What kind of memories do you have and cherish from when you were little?  Ever since I was a little girl, a few of my most favorite memories and traditions are camping, fishing, and Christmas.  When we spent time with my family, we did fun things like camping, or catching fish and just rolling along on the dark, green-blue, glittering, cold waters of Lake Superior.  Playing games, eating food, finding each other’s presents at Christmas.    Everything the traditions and holidays hold are special memories you can always have with you to remember. 

Christmas is my favorite holiday.  We usually do three main things during Christmas.  One is to go to the family Christmas, which is on Christmas Eve.   Then we open presents on Christmas morning with just our family when we wake up.  And then Pickard family Christmas, which is later that day at my grandparents’ house. 

At Family Christmas we all gather at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  One of my favorite years was when I was quite a couple years younger than I am today.  I must have been around ten years old.  We showed up like usual and Ruth, Caleb, Hannah, Ethan, and myself were all downstairs playing with all of the musical instruments from Grandpa Lee.    Considering the fact that our family has a lot of musical talent, there were all sorts of instruments all over the house.  Grandpa Lee came downstairs and began to teach us how to play “Silent Night” on the organ.  We were all still short, and couldn’t reach the pedals on the bottom when we played on the top, so, we improvised.  Hannah and Ethan played the melody on the top and Ruth, Caleb, and I played bass on the bottom.  It worked really well and we ended up performing “Silent Night” in front of the rest of the family.  It sounded very well considering we all had different parts and had to listen to each other to come in.  Thankfully we have a musical family and we were completely able to play it very nicely.  Grandpa Lee was extremely proud.  After that we went upstairs to pray, eat, and wait to see Rudolph’s red nose in the distance. 

Somehow every year, even still to today, Grandpa and the rest of the family manages to pull off the Rudolph and Santa trick for the little kids every year.  We will see a red light in the distance, it will disappear, and then we will hear pounding on the roof.  I don’t know how they do it, but the little kids believe it is Santa and the reindeer, and just to top that off, we put all of the presents on the roof for the kids to get help getting down.  When we are done opening presents and enjoying our family a little bit more, we will pack up our things and go home to get ready for Christmas morning. 
In the morning, we all wake up early, excited to see what you have and to get ready to go to Pickard’s family Christmas.  We all have to wait for Mom and Dad to wake up, but usually they will just lay in bed to make us wait longer.  By the time they get out of bed, we will all still be in our pajamas, but we will start opening each other’s presents and get ready for the day to begin.  One year I remember getting the Wii for Christmas.  We were all so excited so we hooked it up, got batteries in the remotes, and put in one of the games and played for a while before we had to leave for Grandma and Grandpa Pickard’s. 
On Christmas Day after we had our own personal family Christmas at our house, we will head up to Grandma and Grandpa Pickard’s house for Pickard’s family Christmas.  We will spend the whole day there, playing games, eating, opening presents, going outside, and spending time inside doing various things.  Last year, we arrived with our family, our snow gear, more food, more presents, and other things.   I spent a little bit of time inside but after a while, Ruth, Dad, and I went outside to the garage to get the snowmobiles out and running.  I love snowmobiling, it’s one of my favorite things to.  Once we got the snowmobiles out I took my snowmobile, the Ski Doo 700 Bombardier, out for a test drive to make sure it was ready.  By the time I came back to the house, the kids were all outside and ready for rides.  I hooked up the little black sleigh we have next to the garage and filled it up with our cousins.  The ones that wouldn’t fit behind me would be hauled in a smaller sled behind Ruth with a smaller snowmobile.  I drove them along for a while, but once all of our younger cousins came outside there wasn’t enough room for everyone to fit.  My dad came outside then and we improvised.  My Grandpa has an aluminum boat next to the garage without the motor on it.  Dad took out the 800 Ski Doo and attached the boat to the back of it.  It worked out pretty well, it’s a powerful snowmobile so it pulled just fine with all of the kids in it.  Once we were done snowmobiling we went back inside.  We opened presents, ate, and went home for the night.  Christmas is one of my favorite holidays and is always filled with activities. 
Another memory and tradition my family and I have is camping and fishing.  A couple places we go camping at is Lake Beauty Bible camp in Long Prairie Minnesota, and Baily’s Harbor Campground in Door County.  At Lake Beauty Bible Camp it is either family camp or a camp for a certain age group.  At Baily’s Harbor we will camp there, and then go fishing, or just go around the area visiting places. 
One year, we were at camp for the Fourth of July Family Camp.  Our family and Prindle’s always reserve a spot of the campground in a corner.  Every day we would do something new.  We would go swimming, go to the rock wall, go find people that lived there that we knew from living there previously, hang out around the campfire, and a lot of other things.  One year though, my dad and Dirk Prindle decided that they wanted to start a hotdog eating contest.  We all thought it was a great idea.   Mom, Dayna, and some other people bought more hotdogs than we usually did.  We must have looked funny at Walmart, with 50 extra bags of hotdogs in our carts.  At chapel we would announce what time it was at and where it would be and who could play.  We held it at a campsite near one of the dirt roads, where it would be easy to see, and easy to find.  It was a free will donation, and anyone could join as long as they were old enough.  We cooked the hotdogs in several cookers at the end of a bunch of picnic tables all in a line.  It was a sunny warm day, barely any clouds and just a little bit of wind.  People started showing up, either to watch or to join the contest.  Those who were going to play started sitting down on the line of picnic tables and waited for it to begin. 
Once everyone who was going to play was sitting down, the competition began.  You needed to eat the hotdog on a bun, but ketchup and mustard was optional.  There were mostly men there, but there was one women team, make up of three of the staff.  They didn’t eat much, and soon were just sitting and watched the remaining part of the competition.  My dad was on a roll, he would squeeze his hotdog and bun small and eat some and take a small drink of pop and continued like that.  Some of the other people had a system working with them, but other people just kept putting them in as fast as possible.  The contest wasn’t timed, it was just until people could not possibly eat any more hotdogs.  My dad ended up winning, winning fame and glory, no particular prize.  But he still holds the record today at sixteen and a half hotdogs with the bun. 
At Bailey’s Harbor Campground we can go swimming in their pool, go to the game room and visit with the owners, go out to town and other areas, go fishing and lots of other things.  Last year we I went out in our great lakes fishing boat once but there were no bites from fish at all.  We started to head back into the shore because we could tell there was going to be a big storm coming in and we were quite a ways out on Lake Superior.  My dad was driving the boat and mom was sitting in passenger seat.  Ruth, Hannah, and I had to balance ourselves in the middle of the boat so we wouldn’t have awkward weight changes in the boat because the waves were getting bigger.  The clouds looked amazing though, like a big blue- purple wave spilling out of the sky.  It started to rain as we could start to see where the loading dock was and where grandpa had parked the truck with the trailer in the water, ready for us to load and get out.  Grandpa had told a few people we were still out there and they were out on the docks making sure we made it in OK.  Once they saw us on our way in they came back to grandpa to tell him where we were.  The waves were getting bigger, and it definitely was quite an experience.  Dad pulled up into the trailer and we jumped onto the dock and into the truck.  It was down pouring but I still had fun. 
A few other places we go when we are in Door County is to Gills Rock, which has one shore made up of shells, The Yum Yum Tree, which is a candy and ice cream shop, Whitefish Sand Dunes, Cherry Picking, other stores, and to a restaurant and store where there is grass and goats on the roof.  But my favorite restaurant I love to go to when we are there is PC Junction.  PC stands for Peninsula Center.  The restaurant used to be a bar, but they turned it into a very cool restaurant.  When you walk in it has more of a home feeling, not too brightly lit, smelled like good food, and designed with wood all over.  But whenever we arrive there, it is always so packed that we have to wait.  But waiting is not a problem.
While you wait for a spot in the restaurant to open up, you can wait outside.  Outside there is a playground for kids, a sandbox, and a barn made into a building with basketball floors built out back of it, but past all of that was the best part.  Pedal Go-Karts and a ginormous course or a maze for you to race around in.  In part of the course there are some more outside built mazes, basketball, giant chess, and other things.  Where we always go though is way past all of that, way to the back of the giant maze where most people either can’t find, or choose not to go back there thinking there isn’t anything.  In the back, there is a giant pig, absolutely giant.  She has been there for as long as I can remember, being fed the leftover food from the restaurant.  The pig is roughly the size of a small adult cow, a long, pig.  I’m always amazed by how big a pig can get and still be living.  My dad tried to climb into the fence with her last year but couldn’t because the guy started coming with the food for her. 
By the time we pedaled back to the front, we went to check into the restaurant so we could get something to eat.  We always try to get a seat at the bar, for that’s the best part of the whole restaurant.  At the bar, there is a medium sized toy railroad track laid out all the way around it and back into the kitchen.  You order your food and then you wait.  Other peoples food will be put on the train and the “engineer” will use his “engineering voice” and yell out a place around Door County and whoever needed to receive the food.  One of the cooks will usually put the food on the train and be the engineer.  The train then will make its way around the table and stop at the place at the table where it needed to stop so the people can receive their food.  Once our turn came around, we were already, but this was my little brother, Michael, first time ever seeing this.  He got very excited and could hardly even eat his food, he was so busy watching to train go around.  If no one ordered something, after a while, he would load up the train with some toys just to send something around the table.  After we were done we left and went to an ice cream shop. 
Christmas, camping, fishing, and so many other things we do as a family can be so much fun and can make such wonderful memories.  I have so many more memories of everything we do every year, and hope I keep gaining more.  Playing games, traveling around with your family, and just doing certain things can change so much in your life and you can remember them for when you are not around your family.  All of these special memories, I hold close to me and hope many more are to come.