Sunday Stories

Wow.....I was behind. But today I just wanted to sit and catch up. Today is the LAST day of Spring Break! Everyone is napping....we had a great time but didn't get as much sleep as we need. In fact, I am pretty sure tomorrow morning will be a RUDE awakening for ALL of us. I will be getting them up soon. As for now, I'll catch up THEN wake them.

First

WHAT SIMPLE PLEASURES OF LIFE DO YOU TRULY ENJOY?

This is a funny one….and has changed a LOT over the years, I’m sure. At this stage of my life, I love quiet! While I will probably ALWAYS love being WITH people, I enjoy some quiet time to catch up on my journal, or sit and listen to the birds. I don’t do sitting and doing nothing very well. I don’t think I ever have. But I’m getting better at it.

I enjoy watching my kids play sports …. A LOT!!! I enjoy sitting and talking with my children or Scott. I love the beauty of the sunrise and the sunset and walking. I especially enjoy time in the scriptures and learning of Jesus. I love the beauty of nature and walking or hiking throughout it. I love the big blue sky and the beauty of this earth. I enjoy the laughter of my children and the joy of being together. I enjoy a good hot shower after a long hard day of manual labor.

Simply put, I enjoy happiness and joy that mostly involves my family.

When I was younger, I loved PLAYING sports. THAT was what I lived for. I loved lazy summer days playing outside, getting friends together to play ball or a game of some type.

Life changes, but I think I will always enjoy nature and family!

Next

WHO HAVE BEEN YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS THROUGHOUT THE YEARS?

I remember in high school thinking my best friends would be my best friends FOREVER. We would grow up, marry, and have children all while still living down the street from one another. Ha! My life turned out MUCH different than that. I know some of my friends where that is the case….they married someone from high school and still live in the same state. I, on the other hand, did not do anything like this.

But I still have friends that I have had for a long time. For instance, my college roommate, Heidi Schoemig Johnson, is still my friend. We don’t see each other often, but we try to keep in touch. Last summer when we were headed back home from Utah, we stopped by her place on our way to Bryce Canyon! It was SOOO fun to see her and reminisce.

Probably my nearest and dearest and closest friends throughout the years have been Diane Garrett, Dawnette Palmer, and my Effingham Crew. Diane and I played softball together BEFORE we both got married. We became friends and played a lot of racquetball too. She got married right after I left on my mission. We have remained friends and still get together when I go back home to Utah.

Dawnette was a friend from before marriage too. We were both in each other’s weddings. I got married Dec 1995 and she got married Aug 1996. We HARDLY see each other but we do call and text sometimes. When her brother, Aaron, came through he asked to stay the night at our house. No problem. Then he said he was bringing a friend and wondered if that would be ok. Of course!!! When he got here, I opened the door and about fainted….there stood one of my closest friends! It was SOOOO good to catch up, to take her to YW with me, and to show her my life. Prior to that time, she came to visit me in Illinois one time too. THAT was fun! She knows my insides almost as good as I do.

And now that I am nearly 50, I look back at the friends from Effingham. I lived there with my family when they were all very very small. THOSE friends seemed to have grown up with me. Sandy Webb, Cindy Gadberry, Jill Jones, and Amy Packer. They will forever be in my heart. In fact, we will be getting together for a girls weekend soon…..probably just Cindy, Sandy, and myself. I’m excited to finally be old enough to have “old” friends---people that have known me and loved me for a LONG LONG time!

Facebook offers a way to “stay in touch” with friends from the past, from high school, and other places. Although I appreciate this and enjoy seeing what is going on in their lives, I really enjoy face to face friendships and those that know me from the inside out. Friends mean a lot to me….gratefully I have been blessed with many good ones (at least I learned to have good ones after making some poor choices as a youth).

Next

FAVORITE TOYS AS A CHILD?

I remember getting my first ball glove. I was soooo excited…soooo excited. We were having a shared birthday party with my cousin, Jeff Benson (2/29 bday), my brother, Eric (5/2 bday) and me (5/6 biday). Even before I opened it, I could smell the leather. I could tell and just KNEW it was a prized possession. I didn’t have THAT specific glove long; I grew out of it quickly, I am sure. But there has NEVER been a time since THAT time that I have not owned a glove. I haven’t gotten a new one in a LONG time. I did buy a new one before I got married, but Kelsey uses it. My old broken in one that I used in college is still my favorite. It still has my maiden name on it and has been restrung a few times. But I love it. I broke it in perfectly!!!

I remember another glove I got. I read or heard somewhere that the best way to break it in would be to rub it with oil, place a softball in it, tie it with string and put it under your mattress. I can’t imagine how sleeping must have been. But I followed the directions religiously. Baseball and softball were my thing back in the day.

I also remember a blue hot wheel. Not even sure of what TYPE of car it was, but It was blue….maybe a Charger or something like that. I played with that a LOT. We would build roads and garages and use our cars.

I may not remember an exact toy that was my favorite because I may not have had a favorite toy. I played outside a lot. Eric and I would make a fort nearly every day out of extra wood my dad would bring home from the worksite. We had a ping-pong table and we played in that a lot. Dad brought home a lot of larger cardboard boxes and we made a tunnel that connected multiple forts in the playroom. We had a three car garage. Dad made two of the sections a huge playroom for us…..until Scott set it on fire. I don’t remember the particulars of that, or even when, but as I write about that playroom, I remember it fondly. I remember a swing we had hanging in our garage….a one rope, sit on the circle type swing. And we had bikes. A LOT of time was spent on our bikes.

When I was REALLY little I remember a pedal type car. I remember loving it….until it was stolen. I still loved it and mourned a bit for it.

This one is more difficutl...but here goes...

HOW HAS THE COUNTRY CHANGED IN YOUR LIFETIME?

Mostly the technology has improved. While computers used to be the size of rooms, they how fit in the palm of your hand. Information can be transmitted in an instant. This is the age of information. I remember when calling long distance cost a LOT of money, when a letter took days to reach a person, and when searching for information meant going to the library and searching the card catalog or even in an encyclopedia. I’m sure they still exist…encyclopedias, that is, but I know that the card catalog has gone by the wayside. No more index cards with the Dewey Decimal System to find a book. I wonder if books will one day become extinct like many other things.

I also remember that gas cost a LOT less. I know that EVERYTHING costs more now, but I actually bought gas before I ever started buying groceries.

But the world HAS changed a lot. Some of the things that I specifically remember is freedom to play anywhere and everywhere. I’m pretty sure child abductions have been happening for a LONG time, but when I was growing up the world seemed safer. I road my bike around all day long….and a LONG distance from home often as well.

As an adult the world seems larger and yet a lot smaller. It seems larger because I am aware of so many more continents and peoples and cultures. Yet, I find that the more I travel and find out about other places, the smaller this world becomes. People are everywhere, and MOST of us are so similar, only our skin color or our language differentiates us.

This is a difficult one without studying. I don’t keep up with politics and world news as much as others. In fact, my life is very small and seemingly insignificant in the view of others. I am still a very traditional person where my family, my home, and my career are the things I keep up with.

But this one is just a FUN memory :)

WHAT IS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CHILDREN'S STORIES?

I don’t really remember a lot of stories from my childhood. I do remember my father telling me stories about his three horses and three cows. Let’s see if I can remember some of their names…Buttercup was one. Oh, I hope he can still remember, or that they are written down somewhere. As a child when we would go visit him he would always tell us. I could recite them and knew the names of his animals. But time has gotten away from me, and so have the stories, sadly.

My mom and I always refer to the book Are You My Mother, by P.D. Eastman. To this day when I call I will often say hello with “Are you my mother?” We laugh about it now, but it has always been a favorite of mine.

As a child, I didn’t really like to read. Instead, I would get books about sports and read about my favorite players. But what I really loved was Sports Illustrated and then drawing the pictures of the athletes. I remember making collages of the pictures. I would also draw a lot of Snoopy and Charlie Brown. I enjoyed art much more than reading. I’m sure my mother read to me as a child, I just can’t remember them much.

I wonder if my children will remember me reading to them? Sometimes even now I see that they do NOT remember things I did with them when they were young. I wonder if Spencer will remember Flora’s Blanket? It was his FAVORITE book….I read it EVERY naptime and EVERY bedtime. In fact, he looked at it and I read it to him SOOO often that the pages are falling out. So I bought a new one since he’s grown up that I will give to him when he gets married.

As a family, we have been reading The Christmas Lizard, by Cory Edwards for as long as I can remember. We bought the book in Nauvoo, so it had to be after 2001. We have read it EVERY Christmas Eve since we bought it. I have also bought one for EACH of my children to have when they have families of their own.

Funny how our memories are. I KNOW my mom read to me, but I can’t remember. I have read to my children….more to Jordan, Spencer, and Kelsey, than Cody for some reason. And I wonder how much of it they will remember. I wonder how reading to children has changed since the advent of the smart phone and all the techy new gadgets we have.