I'm totally jealous, that place looks awesome. My favorite thing to do for my (not so) inner child is swing. I'll sneak off to the playground and sit on a swing and go as high as I can, tipping my head back, closing my eyes. If i need a real rush, i'll attempt to jump off, but that's not working out so hot for me anymore! I love the feeling of being airborne, of that drop in your stomach when you reach the top of your swing and there's that catch right before you go back down. Nothing like it!

I play with my kids! I'll do silly things with them (they're 4 and 2) that I'd never ever do in front of another adult. :-D Like the time I flung my ponytail forward over my face and crawled around on all fours being an elephant for my son's "safari". I looked so dumb! :-D (and unfortunately there's photo proof, since it was a safari - he took pics!) And a fave game around here is "baby". Yep, we lie on the floor and go "wah wah" and talk in baby talk and pretend I'm a baby learning to walk and fall over - we laugh a lot. :-)

It looks like you had a really awesome time! My favorite things to keep me young (and not remotely "acting my age") are (not in any particular order): wearing bizarre earrings, like the frogs wearing inner tubes around their bellies to work, wearing nice dress up clothes and finishing it off with kiddie barrettes, food fights with my kids, painting nails in "rainbows" with my girls, colorings books -- oh, I LOVE coloring books!, Barbies (yes, I said it -- I like to play with Barbies!) and Polly Pocket is also my friend (especially when I whine and cry and convince my 6 year old to SHARE with Mommy.) :) We also sing made up potty songs at each other in the bathroom, I like to play the gross out games with my kids (my 12 year old daughter things I am as gross as the boys she knows at school -- YEA!)

I'm not savvy enough to figure out all the linking back and such, so I have to leave my mark here. I keep my inner kid happy by just being a complete nut all the time. It's easy to do when you're with kids pretty much 24 hours a day! I'm a preschool teacher (13 years and counting) and a mom of 3 aged 4, 9 and 13. If there is an opportunity to do something "kid-ish", I'm all over it! On the rare occassion that I'm with adults and no kids, I'm still doing kid stuff....for instance, a group of friends and I went to a pumpkin farm before halloween. We prepared for this weeks in advance. We made tie-dyed orange tshirts complete with jack-o-lantern faces painted on the front and our nicknames on the back...in glow in the dark letters for the haunted house portion of our day. We did hay rides, pumpkin patch romps, haunted house, petting zoo and even rode on the giant rocking horses....all without a kid one in our group! We would love to do the bouncy house thing if we had one nearby....and we'd probably even take our kids with us. I also spend tons of time playing with giraffes with my 4 year old, taking my 9 year old to Libby Lu's for the mommy and me makeover...which by the way, I had to beg her to go with me since I was the one who really wanted to do it, and taking my 13 year old son fishing and catching snakes at the lake near our home. (Yes, I can catch snakes and frogs with the best of them...takes me back to my childhood of catching snakes and tadpoles and putting them in my sister's swimming pool just to watch them scream...haha). I'd love to have a Wii, but if you don't choose me, I'll understand. I'll want to throw a temper tantrum and call you doo-doo head, but I'll understand!

I love to take the kids out in the snow. I remember playing in the snow for hours growing up. It's one of the best memories I have. I'd stay out til my fingers were stiff and I couldn't feel my nose anymore. I can't wait for when my kids are old enough to build snow forts and have snowball fights with me. But until then, I do it myself. I pelt my husband with snowballs whenever he isn't paying attention and then laugh and run. Just like calvin (calvin & hobbes).

I've tried taking my kids to big shedding hills, but they just aren't old enough yet. So I improvise. I've been known to go out and shovel my neighbors' driveways just to put more snow in our yard. Then with the extra snow, I make a mountain just big enough for my kids to sled down. I'll pull them up and down over and over again. I make them build snowmen with me every year.

The funny thing is - I hate winter. playing in the snow is the only redeeming thing abou tit.

Despite the fact that I'm middle-aged, I still have a number of characteristics that I had as a child. Here's my top 10 list:

1) I often want to stay up past my bedtime, and, when I do, I act grouchy the next day.

2) The most satisfaction I receive from my actions is often the approval of my parents.

3) I get in more trouble when I'm with my friends than when I'm by myself.

4) When the guys are getting together to play basketball, I can't resist playing.

5) When I sit down in front of a video game, I won't get up for hours.

6) Nothing is as entertaining as a good cartoon.

7) The only dance I can perform is the hokey-pokey.

8) My musical ability is best displayed when I play air guitar.

9) I still feel a sense of anticipation before I open a pack of baseball cards.

10) My best friend is a seven-year-old boy.

One of my favorite ways to celebrate the kid in me is a slumber party. We call them “girls weekend away” but it really is just a big old grownup slumber party. Every year some girlfriends and I rent a house at Sea Ranch and have a three-night long slumber party. We stay up late gossiping, we paint our toenails in unexpected colors, we turn up the music and dance the kind of dance you can only do in front of your true girlfriends or kids. The kind of dance where you just don’t care what kind of fool you make of yourself. We have been known to attempt such moves as the worm, the running man, and the infamous Michael Jackson moon walk. Notice how old these dance moves are, this speaks to our real age, BUT we don’t care for we are forever young at heart. One year after a few glasses of wine we discovered that one of us had never played “Light as a feather, Stiff as a board” as a child. Next thing you know we where all kneeling down on the floor with two fingers under our friend trying to lift her to the heavens. This is a simple feat to do when you are 11 years old and weigh 65 pounds. It is not a simple (or for that matter a self-esteem building) exercise when you are 40 years old and on a diet. Every year we come back home exhausted from lack of sleep and from laughing so hard that our childbearing bladders gave up and leaked…just a little. It just isn’t a slumber party until someone pees her pants! The one thing that is missing from our slumber party is the Wii. If I win I promise that it will be at the next one.

Love the post and the pictures, Jenny! (But bummed the videos don't want to load) And I really enjoyed thinking about the question.

My post is here: http://mariax.vox.com/library/post/for-the-kid-in-me.html

Short version: schoolyard exercises, boy bands and little dogs. :)

http://czarnowskowitz.blogspot.com/

That's my blog, blogging about your blog. Hooray.
Hope I made the deadline. My daughter just might have a stroke if I win.