Old toys and memories

We were going through old toys in the kids’ room today and it was such a fun trip down memory lane. I am a ridiculous hoarder of emotions as they relate to physical objects. Since we have moved so much over the years, I can't usually justif hanging on to the objects themselves. But the emotions? Definitely! We got rid of a lot of old toys today, but not these emotionally important (?) gems:

The stripey one is Magdalena’s and the other one is Miriam’s. We got them at the Kinokuniya bookstore in Dubai Mall, and I think the one on the right was a UAE 40th national day special? As soon as we pulled these out I was overcome with nostalgia for living in Sharjah.

We bought this brontosaurus and a similar T-Rex at the Target in Ithaca, NY. Our first autumn in the UAE, we didn’t have grass but in preparation for its installation, the landscapers dumped a huge pile of sand at the end of our lane. The girls played with the two toy dinosaurs in that pile of sand every evening. Well, one morning we woke up and the T.-Rex had been left outside and the grass was being put in on top of the sand. So buried under the grass somewhere at the end of our lane in Sharjah, UAE, is a plastic T-Rex.

I don’t have clear memories of where these skateboards came from, but I do know that the kids used to love them when they were tiny. I specifically remember them being good for quiet Sacrament Meeting play.

Three-year-old Miriam picked this pony out at the Ben Franklin store in Middlebury, Vermont, a few days before Magdalena was born. We are never getting rid of it.

KEVIN IS STILL WITH US. He moved with us from Cairo to Sharjah to Turku. He is almost 30 years old.

Oh and sometimes when you’re cleaning out toy bins, your kids end up having fun with what they find: