As you consider which stories from your childhood deserve you taking the time and effort to write or record for your family, think about this. 

What you believe to be ordinary, boring events might just make the most delightful stories for your children, grandchildren and their descendants to read. 

With that in mind and celebrating my birthday month, I would like to challenge you to add to your family legacy of stories, photos and mementos by writing a simple story about summer birthday parties. I know you’ve got memories! Dig those out and write something fun to give your family a glimpse into your childhood summers. 

If you were a child before the 1990s, you knew the slower pace and time playing outside. This was time away from school that didn’t find you sitting in front of a game console or looking at your smartphone.

You were a child who heard their mother say “Go outside!” just about every afternoon when she was tired of you squabbling with a sibling about something or another. And once you went outside, it wasn’t hard to find something to do.

What’s special about summer parties?

I think it’s fun to write about childhood summer parties because they were different from parties during the school year. They offered a chance to reconnect with school friends you didn’t see that much from June to August. And, as I know very well as an August birthday girl, sometimes it was hard to find enough people not taking last-minute vacations to come to a party.

In my book The Simple Guide to Writing Family Stories, I give you a story prompt (or story spark as I like to say) that will guide you to your memories of summer birthday parties.

As a sneak peek into the book and to hopefully inspire you to buy your own paperback version or download for Kindle, here’s an excerpt. 

SUMMER BIRTHDAY PARTIES

Birthday parties for you and your childhood friends during the summer months just had a different vibe than those during the school year, didn’t they? In my family we have lots of summer birthdays, and I have experienced them both as a child and as a parent. We’ve had water balloon battles and a few fun pool parties.

Even if you don’t have experience with family summer birthdays, I bet you have some fun memories of parties with your friends during the summer months. They were like mini reunions with friends you might not have seen since school got out for the summer.

STORY SPARK

Write a story about any experiences you had with summer birthday parties. Did your parents plan one for you and then found out all your friends would be out of town that day? Did you go to your first sleepover one summer and stay up half the night telling ghost stories or gossiping?

ENHANCE YOUR STORY

I hope that your parents took photos of you on your birthday that you can add to this story. While you’re digging around in childhood memories of summer birthday parties, you might stir up a special memory of your favorite childhood birthday gift to write about for another story.

If you’re curious about the rest of the book, you can read about it here.

Cheers to summer birthdays!