Last night I got a call from mom. She asked me if I would get in touch with each of my siblings and ask them to type up and then snail mail her some of our favorite family memories. She wants to compile them in a letter that she can give to dad after she dies. So here I go!
As I reflect on my childhood memories I see a common theme, my favorite ones all have something in common, family! They are the times that we were together as a family, life slowed down and we got to just hang out.
I remember sitting as a family in the living room of our house. My dad would play games with us. I remember one guessing game where he would randomly grab our ankles and tell us a category. It was then up to us to guess what he was thinking of in that category. So if he grabbed our ankle and said fruit, we would start guessing different fruits. With each wrong guess, his grip would get tighter and tighter. He always made sure to give us enough hints so we could guess it before his grip got too tight, never hurting us, but keeping it suspenseful! My favorite thing my dad did was horse rides. He would get down on all fours and we would climb on his back and then he would do whatever he could do get us off. Drop one are down suddenly, extend a leg and shake, shake, shake, raise up on his legs, whatever he could to get us off! He used to pretend to pull mints out of ears, we called them candy bird eggs because they were small and white, and his brief case that he took to church on Sunday always had candy in it. On Sundays, when he would open his brief case and pass out candy in sacrament meeting, it was a welcomed treat!
Sundays were a day that I cherished as a I grew up. My parents, through their example, taught me that Sunday was a special day, and you could feel that in my home. Everything about Sunday felt different. It was slow paced, everyone was home and I loved our Sunday meals together. I loved how, when we got home from church, everyone seemed to congregate in the kitchen together and help. And although I don't remember a single conversation we had, I do know that we would sit, as a family, and talk and laugh while we ate. Oh wait, I do remember one time, when my dad tricked Elizabeth by saying, "I bet I can get you to say elephant," and Elizabeth was convicted that he couldn't do it. So he started asking her questions like, "what's the animal that's white and has black stripes?" and she of course would tell him the right animal. Well, when he got to a rhino he said, "see, I told you I could get you to say rhino! Ha! I got you!" And Elizabeth said, " You did not, you told me you could get me to say elephant!" And as soon as she said the word, she realized it, and she started to cry. She felt like she had been duped! Sundays were also the one day we got to eat sweet cereal! My parents were both health conscious (which I will be forever grateful for their example in this area) and so our Sunday cereals were always a special treat. We got things like fruit loops and frosted flakes! And again, Sunday was usually when we got a dessert. My favorites were these chocolate bundt cakes that had a white cream in the center and rhubarb pie.
Holidays were another time that I look back on with fond memories. Thanksgiving and Christmas, Halloween, the Fourth of July and Labor and Memorial Day. I liked how we would always have someone over for Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinner. Often the missionaries and then one other family. I remember one game we would play when we had people over, I don't know what it was called, or if it even had a name, but we used records. We would set the records up in a 3x3 pattern, send someone out of the room, and then one person would pick a record. Then the person who was out of the room would come back in and they would have to guess which record it was. They always got it right! I remember the night my parents explained it to me, it seemed so obvious! Since the records were square, you could create, in your mind, a smaller version of the 3x3 grid we had not he floor onto each one of the records, so when the person who had gone out of the room came back in, they would know to watch for the first tap from the person asking, "Is this it?" And that first tap would tell them which record it was. So if the person asking the question tapped on the upper right corner of the record, then the person guessing knew that the record was in the upper right hand corner of the 3x3 grid.
I liked the Christmas music we would listen to and the way we would re-arrange the house for the Christmas tree. I liked to lay on the floor in our family room, look at the tree at night time, when the house was dark and the tree was glowing and listen to the Christmas music. I liked the little sticker tree that sat on the piano and held the homemade suckers my mom made every year. There were red and green ones and I preferred the red, they were cinnamon! I liked the anticipation on Christmas Eve and that all the siblings would sleep in the same room! The big one, the one with the slide in the closet.
I loved the Fourth of July and all the warmth and patriotism I remember feeling. We would always go to our wards picnic, which I loved! It was casual and laid back and the parents would sit and talk while the kids would run around and play. We would pick up Kentucky Friend Chicken on our way and sit out on a blanket to eat. Sometimes it was at the big open field behind the church, sometimes it was at neighborhood parks, sometimes softball games were organized, sometimes water ballon fights! Every year was fun! As were the firework show at the Minnesota state capitol in down town St. Paul.
We had some good family friends, the Fosters, and every Labor and Memorial Day we would get together and have abbleskievers with bacon and orange juice! It wasn't anything huge, but it was a tradition and it was one I looked forward to each time.
Halloween was always so much fun! My dad would always dress up in his Moroccan djellaba and take us trick-or-treating. Is it just me or did more people participated when I was little? It seems like we could go to every house! Uncle Bill across the street, who wasn't my uncle at all, but my friend Bridgette Bailey's uncle, would always give out the best treats. Either a full size candy bar or a full pack of gum. One year I was so sick that tick-or-treating didn't even sound fun, I remember sitting on the couch that year and watching as the kids came running up to the house. That was the year it snowed over a foot on Halloween night.
Thanksgiving often fell on, or close to my birthday. And while, just like every other tradition I spoke of, I loved Thanksgiving in that it slowed life down and allowed us to be together as a family, I always looked forward to my birthday! Of course I shared it with Elizabeth and that was never something I frowned upon, rather, it was always something that was pretty cool! Our cake was often split down the middle. It was a chocolate cake with one half it covered in a meringue frosting for Elizabeth and the other half covered in a German chocolate frosting for me! It makes me smile just thinking about it!
Two of my birthday parties really stand out in my mind. The first one we had at our house and we divided all of our friends up in to two teams. One team was the cat team and the other the dog team and Elizabeth and I were each a captain of one team. My mom had hidden candy all over the house and the kids had to go and search for the candy. Once they found it, they would bark if they were on the dog team and meow if they were not eh cat team. Then Elizabeth and I would run around and gather the candy from the kids on our team. At the end, we split the candy up between all the kids. The Skinner girls came to that party! I don't remember their first names, I just remember that they were tall and lanky.
The other birthday party I remember was when we took all of our friends to see The Little Mermaid. I googled it, and The Little Mermaid came out November 13th, 1989. So that must have been for our 8th birthday party!
And speaking of turning eight, I remember my baptism. Unfortunately, I don't remember feeling anything super special or fascinating about my baptism, I just remember that I got to go first (since Elizabeth was born first) and that I was SO COLD when I got out of the water!
But just because I didn't feel the spirit or anything special that day doesn't mean I never did in my home. I remember numerous times when we sat down to study the gospel together. I remember my dad playing the blessing game with us and teaching us how to study things out in our mind before we pray. I remember, and am so thankful to this day, my dad teaching us that we are to get revelation for ourselves! Just because the prophets and apostles stand up and say something from the pulpit does not automatically make it doctrine, and we had a responsibility to go to God and find out for ourselves, through the spirit, if what they were teaching was true or not. I remember my mom reading to us what happened, each day, to Jesus, the week before he was resurrected. I remember Eater Morning and how our baskets would be hidden and the only way to find them was through a scripture scavenger hunt. I remember my dads Christmas Eve presentation! He did such a phenomenal job on that. I'm going to have to ask him to send it to me.
I remember the one time Elizabeth Erickson invited me to go to her cabin with her and her family, but we wouldn't get back until Sunday night. That meant I would be missing church. I wanted to go so badly and I remember thinking my parents would tell me no. But when I asked my dad he told me that I had been baptized and that I had to make my own choices. I remember looking at him and saying something along the lines of, "You're letting me chose?" And he said yes, and I said, "then I'm going!" And I did. And I had a really good time! On Sunday, when we got back from the cabin, my family wasn't home from church yet, we must have had the 1:00-4:00 time or something. Anyways, I sat in Elizabeth Ericksons car with her family while we waited for my family to get home from church. I remember watching the station wagon pull into the driveway, and my whole family was in their church clothes, and it was in that moment that I wished I had chosen to stay home so I could have gone with my family to church. I am grateful, to this day, that my dad let me decide! Had he forced me to go to church, I would have had a totally different experience!
Some of my fondest memories come from the park that was right across the street from our house, Como Park. This was not your ordinary park, this park was special! It extended for miles and had a playground, a zoo, a small amusement park, a conservatory, a lake with a lake house, fire pits, a community swimming pool, softball and baseball fields, and jogging and biking trails. Now that I think back on it, it really feel like I hit the jackpot on that one! I love nature and this park provided so many wonderful outdoor activities and it was literally, right across the street! I can even remember the little cut through in the trees we would take, opening up to the vast canopy of trees and a huge open area that held the playground.
My mom would walk over there with us when we were little and we would play on that playground. My favorite game was tag where you couldn't touch the ground. When we got a little older we would go by ourselves. Just up from the playground a little ways was the zoo. This was a real zoo! It had penguins, polar bears, seals, tigers, wolfs, monkeys, gorillas, giraffes, peacocks and a fish exhibit. We would go often as kids. In elementary school we would ride our bikes to school and I loved riding my bikes along the wolf exhibit. They were so beautiful and it was fun to try and spot them. At night, I would sit in my room, look out the window and listen to the animal noises coming from the zoo.
Next to the zoo, and connected to it, was the small amusement park. Since I can easily get motion sick, this was not my favorite spot in the park. But just down the hill from the playground were the bonfire pits, and that spot holds numerous family memories, some of my all time favorite! Family bonfires were so much fun! We would take dinner and have it there and roast marshmallows and run-around until way past bedtime, our feet and hands getting dirty. Sometimes, after we ate and the fire was dying down, we would run up the hill to the playground to play while the adults talked and cleaned up. The bonfires in the park are hands down, some of my all time favorite childhood memories! Thank you mom and dad, for taking the time to put those together!
When I got into high school, I would use the park in a new way. I had put on a fair amount of weight and recognizing that, I decided to join the track team. I was not good! I remember walking around the corner in high school one day and I overheard another girl, Kate, talking to Elizabeth. She said, "I am not feeling really well today so I'm gonna run with your sister cause she's so slow!" And then she laughed. One thing that did was motivate me to get better. I took track seriously and went to all the practices. I started jogging from my house, to the lake in the park, around it, and back home again. Sometimes I would jog that little route with my dad. I remember when he told me that it was only a little over three miles long. I was in shock, it seemed so much longer than that to me! I remember, on some of those jogs, my dad pulling berries off of the bushes and telling me they were safe to eat. I remember him telling me that I was jogging at a faster pace than he usually does and I was pushing him. That was a good day! I knew that my practice was paying off and that Kate wouldn't be able to laugh at me anymore. And I loved that my dad would go jogging with me!
My dad worked at The University of Minnesota where he studied corn and soybeans. I loved going to the UofM. They had a bowling alley and we would go as a family sometimes. Right outside the bowling alley was a little candy shop where may parents would let us pick out a treat. In the summer I would sometimes go with my dad to pick the corn from the corn fields at the UofM. Husking corn was just part of our life! One of those things that when you find out other kids didn't just husk pounds and pounds of corn you're kind of surprised to learn. We would take the corn and eat it (and it was so good) and then what we couldn't eat we would cook, cut off the cob and then freeze in ziplock baggies. Then, in the winter, we would cook that frozen corn to go with our Sunday meals.
My favorite thing to do at the UofM was go to bring-your-daughter-to-work-day. We got to hang our with our dad all day and they had fun things for us to do, like milk the cows and have ice cream.
My favorite family vacations were the ones we we did in nature. We went to Canada and I remember the wind being so strong that I could lean my whole body weight into it and I wouldn't fall over!
We went up north and rented cabins on Lake Superior with Aunt Judy and Uncle Larry and their kids. We went to the Grand Canyon, and even as a child I remember recognizing the grandeur of it all. I loved exploring the ruins and drawings in Colorado. But my all time favorite trip was the house boat trip with mom's side of the family for grandma and grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary. The houseboat was fun, the company was fun, the speed boat that uncle ... I don't remember his name anymore, he's no longer in the family, but his boat was really fun! I remember the banana shaped tube we got to ride and the adults going skinny dipping while I pretended to be asleep. I remember the two songs that my cousins taught me and we sang over and over again, probably driving all the adults crazy: the weenie man song and the friend ham song.
It seems like my life has segments to it and life in Minnesota was the first segment. Moving to Utah was such a different life that it almost feels like two different universes. Being older by this point, my high school memories focus mostly on friends instead of family, which is probably natural and normal for that time of life! But when I got into college I loved having my dad on campus. I liked stopping in and raiding his food drawer when I was hungry. I liked it when I would see him on campus, he would smile a genuine, happy-to-see-you smile whenever he saw me! He took an interest in my friends and even took me, along with all my freshman roommates, down to a BYU owned farm one weekend where we got to ride four wheelers!
One semester I lived at Aspen Grove with other kids in my major. We went on numerous hiking trips and river rafting trips. My favorite was rock climbing at Garden of the Gods in Colorado followed by the National Convention of Recreation in Denver. Anyways, before this semester started my dad gave me a blessing and I remember him telling me to listen to my body and let it be my guiding force behind how far I went and how hard I pushed myself. This advice proved to be sound advice for me, as my joints have always been an issue. In fact, this is advice that I have carried with me and use to this day. I don't wear an Apple Watch or track my steps. I don't wear a heart rate monitor when I work out. I pay very close attention to my body and how it feels! That doesn't mean I don't push myself, I do, and I love to work hard while I exercise, but I let my body tell me when it's okay to push myself hard, and I listen to my body when it says enough! I don't rely on any small device to tell me how hard to work or how many steps to take each day. I am so grateful for that tip he gave me in that blessings!
Now that I am a mom, watching my dad interact with my kids has been a true joy! He plans special things to do with my boys when they come home. One that stands out to me was the drive out to west Utah to look for geods and Xander lost his shoe to quicksand! We saw wild horses running through the deserts of Utah that day and they were absolutely gorgeous! Horses have always been my favorite animal.
My boys cherish their hikes to the Y and want to do it every time we go to Utah! Even now, as teenagers, they love and still talk about animals on the fan! Gotta give you credit dad, that's a pretty clever game! My dad teaches them how to work hard by recruiting them to help in the yard and he entertains them at night with his life stories. He is such a good story teller! When they were little, and we were at their house, he would help me put them to bed by playing his harmonica for them, something I always loved when I was a kid!
Mom, I am so glad you called and asked me to do this! It was great to take some time and reflect! It reminded me, once again, of what's really important. Family! Weather it's making our own traditions or just sitting at the family table together, family is what it's all about! Thank you, for all the great times and memories you have given me.
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