March 14-19, 2016

I have a few extra moments to actually update this thing, so I'm going to return to the tradition of returning to last year's holiday. (Just this time, though. Don't expect more regular posts.)

Monday, March 14. I went to Kneaders for lunch, and I think I had a mint chocolate cupcake. I went to FHE, and Bishop Allen did a presentation with a March Madness theme. Bishop said he wanted to find this meme with a basketball theme but couldn't find one.

Brother Bailey and his children sat in front of me, and his older daughter kept kissing their baby. I leaned up and said, "You look like you're a really good sister," and she said, "I am." On the way home from FHE, I really considered stopping at Village Inn to get a mint pie for Pi Day (since I only eat green pies at that time of year), but I decided against it because it wouldn't be good for my family. I think my niece was annoyed that I didn't. I wrote in my journal:
"Today I went to Kneaders for lunch because I threw away the old sandwiches I had packed. It was rainy and snowy today. Home evening was bracketology by Bishop Allen. Brother Bailey's daughter was kissing their baby; I told her, 'You look like a really great big sister,' and she said, 'I am.' I painted more of my wooden shamrock tonight. I considered buying a mint pie, but I didn't feel like it...."

Tuesday, March 15. I used an informally published book called Ship Brooklyn Saints for the research described in my journal: 
"It was rainy and snowy today. I did some Chauncey West bios (Quartus Sparks and Orrin Smith) when I needed a break. I went to central hub institute for the last time, since we'll probably use a different building next time. Tonight I finished painting my shamrock. Now to let it dry."

Wednesday, March 16. I was able to test out my new trail running shoes on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, and it was also the first time I did a trail run with my Fitbit. I was surprised how fast I was on that trail (since the first part of it is flat, and I only had time for a short run). That night I watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I wrote in my journal:
"Tonight I ran two miles on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail for the first time since November! I went slower going downhill. It was my first time with my trail running shoes and my Fitbit. Tonight I watched Darby O'Gill."

Thursday, March 17. I wore my green pants, white shirt, orange belt, green glasses, and green socks to work. I stopped at a gas station on Beck Street and went inside the convenience store to see if they had sweetened condensed milk. They didn't, and I considered buying a king-size Lucky Charms bar, but I didn't. During the lunch hour, several employees were playing Irish music in a conference room, so many of us went down to listen. The Darowskis (whom I hadn't really met yet) commented on how much I got into it. Jenny Reeder sat next to Charlotte Terry and brought her laptop to work. Most of the music was instrumental, but Korben McBride sang "Danny Boy," and I didn't get why everyone was so enamored before he sang it (I don't get why it's so popular). After work, I stopped at Neighbor's Market to get sweetened condensed milk. I changed into my green shoes and "Irishish" shirt to go to tutoring. When I showed up at Camille's house, she said her boss had the same (or a similar) shirt. Doug and Ellie also came for tutoring, and on the way to tutoring, Ellie pointed out that the sign on the freeway had a holiday theme: "A designated driver is your lucky charm." I think I helped out a student in the separate computer room, and when I went back in, Camille wasn't riding home with us, and in the car Doug and Ellie were talking about how awkward it was, because apparently Camille was really mad at Doug. Doug said he wondered where I had gone, because he didn't see all my green. I went home and made avocado milkshakes (out of avocado, milk, sweetened condensed milk, and ice) and went downstairs to watch The Leprechauns' Christmas Gold. I wrote in my journal:
"Everyone liked my shamrock tie, green pants, and green glasses. During lunch hour, I attended a department Irish music concert. When I came home, I made Hawaiian Haystacks with green rice. Then I went to tutoring and helped Myles with vocab. When I came home (Camille didn't ride with us because she was mad at Doug), I made avocado shakes, using the sweetened condensed milk I got from Neighbor's Market on my way home from work. Then I watched The Leprechauns' Christmas Gold." 

Friday, March 18. After work, I drove to Wild Rose Park for my first-ever Fitbit trial on my favorite (at the time) trail. I did both the Wild Rose and Chukar Loops, 2.5 miles, which was a little less than I had expected. When I got home, our old neighbors, the Reeds, were visiting. They talked about lots of things: they were freaked out by the rattlesnake in our window, but Randy said it was a little less scary because of its "cowboy" hat (my Mom said it was a St. Patrick's Day hat, so that would be coming down). They talked about their son-in-law who would jump on their bed between them. They talked about their spoiled grandchild, and they attributed her behavior to not being spanked. They said she went to Olive Garden with her aunt, Nicole, and expected to get her own serving of something, while Nicole insisted they share it. They talked about how their son bought a house before he got a job and then got a job really far from their house. We talked about how four YSA wards meet in my church building. They talked about the Peterson family in the neighborhood, the wife of which had early-onset Alzheimer's or something. The Reeds talked about how sad it was, that they were at a funeral or something and she stared at the floor the whole time. Our cat, Jenny, started meowing because she wanted outside, so Rosa started meowing, and Jenny came up to her foot to be "petted," and Rosa tried to get her to go away. I wrote in my journal:
"Today I went to Nauvoo Cafe for lunch (for carrot cake, of course). When I came home, I drove to the Wild Rose and Chukar Loops and ran them with my new shoes and my Fitbit. And when I got home, Randy and Rosa Reed were visiting. I haven't seen them in a decade."

Saturday, March 19. I ran up to Wild Rose again, and I even went on the lower portion of the trail that had always been closed. It was really muddy, and part of the trail had me going through overgrown branches, right below the North Salt Lake landslide. I wasn't impressed with that portion of the trail, because it was surrounded by houses, muddy, steep, and full of litter. I had to take my shoes off outside when I got home because of all the mud. Then I went with my mom to pick up Allie, and as we were driving down 500 South, my mom was talking about what she could make for Easter dessert, either carrot cake or a cake like my Grandma Judy used to make, with jelly beans and colored coconut on top. I said I preferred carrot cake, because in my treat categories, that's category 1, whereas a decorated cake is only category 3. We went to At Home because I wanted an Easter decoration. I thought about an egg tree, but I got a little fake sugar egg. That night, we went to a musical performance, The Lamb of God, which was interdenominational, and my grandparents joined us. One of the prayers, from a woman preacher of another religion, prayed to God as "Father and Mother," which was interesting. We looked at some of the paintings on display, and we were a bit underwhelmed by the performance. After we went home, I pulled out the box of Easter decorations to put up. While I was decorating, I randomly had the laughable Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons rendition of "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" pop in my head, and I told my mom about how it had their signature style: "You better watch out, you better not cry-y bay-ay-by," and my mom laughed at the way I sang. I had to pull it up on my phone to play, even though it was out of season, since it so randomly popped into my head.
I decided that I would only put up what decorations I could get up that night before 9, since Easter was early that year. I wrote in my journal:
"This morning I ran up to Wild Rose, and I also ran on the portion of the trail near the landslide, which has always been closed. I went six miles and climbed 1,200 feet. Then this afternoon we went to At Home and Smith's Marketplace. Then Mom and I met G'ma and G'pa at a musical production of The Lamb of God. It was OK."

November 4

Time to remember what I can about November 4. Surprisingly, I don't remember the more recent years as well.

2014. It was Election Day, and I made a Facebook post about not voting: "The most responsible thing I could do would be to be a good citizen and know the issues and go vote. The second most responsible thing would be not to vote because I'm not informed. I chose the second most responsible thing." That's all I can remember right now.

2012. It was our last day in Death Valley for my geomorphology field trip. We packed up our tents, and I was shocked that one of my classmates changed his pants out in the open with girls standing ten feet away. We loaded up in the geology vans and drove out.

 We visited a place called Devil's Golf Course, where there were basalt rocks coated with salt. One of my classmates, Michael Arnold, said, "We're so mean to the devil." I licked some of the salt on the rocks, but they had a very rough texture.

 I was pleased to see a green rock on the ground, which I assumed to be the mineral olivine.

 Then we went to Badwater Basin, the lowest point in America. Lots of tourists had their pictures taken with a sign, which I found uninteresting. We went out on the salt flats after making a stop at the restrooms. I bent down to lick the ground. Our TA, Karl Arnold, picked up a piece of salt and began licking it like a lollipop.

 I asked one of my classmates to take a picture of me.

 Then we went to an abandoned mine and ate lunch. It was very hot. One of the TAs gave a devotional, saying that it was impractical to be fasting that day, but we should still remember it was fast Sunday, and maybe to listen to something a little less raucous. The restroom there was closed.

 We found a bug on the antenna.

Our professor went off somewhere to use the "restroom," and we had to tell one of our classmates not to go there, since he didn't know that's where she'd gone, or else he'd "see something [he'd] never forget." Another classmate told how he had been on a train and had the door opened on him when he was in the bathroom. We headed out of Death Valley, and our professor was playing churchy songs from her iPod (like EFY and MoTab). I offered my Lower Lights CD (yes, CD) to listen to. Dr. Radebaugh looked at the notes and said, "There's like fifty people in this band." At the second song ("I Saw the Light"), she said, "I listen to bluegrass on Sundays!" She skipped the song "Where the Soul of Man Never Dies," but at the end of the album she said she'd have to look them up. We passed some people looking at a layer of black rock next to the road; I thought it was an igneous sill, but I later learned it was a coal seam. (Now I know that igneous sills and coal seams look pretty different.) In Vegas, we stopped at In-N-Out. We could either eat there or eat leftover food on the truck. I ate at In-N-Out because I needed to use the restroom but felt bad doing so not as a paying customer. I did find it strange that the one time we went out on this BYU field trip was on Sunday. Someone jokingly said that we might as well be drinking coffee, since we were already breaking a commandment. We were all very ready for a bathroom break in Beaver, so we stopped at the gas station. I saw some orange Hostess Sno-Balls and debated buying them but decided not to since it was Sunday. Dr. Radebaugh bought some crackers. On our way home, I was texting my roommates to see if they could help me carry my stuff home from campus. My roommate Scott agreed to. I also got a text from our ward clerk, Michael Wyatt, and he was wondering how I was because I hadn't been at church that day. When we got back to campus, they were giving out food. I took a loaf of white bread, and maybe some skim milk, I don't remember. Soon Scott and lots of people from the ward showed up; he had invited them to come help me at ward prayer. There was plenty for everyone to carry something. At the end there was only my pillow and my bread. I let a girl carry my pillow, but maybe that was creepy. I was sandy and grimy. I wrote a short blog post.

2011. There was a lunch at my job at the Distribution Center; I think it was tacos or burritos, because I had brought tortillas. They asked me to say the blessing on the food; as I was praying, I heard Kelly Clarkson's "Mr. Know It All" playing on one of the radios in the work area. Some people had brought bags of candy. Some of my coworkers knew about my eating habits, and they asked if I could eat that Halloween candy. I said I couldn't, because Halloween was over, and it wasn't Halloween themed anyway. I explained that I could have candy corn things, because when I was in elementary school I read a Thanksgiving book called The Candy Corn Contest. I said I couldn't have plain candy because it was available year round. They said, "But candy corn is too." I said it was more common in the fall; they said, "Candy is too." They said my eating system had problems, and I acknowledged that it wasn't perfect. The previous night I had bought a bag of bulk candy corn taffy on clearance, and then I noticed that there was a produce sticker on the bag that said "5 A Day for Better Health," and I put that on Facebook.

2009. We tracted into a man whom I had met several months earlier when we attended a Bible study at another church. He was friendly and asked us why the Book of Mormon uses language from the Bible, as he heard. I explained my theory that it was to aid in the translation process, but I made it clear it was only my theory. He told us that his neighbors belonged to the Community of Christ, formerly RLDS Church. That night we visited Dianne Scott. Technically we shouldn't have been there, since there was no man present, but sometimes circumstances made it so we did that. (That rule was made for people who shouldn't be on missions anyway. But don't think I'm trying to discredit mission rules, because you should obey them.) She told us her conversion and things. I was a little surprised with how friendly she was, since most less-active members weren't so nice. Then we went and saw our Bishop, who lived on the same street. He offered us leftover pizza, and there was a conversation about how we sometimes perceive people as believing differently than they actually do. He brought up faith and works, saying he knew his Baptist preacher neighbor believed in living good lives. I said I felt the same way about the notion of the trinity. Sister Palmer told us we were welcome to come on Thanksgiving and asked what we wanted. I said pecan pie, and she said that Bishop was going to make that anyway. That night I wrote in my journal.
"This morning we did service helping Brother Ruddell and then Sister Carter. Later we tracted some and met a guy named Jack Azbill whom I met at the Tammany View Baptist Church. Then we saw Sister Gibbins, who was out in her yard.
"We had a good lesson with Mallary, then Elijah wasn't around. We had a long visit with Dianne Scott, a less-active I'd never met before. Then we stopped at Bishop's house, and talked and ate cold pizza."

2008. We spent half of our weeks at the home of a senior couple in one of our branches, and we helped them tile their entryway and fireplace. Actually Elder Love did most of it, since he was a handyman. We spent most of this day doing that, although a couple of times we changed into our proselyting clothes and went to our branch building to meet an investigator there. She never showed up. At one point I picked up a book of Edgar Allan Poe and read "The Raven" out loud. I felt bad that we spent all day doing the tile, but in retrospect I think it was a very good thing to do. I just wish I had been more helpful. We had dinner with the Christensen family at the Mexican restaurant in town. They commented on my very short hair, since Elder Love had shaved it the previous day without a comb on the clippers (or maybe the wrong size). When I told them what happened, their adopted five-year-old granddaughter Bailey jokingly scolded Elder Love. Bailey asked what we had been for Halloween. Elder Love said, "A missionary," and then he remembered, "I was Elder Melville!" Bailey didn't understand, so Sister Christensen said, "Elder Love wears one kind of tie, and Elder Melville wears a different kind." Elder Love said we wore the same tie (we just happened to have identical ties). Then Brother Christensen came with us to help the Stackhouse family with moving things from one house to another. (He was later annoyed that able-bodied kids weren't helping us.) I wrote in my journal:
"We helped with the Herrons' tile for most of the day. Not having much experience and fearing messing it up (since I never do anything right), I didn't feel like I was doing much. The times we weren't tiling we were waiting at the church to meet with Wanda but she didn't come. We also had dinner at a Mexican restaurant with the Christensens, and then helped the Stackhouses with a little moving. It was rainy and very cold today. I like my new sweater.

2006. It was my Grandma Judy's funeral, but I don't remember as much of it as I should. At the viewing in the morning, they offered everyone one last look before they locked the casket. I didn't feel a need to get up and look, because I had already paid my respects. Uncle Mike read out loud her obituary. It said she sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. My mom later said that she heard someone say "Huh?" when that was read, and she thought she had simply sung in a choir that was in a concert with the MoTab. The obituary was meant to sound pretentious. My grandma was not a member of the MoTab. They had all of us grandkids get up to sing a primary song during the service. Meanwhile, my cousin Peter (from the other side of the family) was upstairs in a nursery with my nephew Preston, who was eleven days shy of two years old. I felt a little bad that he was playing with my nephew instead of me--but it was my grandma's funeral. Then we went to my grandparents' house, and I helped carry things out. I think I carried some autumnal funeral wreaths. Allie and Preston were playing in the red Jeep in the yard.

I had a few "phases" at this time. One was that when I was in church clothes, I would gradually change out of them. Different occurrences would cause me to do one step towards changing. One of these steps was going outside, and since I was going outside a lot, I had a lot of times to gradually change. That's why I'm wearing a tie in the top picture, but my shirt is untucked without a tie and I have plain shoes on in the bottom. We went home that night, and while I was putting up my Thanksgiving maize lights on our fireplace, I acted on my other "phase": There was a full moon, so I pretended that I couldn't stay too long in the moonlight from the window, or else I would turn into a wolf. My mom was on the phone, and I think she was annoyed with my growling and hunching over.

2003. I don't specifically remember the day, nor the dress rehearsal for Evil Doings at Queen Toots' Tomb, but I wrote in my journal:
"Oi! It's only November 4, and already the Reeds have their Christmas tree up. I still need to take down Halloween and put up Thanksgiving decorations. [I stylized the word "Thanksgiving" with steaming corn cobs for the i's and a turkey beak for the v.] We had a rehearsal today. Our only dress rehearsal without an audience. It wasn't very good. We have microphones and whenever we walk by a speaker if the mikes are on, it makes a big, deafening noise. They echo, too. I didn't have much homework tonight, either, which is good, because I didn't get home until shortly before eight. There was pizza after practice."

2002. We were in Taiwan. I might have recorded the day in a journal somewhere, but I don't know where it is.

1996. Again, I don't remember this, but I found a second-grade journal, wherein the entry is fairly similar to 2003, even though I was seven years younger:
"This month is November. [This time the N was a turkey beak, and the v was an upside down tepee.] we don't have all of our Thanksgiving [again with the upside down tepee] decorations up, and we don't have all all [sic] of our Halloween decorations down. We'll work on it."

A two-year-old's Halloween fears.

I only have a short time to do a Halloween-themed memory post, so I'll remember my niece's fear of Halloween when she was two years old.

One day in September 2005, I pulled out a cheap plastic inflatable ghost to put up for Halloween. Allie saw it and became scared and snuggled close to my mom. I was surprised she was scared, so I moved it closer, and my mom said, "Mark, don't scare her." I didn't get why she would know it was scary--she was only two years old, and it was just a white squiggle with a happy face on it. Why should that be scary? It kind of freaked me out--like did she know something about ghosts that we adults didn't?

I hung that ghost up, and it would lose air, so I would have to periodically re-inflate it. Every time I got close to it, she would worry for my welfare.

She became scared of everything to do with Halloween, although I don't remember a lot of specifics. We had a large jack-o-lantern decoration in our yard, and she was scared of it. I think my sister told us that they had been at a house with lots of witch decorations and she was freaked out.

After some time, however, she became less scared, and once she said, "Pumpkins aren't scary!" And once she need "I not scary [scared]!"

By the time she was three, however, she was no longer scared of Halloween.

Happy Halloween!

July 23

I'm going to remember what I can about the day before Pioneer Day. However, since I haven't really considered Pioneer Day as a full holiday, that will make it a little hard.

2014. My brother took my nephews swimming, but Nathaniel didn't want to go, so my mom took him with her as she went other places. She ended up going to Susanne's house to watch Bountiful's parade. After a full day of working at home, I announced to my family that I was going to go watch the parade, so they decided to come too, and David drove and I had to tell him which street to turn on. We were able to park in front of Nan's driveway. Then we met them on her neighbors' lawn; the boys were told they couldn't have the neighbors' food. At one point I went into Susanne's house to get popsicles. We watched the procession; some high school bands got to dress coolly, but some had to wear their hot outfits. The boys were eager to get the free parade handouts; my mom remarked that they hadn't been taught manners not to get in other people's way. After the parade, we went to a firework shack near Dick's Market, where my brother picked out a lot of fireworks to set off. We got some tanks and some ground blooms. We lit off the fireworks at Susanne's house; David almost got burned from waiting too long to throw the "flowers." When we left, Ya-ping wanted Nathaniel to ride in my mom's car, since his carseat should have already been in it, but in fact my mom had not used his carseat. On the way home, we asked him about his imaginary families and houses. I said, "Do you have any dogs?" "We do have dogs!" "Do you have any cats?" "We do have cats!"--a cat named Bottom. My mom beat me to the next question: "Do you have any birds?" "We do have birds!" This is my journal for the day:
"After work today, we went to Bountiful's parade with the boys. They don't understand how to watch out for other people. Then we did fireworks with them. Qi-en really is the cutest."

2012. My ward's FHE was in the Regency Apartment lounge, where we watched 17 Miracles. I sat on a loveseat, and later my future roommate Scott, whom I was afraid of, came and sat right between me and the other person. (Later our friend Carissa told me she found that hilarious.) When Levi Savage was publicly rebuked for not having faith, Scott said, "I couldn't do that." In the scene where the kid eats the buffalo chip, Michelle Sutterfield said "Sick!" and then when he was being threatened by wolves, she said, "Is that the same kid who was eating that thing?" I believe that this was the same night that our "horse" friends Kristen, Hanna, Carissa, and Amberly came over to our apartment, since we didn't have class the next day. They talked about Scott having rearranged our apartment, and they loved the blog I had made; they made my roommate Cameron read it. Then they went and brought back an old creepy dating book with weird pictures and wanted us to make captions for the pictures. One weird picture had a guy looking at the side of a girl's face. I had two captions that I thought were perfect. One was a line from I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown: "'I'm trying to have an expression of looking to the future with hope.' 'That's all right, I'm just drawing your ear.'" For the other caption, I began singing "Trololo" because I thought the guy looked like the "Trololo" singer. Everyone laughed, but only Amberly knew what I was talking about, so I brought out my laptop to show them the YouTube video.

2011. This was a Saturday. I think this was the year I gave Allie a pink owl for her birthday. These are some anecdotes I copied and pasted from an old blog:

• She wanted to play Apples to Apples. Which is strange because she doesn't really get what's going on. Anyway, when it was her turn to be the judge, her green card was "Nasty." Someone put "AIDS." She picked a different card, and then shortly after said, "I was going to pick AIDS but I had to pick this one. 'Cause we all know what that's like." My sister and cousin and I were all laughing hysterically, as quietly as possible.
• I discovered an entertaining website called "Not Always Right." I was reading this, and came across [a comic strip in which a mother asks for a "Playboy" for her son, but she really wants a Gameboy.] I had been reading some of the anecdotes aloud to my mom, and Allie insisted that I read this to her because it was funny. I told her, "I don't think you get it." So she told her herself. I still don't think she gets it. At least, I hope not.
• I turned on Hogan's Heroes. She said to me, "I wish this were Pollyanna." Then in the episode they brought in a small Nazi flag, complete with the swastika. She said something like, "I knew they were in another country. Australia!" This made me laugh, so she "corrected" herself: "Austria!" My mom caught on that she had seen the Nazi flag on The Sound of Music--hence thinking it was Austria's flag.
• I was attempting to play "Linus and Lucy" on the piano. I thought I was doing reasonably well with just the left hand, but then I heard her say, "Mark you need to fix that do better or you'll need to take piano lessons, too!"

I was also amused when I looked at the cover for the August issue of The Friend. It has a bunch of primary-kid drawings of Thomas S. Monson on the cover. But one of them doesn't look so much like the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Rather, I think it looks more like the President of the United States of America:



I pointed it out to my parents, and even Allie thought it looked like Obama. My dad said he had thought the same thing.

2010. In the morning I got up and got ready to go home. As I was driving out of Provo, I saw people walking home after participating in the World's Largest Water Fight. That night my dad turned on the news and I saw the water fight on the news, and I regretted that I didn't participate.

2009. This is my journal entry for the day: "Today we were blessed enough to have our lesson go through with Anna Hamilton, although it almost didn't. Brad and Carey's lesson didn't go through. I guess they had an emergency." Anna lived in a single-wide trailer and didn't own much; this might have been the time we brought George Sabin with us.

Pioneer Day, 2012-14

A few years ago, I made a post about Pioneer Day, so I'm going to remember those that have happened since that time.

2014. In the morning I wanted to pick apricots so my mom could make something with them. Nathaniel wanted to help me, so I went out with him and he climbed on top of our swingset to reach the fruit. I put my arm around him, and he kept saying, "I got it! Wet [let] go!" Of course I didn't; I  told him I would be very sad if he fell down. I came in with the colander full of apricots and said to my mom that some of them were a little green, winking that Nathaniel had picked some that weren't quite ripe. Preston said, "Did Baby pick them?" Nathaniel said, "I didn't know!" (Indeed, Preston had picked plenty of green ones himself the year before at the age of eight.) Then we went to a McDonald's in Salt Lake since the boys all like it for some reason. Franklin put his chicken nugget on his straw, and Preston followed suit, and they drank soda while eating nuggets. Preston said they should make nugget-flavored soda.

Then we went to the mall to go to the Lego Store. Nathaniel didn't bring shoes, so he had to wear Allie's girly shoes, which he wasn't too happy about. I carried him across the parking lot, and while I was doing so I asked him who was cuter, me or his dad, and he said me, because I was younger even though I had bigger legs. [I just asked him in 2015. He said, "That's a hard choice....It's too complicated. I think you because you're not as old as my dad."] We went to the Lego store, where there were bins where they could fill cups with Legos. He didn't like to get Legos from bins with Disney Princess covers, so he didn't get white flowers, but he got purple and pink flowers, since they weren't in Princess covers. There were some orange Legos with a Princess cover (Allie said, "The orange could be for the pumpkin carriage," and my mom said the covers probably didn't necessarily mean anything to do with princesses), so Nathaniel didn't get the orange ones, but he loved to get some clear ones, even though they did come from a Princess cover. Ya-ping tried to fit more Legos in Preston's cup by shaking the contents of one cup into another. I could have told her it wouldn't work, and indeed it made it worse. As she was doing that, David said, "This is where Preston gets it." David wanted to see whether Nathaniel wanted to fill up a cup or get a cheap set, and he wanted both, causing David to say, "That's not an option." Then we went to Chinese Gourmet to meet my grandparents for dinner. While we were waiting, we tried to get Ya-ping's niece to speak English, but she was too shy to do so. Susanne said she didn't know she could speak English. At the restaurant, it was the first time I ever had Mongolian barbecue. We came home and David's high school friend Preston Hawkes, for whom David's Preston was named, came over. I had been in my room playing on the Super Nintendo but I went out and gave him an update on what I was doing in life. Nathaniel loved talking to this big Preston; he was telling him he knew Chinese, but Preston thought he was talking about his knees. David said that Nathaniel was by far their easiest four-year-old. I asked Nathaniel to tell Preston how many moms he had; he didn't respond, but Preston said, "That's a lot. Anything more than one is a lot." David said that one day he just started talking about his new mom, which made Ya-ping ask David why he said that. They talked about their crazy friend Mike Bishop, and Preston said he was still Facebook friends with Mike's ex-wife. Preston talked about his younger brother being a jerk in public without knowing it, and he said he (Preston) didn't usually like to swear but he called someone a bad name. He said he would have to visit David when he was with his son, and David said they could take them to the Exploratorium. This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today I picked apricots and Nathaniel helped me. Then we all went to McDonald's and then to the Lego store. We went to dinner with G'ma and G'pa. Tonight big Preston came and visited. I'm going to miss those kids."

2013. I think it was a little boring, so I made a blog post about pioneers. (I could write a much better blog today.) That night I went running, and when I got back a bunch of people were lighting sparklers, so they invited me to do so too. We got on the apartment staircase to take pictures. (I found a picture, but I feel weird stealing someone else's picture.)

2012. I made this Facebook status: "I've never really thought of Pioneer Day as much of a holiday. However, I am grateful for my pioneer ancestors who went through such hardships and sacrificed so much, working 'with might for a cause that's right' to establish this great state of Utah." I spent the day looking at words in Isaiah in the Oxford English Dictionary and writing a paper about it for my Isaiah class. I hadn't been running in a while because I had knee problems, but I went that night, and as I was up on campus in front of the testing center, I looked out over Provo and saw aerial fireworks. Then I went home and drank Powerade.

July 1-5, 2014

Memorial Day weekend has me thinking about patriotic holidays--specifically the Fourth of July, so I'm going to remember what I can about the Fourth of July last year.

July 1. I got up early and called my boss, and he told me he wanted me to create his Wikipedia page. He wanted me to look at other Mormon historians and pattern the page after theirs. I'd never done any Wikipedia work before, so I spent the day learning how to do it and writing his bio. That night I pulled down my bicycle and pumped up the tires, and I went biking. I biked near Lofty Lane in North Salt Lake and passed a family lighting fireworks. This is part of my journal entry for the day (parts of it have things I shouldn't put on the internet):
"I got up earlier than usual today because I needed to call Reid. He wants me to create his Wikipedia page, so I've been trying to do that.
"During my lunch break, I went to Winegar's. After work, I did some light organizing, then played some Nintendo.
"I almost went running, but then I decided to go biking instead. It was fun to be on a bike again. I had to get on the sidewalk to avoid some fireworks. Then I lifted weights, and then I watched Bewitched."

July 2. This might have been the day when I told my dad that a lot of the work I had been doing on Wikipedia had been lost. He said "Oh no" like it was a horrible thing, but I wasn't that worried about it. I was wearing my blue-and-white-striped socks with red stars when I went biking again that night. I went up to Gary Way via Centennial and went on David Way. I wasn't gone very long. My dad seemed disappointed I went for such a short time and said he wouldn't have closed the garage if he knew how soon I would come back. Late that night, my mom came home with my sister-in-law Ya-ping, my niece Allie, my three nephews, and Ya-ping's niece.


July 3. I was working from home, as usual. When I was working on the Wikipedia page, I got this funny Captcha image, so I put it on Facebook:

My aunt, Sue, was going to the zoo, so she invited my nephews to go to it. Preston and Franklin didn't want to go, but Nathaniel did, so my mom took him there. When she came home, she said that it was funny to see him shy when he met up with Peter. I reminded her that he was shy at first when we met them that summer but quickly warmed up. Later Peter came back with him, and it had taken him a very long time to get to our house because he got extremely turned around. As soon as he got to our house, Preston and Franklin became very noisy, so I had to go work in my room. Then Sue and Nicole and the babies Nathan "Wallace" and John "Bruce" came over to go up to the fireworks with us. At one point, I went downstairs and my mom and Susanne told me Nathaniel had been talking about his other moms. Susanne said, "How many was it he had? [Some number in the thousands]?" and Nathaniel chimed in, "And wifty," which we all found quite funny. We walked up to the fireworks, and I brought my patriotic Goldfish with us. Ya-ping made the boys take jackets, even though it was the middle of the summer, which I thought was ridiculous. We passed the Anderson house, and Sue stayed behind and talked with them. Preston was getting way ahead, even though he didn't know where we were going. At the top of the hill just as we enter the golf course, Franklin was bawling, and I think it was because Preston had hit him with his jacket and the zipper hit him in the face. I think Franklin's crying was excessive, but I told Preston he needed to be careful, and he gave some excuse I didn't entirely buy. After we had secured a spot on the grass, Nathaniel needed to go to the bathroom, so I took him. There were long lines, and he kept asking why it was taking so long. We had an interesting conversation, which went something like this:
"Why is the sun in half?"
"That's not the sun, that's the moon."
"Where did the sun go?"
"It went down already."
"Is the sun made out of fire?"
"Kind of." (Keep in mind that I was talking to a four-year-old.)
"Is it made out of lava?"
"Nope."
"Preston said it was made out of lava, but he was lying. Is the moon made out of fire?"
"No, the moon is made out of rocks."
"Why did they make it like that?"
"Because a really long time ago, in space, there were lots of pieces that stuck together and became rocks, and then lots of rocks stuck together and made the moon. And the earth."
"That happened a really long time ago?"
Allie met her friend Katy and played with her. We were missing "Wallace," so we assumed he had gone with Allie. A little later, Peter suddenly got up and ran over to catch Wallace, who was wandering on his own in a large group of people. When Allie came back to us, we said, "Did you know that Nathan followed you?" She said yeah, it apparently not having occurred to her that she should have made sure he was still with her, so we told her to be more careful. Susanne distributed glow sticks to us, and Nicole gave some Goldfish to John. We could hear distant music playing. One song was Pharrell's "Happy," and Preston said, "Why is the 'Happy' song from Despicable Me 2 so popular?" When Katy Perry's "Firework" was playing, we knew the fireworks would start soon. During the fireworks, Nathaniel got a little scared, saying, "They're getting woser [closer]!" He cuddled up to Sue for protection. Then when they were over, we walked home. I carried John in his stroller down the rocky hill.

July 4. That morning, Preston went outside and got stung by a wasp. He came inside and said he was stung; he looked at the sting and said he still had the stinger in him because he could see a little black dot. Ya-ping looked at it and also saw the dot, but I looked at it, and I said I thought it was just where some blood had filled in where he had been poked and then dried. Franklin said, surprised, "You know about science?!" I made a Facebook status that day that said, "I love America! But I don't feel that I have a right to say I'm proud to be American, because I didn't do anything to be American." Sue was at our house again and said she thought it was funny. I think she also complimented my flag socks. I invited the boys to watch a Fourth-of-July-themed movie, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July, but initially only Preston wanted to. He asked me when it was made; I said 1980, and he said, "It's pretty good for its age." Later, the other boys came in. When the bearded villain Winterbolt flew in on his sleigh, and Rudolph said, "It's a sleigh all right, but it's not Santa," Nathaniel said, "It is Santa Claus!" I had to explain it just looked like him. At some point that day, our AC broke. My mom and Ya-ping had gone shopping, and I stayed with the boys. Franklin saw a Monopoly game in our closet, and he wanted to play it, but I said it would be hard and complicated, but we could try it. Well, both Preston and Franklin were distracted by watching cartoons, so I basically had to do everything, which was annoying and stressful. Franklin wanted to buy every property he could, but Preston didn't. At one point Franklin said, "I like this game. You said it was hard and complicated," and I thought it was weird he said that, since I was the one doing everything in the game. Mom and the girls came home with hot dogs and a watermelon. Ya-ping cut the watermelon the weirdest way I have ever seen. She put the Monopoly game away, which I had left out in case the boys wanted to continue playing, but she put it away hastily, and I had to go back and organize all the money again. That evening, she was on the patio talking to David, and I was lighting the fire pit to roast the last patriotic marshmallows with the boys. When I started the fire, it flared up, and Ya-ping gasped--then I heard her saying my nickname in Chinese on the phone, presumably telling David why she gasped. We had s'mores, but some of the boys just wanted marshmallows. That night we went to Susanne's house to light fireworks. The first ones were parachutes, and the boys were arguing over who got them, since some exploded or disappeared. Sue said she would take them and later that evening there would be a number-guessing game to see who got them. My mom said she was just going to tell them it didn't matter, but Sue's idea was to make them forget about it. (It worked.) Susanne's neighbors had huge fireworks. I shared my red, white, and blue Tic-Tacs with the boys and everyone else, and when I was waving my sparkler, I pretended I was conducting music. Then we went home and I got on my computer, listening to a few of my Fourth of July songs before bed. Here's my journal entry for the day:
"An OK Fourth. I stayed home most of the day. When the girls went shopping, I stayed home with the boys. Preston watched Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July with me. He asked how old it was, then said, 'It's pretty good for its age.' Then Franklin wanted to play Monopoly, which kind of stressed me out. Then I had to grill on the barbecue, because Pops was trying to fix the broken AC. Then we went to Nan's and lit little fireworks while her neighbors did big ones."

July 5. My family was going to a wedding for my first cousin once removed, and we stopped at Susanne's house beforehand. I, on the other hand, was going back to Provo. I found that my clip-on sunglasses had the plastic coating melt so that they had a permanent smudge on them. I got back to my apartment, which was a mess because it had just been painted. I decided to try out Spotify, so I downloaded the program and listened to some odds and ends. I think I was discovering how useful a tool it would be to find holiday music, and I listened to Ed Sheeran's "Sing."

December 5, 2009

Some of my previous posts have included the first time I met two of my nephews, Preston and Nathaniel. But since my middle nephew, Franklin, is turning 7 this week, I'm going to remember the day I first met him. He was born while I was on my mission, so I didn't get to see him until I was home five days, when he was twenty-two months.

In the morning, my parents and I went to the airport to meet Ya-ping, Preston, and Franklin. My dad and I went up the escalators where new arrivals came down, while my mom waited at the bottom. We were waiting and waiting, when suddenly I saw some kids run up to my mom. I thought, "Who are those girls, and why are they going up to my mom?" Then I realized they were my long-haired nephews, so we went down and met up with them. As we were going up the elevator, I tried talking to Franklin, who was very shy and clinging to his mom. Ya-ping was saying, "You look different!" In the car on the way home, I was  turning around and tickling Franklin on his leg, which made him giggle, which made my mom laugh. He also began singing the "Elmo's World" theme song: "Ma, mawmo, maa!" We got home, and Sue had brought Peter over to see them. My parents and I went to our church for our ward Christmas breakfast. Lots of people (such as Evan Gubler) were coming up to me to welcome me home. They told me that I had gotten taller, but I think that was just an illusion because I wasn't as fat. The guests for our party were bagpipers, which I found annoying and un-Christmassy. We left early, and when we got home Peter was playing with Preston. I tried to talk to Preston, but he just responded by blowing raspberries.

That afternoon, we had a large trip with family to different stores. It included me, Mom, Susanne, Allie, Ya-ping, Franklin, Sue, Peter, and Quin, so of course we drove in the Suburban. Jesse might have been there too, I can't remember. Preston had been napping when we left, so he didn't come with us. First we went to DI, I think because Ya-ping wanted to get clothes and stuffed animals for the boys. While we were there, Allie said, referring to the Thompsons, "They like Franklin more than me!" My mom told her that I was still around her, while the others were playing with Franklin. At one point, Quin told her, "We get to see you all the time, but we don't get to see Franklin as much." Then we went to Walmart, and as we were going in, we had a conversation about elderly relatives on Facebook. At one point, my mom called my dad, who was home with Preston, and when she was done, she said that he had said that Preston was fine now that he had stopped crying. We went through the Christmas candy aisle, and I wanted to get mint miniature candy bars. But then Ya-ping said she wanted to get miniature Snickers with Christmas wrappers, and I couldn't justify getting two things of candy, and I resented her choice of generic candy over special mint varieties.

When we got home, Preston was watching Harry Potter on TV with my dad, which Ya-ping wasn't too happy about, because she thought it was violent.

December 21-27, 2013

It's time to remember last year's Christmas week.

December 21. I remember lying in bed while I heard my mom talking on the phone. She relayed stories about Nathaniel to Sue, and she was talking to her friend Jackie and I heard her say she would have to tell me something. I found out that what she needed to tell me was a funny ambiguous statement that Jackie had misinterpreted the night before; my mom had texted her something like, "We are in Fillmore for a wedding, and the reception is terrible." She meant the cell service was terrible. Sometime that day, we went to Chuck-A-Rama. At the table, there was conversation about gay marriage being legal in Utah. My mom said she didn't think gay marriage should be illegal but she didn't like the way the law had been handled. My dad said her opinion was because she had listened too much to David; Susanne said she had lots of gay friends ("well, not a lot"), including a couple with an adopted kid, who Allie said was really cute. There was also talk about the movie Elf, which I don't watch. Allie asked why not, and I said it was because of language. She said, "There's not any inappropriate language in that movie," and Matt chimed in and said there was some. My mom also talked about a person in their primary having to give a heartrending lesson because she had a toddler die. I got a brownie covered with Christmas sprinkles, and I noticed that some of them had fall sprinkles. I got some peppermint hot chocolate as well. I think Jackie came to our house that day and asked if my mom had told me the "reception" story. Jackie said she thought, "That poor girl, having a terrible reception!" That night we got Arctic Circle for dinner. My mom got eggnog and gingerbread shakes, which looked identical, even though the advertising showed that the gingerbread one was a chocolatey color. We watched Miracle on 34th Street. Allie was with us, and said, "This reminds me of Saving Mr. Gates, even though I've never seen it." I mouthed to my mom what an incredibly weird thing that was to say.

December 22. In the morning, my parents pointed out to me an ad in the newspaper with a hilarious typo:

That afternoon, I made gingerbread, using both a special Christmas cookie sheet and Christmas cookie cutters. Frosting was made and I used it to add details to the gingerbread cookies. I also made wassail. Then we watched the DVD of the MoTab/King's Singers concert.

December 23. I went with my mom to perform various Christmas tasks. (I know Allie was with us at some point, but I don't remember her being with us at the beginning.) We went to a mall in Salt Lake because my mom wanted to get slippers for my grandma. She asked a saleslady, "Where is the lingerie?" and I thought "Where are the slippers?" would have been a more appropriate and more accurate question. We met up with Sue, Nicole, and their two boys. We traipsed all over the mall, including stopping in a store with earrings in case I wanted to get them for Allie. There was a guy working for an LDS DVD company who tried to offer us a free movie; I felt bad that everyone ignored him. When we went to the Hallmark store, Nathan/Wallace was playing in fake snow and yelling at anyone else who tried to play in it. We admired their monthly Peanuts ornaments and I ended up getting an ornament of Jack Skellington on his little automobile from Christmas Town. Allie, ever obsessed with playing with Wallace, rode with Sue while my mom and I went some other places. I remember having some minty candies in the car, and we went to a shoe store to see if they had slippers that my mom wanted to get for Grandma. Then we went to a Sprint store to get my Grandpa a smartphone. They didn't have any blue phone covers, so my mom got a green one instead. It seems they also gave us some headphones. The rest of the family went to go see Saving Mr. Banks at the theater, but since the movie doesn't fit my standards, I didn't want to see it. I went to Walmart and Target. Walmart was very busy, and I think I was annoyed at a cart in the parking spot. I had to park the car, move the cart, then pull completely in the spot. It seems that as I was taking the cart back to the store, a lady took it from me, since there weren't any carts there (I wasn't planning on using a cart anyway). I looked at Christmas CDs, but I didn't get any. Then I went to Target, where I got earrings for Allie. I was delighted to see a set of holiday socks--socks for Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and the Fourth of July. Of course I had to buy it. I also bought some red and green Goldfish crackers. Then I waited around in the car while I waited for the movie to be over, trying to watch YouTube music videos. After the movie, we all went to Sears and looked at clearance Christmas stuff; Sue gave us the Lego set Peter had bought for my nephews. Then we wanted to go somewhere for dinner; since my grandparents were with us we went to Zupas. My mom got a dessert to share, but there weren't any seasonal desserts. I showed Wallace my Nightmare before Christmas shirt, and my mom mentioned that when I was a kid I would have my thumb in my mouth, my finger in my nose, and another finger in my belly button. We watched my grandparents drive off, my grandpa driving somewhat recklessly, not using his blinker and such. My mom said, "What do you wanna bet they die while he's driving?" My dad had had some kind of dental work that day, so on our way home my mom went to Orange Leaf so we could get frozen yogurt, one of his favorite things. Of course, I was delighted to see that not only were there three Christmas flavors of yogurt, there was an abundance of Christmas toppings. We went home and gave the yogurt to my dad. That night my mom and I watched Christmas for a Dollar, and I was ashamed to admit that I liked it.

December 24. Strangely, I don't remember what happened this day. I know we watched White Christmas, and I certainly was packing for California.

December 25. In the morning I turned on my Christmas playlist, but I just turned it on from the beginning. But one of my presents was Kelly Clarkson's Greatest Hits: Chapter One, which had "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on it, so I stopped my playlist, put the new song in it, and then put it on shuffle. When the Lower Lights' bluegrass version of "Once in Royal David's City" came on, my sister said that a famous actor was good at playing the banjo and tried to find it on Spotify on her phone. I think she tried to find other songs, and Matt said to her, "There's already music on." She tried to advertise Spotify to me; I said I heard that Google Play was the same idea, and Matt said that Spotify was better. I saw she had a Halloween playlist, and I said, "Wow, your Halloween playlist is bigger than mine," but I think most of the songs weren't actually Halloween songs. We finished our preparations to go to California, and then we went to my grandparents' house for brunch, where Nan snapped this picture:

Among other breakfast items, my grandparents made spiced apple cider. I was astonished that it tasted like the powdered kind, even though it wasn't. Peter remembered me quibbling about the usage of cider and wassail, but he got it backwards--I think wassail refers to the drink with apple and citrus, while cider is just apple cider. Jesse asked me what I got for Christmas, and I told him I got a slow cooker. He asked if I was going to make anything special in the slow cooker; I told him that I might make corned beef and cabbage at St. Patrick's Day, and he said, "That sounds terrible." Then we went to the airport. While we were waiting to board our plane, I was listening to Christmas music on my phone and experimenting with saving music in Google Play. I noticed a little thumbtack icon at the top of my phone, but at this time I didn't realize that I could swipe down from the top and see app notifications. On the plane, my dad told me that he had put a peppermint candy bar in my stocking because he thought I would like it because it was seasonal; he had gotten it from work. I was eating it and he asked if he could try some of it. When we landed, Ya-ping picked us up and drove us to their new apartment. Baby was excited to talk to us, but we couldn't call him "Baby" for long; it was on this trip that he told us he wasn't a baby and we couldn't call him that. In their room, he said, "That's brudden's bed," and I said, "That's your brother's bed?" to which he said "Uh huh!" I thought "brudden" was how he said "brother," but I soon learned it was how he said "Preston." He told me that he had "hixteeng buses," and for the rest of the visit he told us about his sixteen ("hixteeng") new houses and moms. He kept talking to us, and David said, "He's not usually this talkative." He took a Wii game to show us, and Preston yelled, "Don't shake it!" Nathaniel kicked him, and my mom said, "Oh, no," and he had to go to time out in his room and cried. Later, he jumped on his dad and said, "I almost [unintelligible] my dad." I said, "You almost what your dad?" to which he said, "Uh huh!" That made everyone laugh. (Apparently he said "killed.") That night we watched Monsters University (David had to keep telling Preston not to give things away) and then It's a Wonderful Life. Preston kept asking what was going on in It's a Wonderful Life.

December 26. When I got up, Ya-ping had made me a Jack Skellington hat. We took BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, to go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where my mom bought passes for us to be able to return to the museum and be more economic. We drank from the toilet drinking fountain and played with the other exhibits, including the spinning chairs, the ball jump that does math, the peg board where you can make marble ramps, and others. There were a lot of people there. We then went to a park across the street, in the middle of the city. My mom and Ya-ping walked to Subway to get us dinner while the boys played on the playground. I watched Nathaniel to make sure he was safe. Then we ate our dinner. We saw a man running shirtless, and my mom said he must be cold, but it really wasn't cold. David wanted to do running races with Preston, me, and my dad. I won every time. We walked past a place where people were ice skating, and I reflected that I probably will never go ice skating in my life. Then we returned to the BART station; David said to Franklin, "What's on Uncle Mark's shirt?" He said, "A cat in a space suit." David said, "Can cats really wear suits like that?"

December 27. I think I remember sitting on David's couch, listening to my music from 2013 and sharing my Facebook Year in Review.

Things my niece used to say

Since I have a long stretch now without any holidays, I thought I would post about the linguistic development of my niece and nephews. Since my niece Allie is the oldest, turning ten this month, I will start with her. I'm sure that I will remember more things later on.

I can remember one day in the fall of 2004 when Allie was one. My mom told her to go put her diaper in the garbage, so she did. I was amazed, because that was the first time I knew she could understand English.

In November of 2004, when she was sixteen months, there were only a few words she could say. I think she attempted to say "Xiang-an," the Chinese name of my nephew Preston, but she later only would say "Baby." She could say "turkey" because she loved the inflatable turkey in our yard. Shrek 2 came out that month, and she grew to really like the movie, calling it "Shh."

The following March, I remember her coming into my room on Good Friday, after we had just gotten Easter gifts. She brought Preston's new toy, which had a picture of a dog on it, and said, "Woof!" That was the first time we knew she knew what a dog said.

She learned that our cat's name was Jenny, so she learned that word, only she pronounced it "Genn," with the g hard as in get and girl. My mom thought she was actually saying "kitten," but I'm not sure. She was good at the linguistic principle of overextension, which is using one word to refer to more things than it means. "Genn" was her word for any cat or cat-like animal. Shrek 2 became known as Genn, because of the Puss in Boots character. (She called Monsters Inc. "Boo" and The Incredibles "Bob" and sometimes "Bob, Dash, Baby.") I remember a trip from Yellowstone when Allie was about two in which we stopped  at a rest stop for lunch. There was a squirrel by our table, and when we left, Allie said, "Bye Genn!" On that same trip, she wanted to watch The Incredibles and said, "I miss Bob." That was only the second time we had heard her say "I miss [something]"; the previous time had been one Sunday when she said, "I miss Mom."

For her birthday when she turned two, she got some fake food. She called a fake cookie "cake." But that overextension didn't last long; her go-to dessert word became "pie." At that same time she called all fruits "apples," and she often would request a tomato, calling it an apple. (She requested tomatoes because they look much sweeter than they are.) She later added "bunny" to her vocabulary, which replaced "Genn" as the go-to word for small mammals. She called squirrels bunnies, and she had some Minnie Mouse sandals that she would refer to as bunnies.

One day that same summer (2005), we were looking at pictures and she started calling everyone by name. At that point she had learned to call my dad Pop; I'm not sure why. She kept calling Ya-ping "Gawgo." It was  really funny. We don't know where that came from, but the name stuck. After that, my mom and I were the only ones who didn't have a name from her. She finally started saying Mark, so Grams was the last name she had to learn. Of course, she didn't say her r's, so "Mark" was more like "Mawk." Once I walked into a room and my sister said, "It's Mawk," and Allie said, "No, it's Mawk." She knew my name wasn't Mawk, even if she couldn't say it right. On my birthday in 2005, someone said, "It's the birthday boy!" and she said, "No, it's Mawk."

She used to talk about all of our cars, but she would say it as "ky" (rhymes with "guy"). She would say, "Pop's ky, Mommy ky," and so on.

At the Halloween season in 2005, she became terrified by many Halloween things, even simple things like jack-o-lanterns. As the season progressed, she became a little more tolerant. She would say, "I not scary," meaning she wasn't scared. Once she said, "Pumpkins aren't scary."

In introduced her to Charlie Brown, which she called "Sally and Brown"--although looking back I'm not sure if she was actually saying "Sally and" or if that was her attempt at saying "Charlie."

My sister for some reason introduced Allie to Disney Princesses, and she grew to love them. In October 2005, Cinderella was released on DVD. We put the DVD in and watched the trailers. Allie identified Cinderella as "Wa-wee." Our best guess was that was an attempt to say "Relly," as in "Cinderelly."

At some point that year, my sister began buying bags of cheese sticks that had two flavors, a white one that was Monterey jack, and a yellow one that was cheddar. We would refer to these as white cheese and yellow cheese. Then Allie converted white cheese to Snow White cheese. And then since she had Snow White cheese, the yellow cheese became Belle cheese. I didn't like those cheese sticks; I preferred mozzarella string cheese, so whenever we got regular string cheese, those were called Mark cheese. These cheese names stuck for a really long time. Eventually my sister quit buying the yellow and white cheese sticks and just bought regular string cheese. That was still called Mark cheese, even though there was no other cheese to distinguish it from.

In November 2005, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out. That was another movie Allie liked, but it led her to pick up the word "stupid," as Mike Teavee would say, "It's stupid!" In that movie, Willy Wonka once said, "Scaredy cat," and Allie would combine two words she learned in the movie and say "Stupid cat!" She would call Willy Wonka a girl.

Once when she was two and a half, we had a rotisserie chicken, and she kept calling it a "bum."

At some point when she was two, she picked up a habit of assigning characters to a member of the family. I can remember doing this some as a kid of about 5, but only when I was watching movies. Allie took it to the extreme. Near my high school was a car lot with an inflatable witch and an inflatable gorilla. She said the witch was her (because she had been a witch for Halloween) and the gorilla was Preston. In January 2006, we went to Target and bought Corpse Bride. She looked at the DVD and said that she was the Corpse Bride and Preston was Victor, and Pops was the skeleton dog. Around that time, I got the second season of Bewitched on DVD. She did similar things on that DVD. There was a picture of Darrin and Samantha and their new baby--that was David and Gawgo and Baby. There was a picture of Darrin as a werewolf--that was me. And the little animated Samantha was Allie, since she usually made any witch her. (She also kept saying that the animated Samantha was Sleeping Beauty.)

However, the most common and consistent name assignments were with Disney Princesses. She had these down pat. She was Belle and Preston was Beast, my mom and dad were Cinderella and her prince, Gawgo and David were Ariel and Eric, Susanne and I were Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip, and our aunt Sue was Snow White. Our cousin Peter was the huntsman sent to kill Snow White. When she would read Princess books, she would substitute family names. All of her replacement names sometimes led to her saying some funny things. Once she was watching Beauty and the Beast and said, "Mom! It's the scary Preston!" Once she said, "Peter tried to kill Sue!"

In 2006, I wrote a blog post about her fascination with "naughty words."

In the spring of 2006, she started calling my mom "Grandmamother" (pronounced "Grammamudder").

Around the summer of 2006, she picked up a lot of words and phrases from movies. All of a sudden she began calling me "Crazy woof" (wolf), and we didn't know why. Then one day I was watching Hoodwinked! with her, and heard Red say, "You crazy wolf!" One summer morning she came into my room and said, "Get up Sully!"--quoting a line directly from Monsters Inc. Once she said something about "a smile like a sick pumpkin"--a line from A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Once I heard her say, "You mean old thing!" facetiously, a line from Cinderella.

She would also memorize words from her princess books; you could read to her and stop and she would fill in the words. Once she said to me, "Did you like looking for treasures when you were a little mermaid?" That was shortly after she said to me, "Bird seed is so gross. I tried it once when I was a little bird, and it was yucky."

Once we were driving through a cemetery, and Allie looked out the window and said, "Oh my gosh! They're darling!"

That summer Ya-ping's sister Shu-hua came for a visit, and Allie began calling her her best friend.

This summer she pronounced my cousin Jesse's name as "Jeshy."

That summer we went camping at Moosehorn lake. One day we drove to see a waterfall with my uncle John and his kids. Allie fell asleep in the car, and when we got there, everyone got out to look at the waterfall. My mom was staying in the car with Allie. After everyone had walked off, I noticed that Allie had woken up, so I looked in at her. She said to me, "Go look at that faterwall!" Another time on this trip, I was watching her walk around. She didn't like my supervision, so she kept saying to me, "No, Prince Biwip [Phillip]!"

In August or September of 2006, a Halloween costume catalog came in the mail, and Allie became obsessed with Halloween costumes. She knew all the costumes in the catalog, and she had decided what all of us were going to be for Halloween. I think I was going to be a ghost. I remember being in the backyard with her one day, discussing the costume situation. I was asking her what people should be for Halloween. I think she said my dad was going to be a turkey. After I had gone through everyone in the family, she said, "What about my best friend Shu-ha?" So I asked her what she should be. She saw the garbage can in the backyard and said, "A crash tan!"

Whereas she had been terrified of Halloween in 2005, she loved it in 2006. She would always insist on driving past houses with lots of decorations. One had a giant spider, so she called that house the spider house. The Loveridges had an inflatable Frankenstein, which she called "Stankenfrein." Once this inflatable was not properly inflated, so for a long time afterwards she would tell us about how the "Stankenfrein was on the ground." She called skeletons "skilligans," probably on analogy with Gilligan (since Quin used to watch that when he visited).

On September 17, 2006, we visited my aunt's house and she fell off the couch and hurt her arm. Then we went back on October 29, and she said that she was going to fall off the couch and hurt her arm. On our way home that day, she started calling me Piggy. She even said, "Oink oink!"

At that same time, she told me that Santa Claus was going to go to Target to get her toys.

This was around the same time she started calling Willy Wonka "Winky Wonka." 

One fall Saturday, I took her outside and played with her in the leaves. She got a leaf stuck to her hair near her eye. She said it made her a pirate. Then she said it made her look like an Indian.

A day or two after Halloween, the Thompsons were at our house, and Allie told Sue, "My mouth's having issues," referring to the rotting face of her jack-o-lantern.

At Christmastime in 2006, she became interested in nativities, which she called "antivities." She called Joseph "Jophes." She would play with nativities like action figures. Once we watched a video of the nativity, and she got the idea that they were giving a baby blessing, and would often incorporate this idea into her playing. Once when she was playing with a particular nativity, I told her, "They're not really giving a baby blessing." So she asked for the box. She said, "It says, 'They give the baby's blessing.'" (The box, in fact, said no such thing.)

Around this time we began to teach her the names of family members. She began to refer to her mom as "Susanne Arena" (her middle name is Sarena) and she would sometimes refer to my dad as Ricky or Rick. She once went to a party with family members of her mom's boyfriend. She later told us that she had told some girls there that Rick's mom had died. I remember thinking how funny it must have been to have this little three-year-old telling these girls about how someone they didn't even know had his mother die!

I remember a day in January 2007 when she named her stuffed animals Allie and Mr. Brucey (Bruce was the name of the dog of her mom's boyfriend). Another night she was watching a Princess Sing-Along and said, "Is this a Valentimes show? 'Cause it has hearts in it?"

One day in February or March the Thompsons were at our house. Quin called her a silly goose. She retorted, "Silly duck!"

My mom got a calling as Activity Days leader, and Allie loved those girls. She called them "antivity girls."

For spring break in 2007, we went to Nashville, and Susanne and Allie took a plane there. I asked Allie how she liked the plane. She said, "It was a little fast."

Then on Easter Sunday, I tended her. I tried to tell her the true meaning of Easter, but she wouldn't have any discussion of death: "I don't want you to die, because then you won't live with us anymore!"

That spring she saw a picture of a city and called it New York. (It was actually either Las Vegas or Salt Lake.) (Maybe this actually happened the year before--I can't remember.)

One day in May, my cousin Jesse came for a visit. She said to him, "You table! You chair!" Jesse found that really funny.

She had a phase where she began words with "bee." Banana was "beenana," pajamas was "beejamas," and Fiona on Shrek was "Beefonia." (Her interest in Shrek was rekindled when Shrek the Third came out.) She also called marshmallows "smarshmallows."

 Memorial Day weekend 2007, we went and saw the new baby of my cousin-in-law Kalia. The baby was wearing a bow, and Allie said, "Just like Baby Shrek!" Allie also said, "Our baby walks." The "our baby" she was referring to was Preston, who was two and a half. I found it funny she called him "our baby," especially since she herself wasn't even four yet.

Then came the summer of 2007, when I was working at Walmart, working in the nursery, and getting ready for a mission. Allie became really funny that summer as she was turning four.

I was once filling out a job application. I asked my mom and sister what I should put on a certain line, and they said, "None." Allie said, "The Flying Nun?" In August that summer, she was playing with her mom, and randomly blurted out "Flying Nun" and "Surfer Buddy!"

There was once a sign on a fence that said "Welcome Home Elder D!" My mom told her what it said, and said that they could make one for me when I got home that said "Welcome Home Elder Mark." Allie had not heard the word "Elder," so she understood "Elder D" as "Letter D," which really does make sense. For the next few years she kept saying that she was going to make a sign that said "Welcome Home Letter Mark." I was quite sad when I got home and the sign said "Elder Mark"--apparently the six-year-old Allie insisted on "elder," even though my mom and sister wanted it to say "letter."

In 2007 she would sometimes call me a name: "You ball-head baby!" We didn't know where that came from. Once when she called me that, my mom reproved her, and she seemed kind of taken aback that she had been reproved: "I just called him a ball-head baby." Then one day she was watching some pre-teen movie, and I found out that's where she got the insult, although I think the movie actually said "bottle-head baby."

That summer, my aunt started the divorce process and kicked her husband out of the house. That apparently inspired Allie to tell me I needed to move out if she didn't like something I did. The first time she did this, she said to me, "Your mom will kick you out, and you'll have to go live by Uncle Wayne!" She did this often, and would sometimes say, "Pack up your stuff and go!" Once she said, "Remember when you broke your leg when you were a little boy? That's why you're moving out!" I wasn't sure why that merited moving out. Once she said "You'll have to come live by us!" since she and her mom had just moved out. Then came the Sunday that fall when she told me to move out, so I began walking out. She said to me, "Don't forget your stuff!" I said, "I have everything I need," and I walked out. Apparently she said to my mom, "He didn't have to leave." She looked out the window and saw me standing in the driveway, so she invited me back in. For weeks she would randomly apologize: "I'm sorry I made you move out, Mark."

But although she no longer told me to move out, she continued to do other threats. On General Conference Sunday, she said to me, "You can't go to nursery anymore! You have to go to Sunday School with your mom and dad!" One day we went to the new Walmart in Centerville. On our way in, she told me about a Spongebob episode she had watched, and said, "Patrick said to Spongebob, 'We're gonna go in a can!'" She didn't want to ride in the cart, so we told her that she could walk around, but if she walked away, she would have to go in the cart again. Well, at one point I found she had wandered off into another aisle, so I picked her up and put her back in the cart. She didn't like that, so she said, "You're gonna go in a can, just like Spongebob and Patrick!"

One Sunday, my mom told her that her mom had packed two dresses. Allie said, "Why did she do that? She's such a retarded sauce!" I figured out that was a misunderstanding of Spongebob's interjection "Tartar sauce!"

Once she was at our house, and she said to her mom, "Your belly's getting big. I think you're going to have a girl!" Susanne said, "Nope, no baby. I'm just fat." At which point Allie pointed to my mom and me and said, "Oh, just like her and him?" My sister took her up to leave. My dad hadn't been in the room (and therefore hadn't heard the conversation), but she called out to him, "Your belly's sure getting big, Pops!" Another time that fall we were at their apartment and a weight-loss commercial came on. Allie said, "Look, Grandma, her belly's as big as yours!" Susanne said, "Allie, that's really not nice." To which Allie said, quite innocently, "I didn't say fat."

Then I left on my mission. I didn't get to talk to Allie during those two years, of course. But I do remember one email she dictated to me in which she said, "I promise," but it didn't make any sense. I talked to her on Christmas 2008. I told her she sounded so big, and she said, "I know, because I'm five." She also told me that she had seen a thing on the news about a Santa Claus tracker, and said, "It kind of freaked me out." On Mother's Day 2009, I talked to her and said, "I can't believe you are five!" She corrected me: "Five and a half."

Then I came home from my mission. On the car ride home, she told me that Preston would wake up with a frowny face. One day that month she said, "I aren't." Then she corrected herself, "I amn't." One day we talked about having family home evening, and she said "hamly foam evening." On December 29, my sister was trying to get her to eat a pork sandwich leftover from my homecoming. Allie refused and said, "My belly doesn't like meat on Tuesdays!"

On Groundhog Day in 2010, my family came down because my car needed to be towed. I was in my Intro to English Language class, and I needed to observe Allie linguistically. I heard her say, "Do you renember that?" She said her favorite February holidays were "Valentimes and Groundog Day."

The Saturday before Memorial Day that year, my parents picked me up in Provo and we drove down to Fillmore. Allie had a stack of movies she was watching, one of which was Mamma Mia! I told Allie I didn't want to watch it, since I don't know of any PG-13 movies that fit my standards. After agreeing to watch something else, Allie told me that I could watch it because it had boys in it. She also told me I could watch her Barbie Princess and the Pauper movie because it had boys in it too.

Fall 2010 I lived at home. She would say "gooder" instead of "better." She would also say "care" instead of "matter." Once I challenged her on this, and she got quite defensive: "It doesn't care what you say!" She would even say "news" instead of "use," a relic from her toddler days.

In June 2011, we were meeting my uncle John and his family (who live in Delta) at the aquarium. Allie asked, "Will their license plate say Utah or Delta?"

On New Year's Eve that year, she was playing with Preston with some sticky dart things that stick to the wall. She caught one as it fell off the wall and said, "Caught red handed!"

She went through a time where she would use "awkward" to mean "weird," and she would use "creepy" all over the place. It usually meant "weird" as well, but it was different than "awkward."

She has often had a habit of saying "Yeah" or "I know" when you tell her something--even if you're answering a question she asked.

Well, that's all I can think of at the moment, but I know there have been lots of other funny things she's said!