) was setting up the Christmas tree when I was about 4. Good times.

Some of us would rather not recall such things.

Sixth grade we’d take the neighbor girls camping with us. Had a raised roof camper van that the eldest and I would make the trip lying together on the top bunk above my mom and dad who were driving in the cab. Little did they know that we were giving one another a rather thorough sexual education up top side. First time I ever touched a girl for real. I looked forward to those trips. Getting there was half the fun.

Family time was most often swimming pool time as far as I can remember. We’re also pretty big on watching movies with pizzas on Friday nights…

We would all spend time together as a family in the backyard on summer days; we’d be out there for hours. It was Vegas, of course, so it was often quite hot, but we had a pool and a lot of trees in our yard.

We also have been going to our house at Lake Tahoe as a family for as long as I can remember.

@DominicX Lake Tahoe is so amazing!

My earliest memories involve a 1970’s era Skamper pop-up camper, a 1970’s Chevy Impala blue station wagon, and lots of board games.

Cabin in the mountains as well. We would stay in the Smokies, up in Tennesse or North Carolina. In the winter when the weather was cold and crisp. The smell of the fireplace was great (it was novel being that I am a Floridian where there are no fireplaces.

I distinctly remember camping. We would go to this spot way up in the mountains, with nobody around. Every time we went there, we saw deer, moose, and pine martens. We’d go on this hike around a few beaver ponds, and no matter how hard she tried to stay dry, my sister would always fall in the water. Then we’d come back and make macaroni and cheese over the campfire.

As far as vacations go it would be Cape Cod. We stayed in a cottage at Mr Coe’s (there were lots of cottages on the property. We went for rides on Pony’s, rode on a “swing” not like a typical swing, it was a board that went around a center pole, and you sat on the end, like the end of a see saw. Half the trip around seemed to be over a cliff, or that is how it seemed from a child’s perspective. In Cape Cod we also went to the beach at snake pond and went swimming.

Also, my mom used to take my sister and for the day to Rye Playland, and the Whip was the BEST ride.

Other early memories were flying kites, frisbee, sledding, and playing the card games like crazy 8’s. These were primarily with my father.

That might sound like they were divorces, but they weren’t, still married now.

I can remember being in the womb.

Leisure time, I would say around 2.

My earliest memories surrounded my mother who was bedfast. Where it seemed there were always people around thru the week,Sundays were the best. Whole families would come to visit and there would be children to play with. Then after visitors left, my family would have Sunday supper and exchange the days events. Desert was always with Ed Sullivan.

My earliest memories have to do with going to the neighbor’s house to watch TV when I was about 3 or 4 (1951) What was on TV wasn’t too interesting but watching and listening to a roomful of adults was.

Most of our family time centered around my Dad. Out of the blue he would put us and neighbor kids in the station wagon and head up to Stinson Beach or down to San Gregorio Beach.

You can’t go home again. Stinson Beach used to be a great sandy beach with little cabins behind the beach grass dunes. Now big houses crowd the beach. San Gregorio also was a very oriented beach with waves and shallows and a little creek that emptied into the ocean. When I went back years later with my daughter it was posted as clothing optional so not family friendly anymore.

One time we went down highway 49 and visited Columbia and Angel’s Camp. We bought pans and looked for gold in the Mokelumne (sic) River. We also found a little private recreation area called Gold Beach. It had a great sandy bottom with flecks of iron pyrite (fool’s gold) It was a great swimming and tubing stretch of the river where you saw nothing but nature. We loved Gold Beach but probably it’s surrounded by housing instead of grassy hills

@YoH: (Do you mean bedridden?) These memories sound lovely in spite of your mother being in bed. Who cooked? Was there a tradition of lots of people in and out?

(We too watched Ed Sullivan on a tiny, snow-riddled black and white TV. Before that we listened to the great Sunday night radio programs; Jack Benny, Phil Harris, Amos and Andy, Duffy’s Tavern).

I don’t really remember much family leisure time as a child. I remember my own kids loved to have picnics in the den. That was just putting a blanket on the floor and having dinner in there. I never really knew why they thought it was so much fun, but it was for them.

wow, i actually have one memory of family togetherness.
one memory, strange…,
but it is of my stepmom and stepdad and me going out to eat, oh wait there is another one…
of all of us eating dinner at home and me being forced to eat liver (yuck).

We went to some beach in Washington State. There were only a few people there. We stayed in these little cabins. We had acres of beach to ourselves.

Going to this fruit market thing in Paris. I don’t remember it much but my parents liked going there to spend the day. There was a pond and I remember seeing ducks in it, and that’s the first time I saw ducks, so I was like dude, ducks.

This was a fun dinner we would have : dad would buy live crabs. There would be a huge pot of boiling water on the stove. I felt really bad when he’d dump them in there . After they were reasonably chilled , he would spread newspapers on the dinette table and we’d all have nutcrackers and eat them together.
When I was older we’d watch Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on tv.
Oh; also Author Godfrey was great to watch. Mom was crazy about that smart alec.
Vacation time was simply renting a little house near the ocean for a couple weeks. When I got older I’d get to take a friend with me.
We’d walk the boardwalk during the day (unimaginably fun and exciting with the smells, rides, food and music) or play in the ocean. Then after dinner, back we’d go to the boardwalk and try to get into some mischief.