December 30, 2014-January 2, 2015

Time to remember last New Year's!

Tuesday, January 30. It was snowy and windy, and I think a government official on the news was asking people not to drive if they could avoid it, so I decided to work from home. I was working in the living room when lots of birds flew around the house, as if I were in a snowglobe of birds. I had to get up and take a video with my phone.
I asked my parents if they thought I should go out on the roads to go to the temple, but they helped me decide not to. I think I ate an orange. I wrote in my journal:
"This morning there was snow on our road, and the news talked about lots of accidents because of wind, so I stayed home again. I talked to Reid. Then I finished my plans for next year's scripture study. Pops showed me how to change a battery [in a car]. Twice I was sitting in the living room when oodles of birds--probably hundreds--began flying around the house. It felt like it was snowing birds. Fearing bad roads, I didn't go to the temple, so I wrote a memory post about December 30. Then I used the elliptical while watching Gilligan's Island."

Wednesday, December 31. It was very cold, and before I went in to work, I went to the Salt Lake Temple and had to ask where to go inside. They asked about how cold it was outside. When I went home, my family had bought lots of New Year's goodies. There were birthday cake Oreos and root beer and ice cream for root beer floats. I turned my 2014 music on shuffle while my mom and niece and I played Book of Mormon Battles, which is basically glorified War. I had my music's album art showing on my computer, prompting Allie to ask, "Who's Ingrid Michaelson?" She asked who was singing when a song from the album Cheek to Cheek was playing, and when I said Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, she said it must be bad then, but I said that album was clean. Later we watched Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, and Susanne came and we watched Mr. Peabody and Sherman--I think we rented it from Amazon. Mom and Susanne thought it was hilarious when Washington and Lincoln were pardoning the dog and Clinton said, "I've done worse," and Allie didn't get it. Then we turned on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. Fergie was on TV and Allie called her "Fer-jee." There was some talk about Nicki Minaj that I don't know if I should repeat here. Allie was excited when Taylor Swift was singing "Shake It Off." My mom said Taylor had kind of gone off the deep end, as she was dressed more scantily than she usually was (she must have been cold!), and I said her latest songs had more swearing. After the New Year and everyone had gone to bed, I spent some time listening to New Year songs on NoiseTrade and looked at Awkward Family Photos. (This of course was technically January 1, but I hadn't gone to bed yet.) I wrote in my journal:
"For New Year's Eve, I went to work, but first I went to the Salt Lake Temple for initiatories. It was in the single digits today. I had to scrape lots of snow and ice off my car, and while I was doing so, a guy for a glass company pulled up. He was looking for 656, which I don't think exists.
"New Year's Eve wasn't too exciting. I turned on my 2014 music while Mom and Allie and I played Book of Mormon Battles. Then we watched Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, and then Nan came and we watched Mr. Peabody and Sherman. 
"After Mom and Dad went to bed, I listened to more music and looked at silly things on the internet."

Thursday, January 1. In the morning I bundled up (somewhat) and drove up to the Eagleridge church building to park my car and go running. There were lots of places where I had to run in the street because the sidewalks weren't clear, and when I got to the Bountiful golf course, the sidewalk was covered in snow and ice and I had to go really slow. On my way back, near the top of a hill I passed some girls running the other way; they said hi and I said "Happy New Year!" My cousin April came to our house to carpool up to Golden Corral in Layton. As we were pulling out of the driveway I had to tell my dad to stop because a car was coming up the road; it was Steve Moosman and he waved at us. My mom asked if we had seen the picture Sue had posted of her grandsons, and Nan said, "The one where he looks dead?" My mom was glad she wasn't the only one who thought that. April was talking about Studio C, and I said I had had a class with the short-haired girl my first semester at BYU. April liked the show but not the acting. After we were done eating at Golden Corral, I heard Jesse and Peter talking about a tree; I asked what that was about, and Peter said missionaries had visited with him and told him not to let his spiritual tree die. When we got in the car I asked how old you had to be to have tattoos, because my teenage first-cousin-once-removed had one. My mom said she didn't know how they could afford tattoos. That night we brought out questions we had answered circa 1995 and 2005 and compared our answers. Gilligan's Island was my favorite show both 2005 and 2015, and cucumber was my favorite vegetable both times. I said my favorite songs were "Memphis" by Cherie Call and "You and I" by Lady Gaga. Susanne said she loved "Brave" by Sara Bareilles, and I think she put "1D" for favorite band, as did Allie. We were amused that in both 2005 and 2015, Nan specifically said "carrots, broccoli, cauliflower" were her favorite vegetables. We discussed our New Year's resolutions. Then I watched Rudolph's Shiny New Year. This is some of my journal entry:
"This morning I bundled up and drove up to Eagleridge to go on my old running route. Due to snow and ice, I had to do a lot of running in the street and running slow. But it was glorious and invigorating, although I am a little sore. My goal was 54 minutes, but I made it 58.
"April rode with us to the Layton Golden Corral for New Year's dinner. After we got home, we set New Year's resolutions and did a 'favorites' activity. Then I watched Rudolph's Shiny New Year."

Friday, January 2. I just remember being on my computer, deciding whether to go to my stake party, and I just felt too tired to go when 9:00 came around. This is my journal entry for the day:
"I feel proud of myself for getting the year right [in my journal entry]. We'll see how long it lasts.
"I had an ordinary work day. I finished the Conversations with Mormon Historians, then worked some on the General Epistles. The Mormon Historians book annoyed me, because some previous editors 'fixed' things and made them wrong.
"I came home and took down New Year decorations, then watched Hulu. I didn't go to the stake party because it's late and I'm tired, and tomorrow we're cleaning the church, and New Year's is over."

New York addendum

The last several posts related to trips to New York, but I forgot a few details that I remembered later. Here, I will try to remember the things I missed.

1997. I remember buying worms to use to go fishing. One night, we were fishing, and one fish was really smart--it kept biting the worms off the line, but it wouldn't get hooked. The one fish that bit the hook was too small to keep. We wanted to release it, but it had swallowed the hook. I think my mom might have asked Grandma King what to do. We had to rip the hook out, and with it came out some of the fish's guts. We threw it back in the water, and it did a poor job of swimming off. I felt so bad for it, but my mom tried to comfort me by saying that it would probably feed another fish.

We visited my mom's cousin Rob's house. I remember there being a discussion about him cutting down a giant Christmas tree for his house, but by the time he got it in the house, it wasn't so big anymore.

2000. Maybe this was 1997, but I remember walking by Big Sandy Pond and seeing a family with a little (about 2-years-old) girl completely naked, and I thought that was inappropriate.

 One day we went to Watkins Glen, a place with 800-something steps to the top. In the parking lot, we saw some people in biker shorts, and I was surprised they weren't embarrassed to be dressed like that. My mom didn't make it to the top, but the rest of us did. There was a little gift shop at the top, and we went in and looked around. They had shirts that said "I hiked to the top" and some souvenir pennies. Then we hiked back down and went to the gift shop at the bottom. In that gift shop, they had the same "I hiked to the top" shirts, and I thought they should only sell them at the top so that only people who really did get to the top could buy them.

We also went to a Corning glass factory. We watched a demonstration of them making a glass dish. When it was done and no longer molten, they threw a piece of paper on it, which immediately caught fire. I remember hearing a teenager saying he needed to see that done again.

2001. I remember seeing the poem that my late aunt Darleen had written about my great-grandparents and their house. I thought it was really good.

After seeing fat shirtless men and overweight women in short shorts, my mom said that Salt Lake City is more modest, and that was a good thing, because the overweight people didn't realize how bad they looked dressed like that.

And I'm sure I will remember even more things, but I don't know if I will make another addendum.

New York, 2001

In keeping with the theme of the last few weeks, here's the last New York trip my family took.

My mom and I flew into Albany and rented a car, although I don't really remember the particulars.We would have driven up to Pulaski, where my grandparents were already at "the Pond," getting ready to sell the house after Grandma King's death. One night, my mom and I went to the local grocery store. We got cherry Twizzlers and one or two Pez dispensers. I think I got a Snoopy and a Peppermint Patty, but I don't know if I got them at the same time. The store also had cereal themed after the Atlantis Disney movie in theaters at that time.

One day, my grandparents, my mom, and I painted the metal of the dock. We had to get in the water to paint it, and so afterwards we went swimming in the pond. Suddenly my mom shrieked because something in the water had bit her.

Susanne called us; she had been in Mexico. She asked me if I still collected chess sets, because she had bought one for me. She had also gotten really sick from eating flan. After she came, I remember she said she would never eat it again, but my great-aunt Mary Lou said it was sooo good. (I don't like it.)

I had brought some Fourth of July magnets, so I asked Grandma if I could put them on the fridge. She said I could.

One day, my mom and grandparents went to the Palmyra Temple. I went to Hill Cumorah instead. I hiked it a couple of times (with a Pez dispenser in my pocket; I think I was wearing my plaid shorts that had a little world patch covering up a hole burned by an ash), including the back way. There had been a youth conference there; when I walked into the visitor's center, the missionaries thought I was part of that group. I explained I was from North Salt Lake. A sister missionary asked if I knew where Holladay was; I said no. I got a one-on-one tour in the visitor's center.

We went to church one Sunday. One of the speakers said something about "four c's: cake, candy, cookies, and ice cream." I went to the one youth Sunday School class, in which the teacher had brought her little daughter. The toddler had a red drink that she tried to give to the class; one girl took it and pretended to drink it, while a boy did a terrible job of pretending. The teacher said that the drink was made out of wheat. Then I went to Priesthood; one of the guys in that class repeated the "four c's" comment.  There was a poster with the Boy Scout Law on it; they had added "hungry and aggressive" at the end. My grandparents were frequent enough visitors that the ward knew them; thus, when one girl asked me who I was visiting, I said, "the Ebberts," but I don't think she knew who that was. After church, Grandpa was talking about the family that had fourteen kids. During priesthood, they had talked about fasting and said that you don't need to fast if you are pregnant or nursing; the patriarch of that family said that his wife hadn't fasted for fourteen years. (Maybe it was longer than that.) I had noticed that the teenage boys in that family needed haircuts.

At some point, Susanne joined us. One day, we visited some historical place; I think it was about the Revolutionary War. I was wearing my red USA shirt, and the tour guide wanted me to represent a Redcoat (unless the historic site wasn't about the Revolutionary War). I got a penny whistle and a feather pen and empty inkwell from their gift shop. I think this might have been the same day we went to some Pfaltzgraff (which sounded like "false craft" to me) and Oneida stores. At one store, they sold dishes with slight defects. I saw a Halloween night light that I thought was cool. At the other store, they sold all sorts of silverware and some other odds and ends. I found a little snowglobe of bears celebrating New Year's. Elsewhere in the store, they had little teapots representing months. For November, there was both a turkey and a Pilgrim hat. I liked the hat one better; apparently, it had been replaced with the turkey. I couldn't decide between the snowglobe and the Pilgrim hat teapot, but I ended up getting the teapot.

Then, at some point, the Thompsons came. I think they had flown into New Jersey and rented a van, which had automatic doors, something we were not accustomed to. At one point, I remember Jesse saying he didn't like Baha Men, that being one of Chancey's CDs (during the era of "Who Let the Dogs Out?"). Another day, we were riding in their van for some reason, and my mom put in my mix tape from the year before. It had a lot of smooth jazz from a Peanuts CD that I did not like, so I was trying to express my disdain for it, but my mom and sister told me to stop.

On the Fourth of July, there was a family reunion. I took a dish out of the fridge, trying to find something. My great aunt Mary Lou told me I needed to hold the dish upright. Later, we went to see a river with a waterfall. I was wearing my white t-shirt with a flag design. There was a sign on a tree telling people not to cliff jump, because the writers had a friend who had done so and died. The sign was a bit of a memorial to him, and among other things it had a picture of a pack of cigarettes. I said that if he smoked, he was going to die anyway. We took a little hike down to the bottom of the waterfalls, and on our way, my aunt Sue said she had found a weeping wall, "but it's not as big as the one at Zions." The "weeping wall" she found was just a little tiny spring, hardly anything like Zion's Weeping Rock.  Sue's family was going to go see some fireworks. I was a little hesitant about going with them, because of my then-uncle Wayne's habitual tendency toward orneriness. I went anyway, and as we pulled up to the fairgrounds, I saw the sign saying "Oswego County Fair" and I asked if that meant it was the county fair of Oswego or the fair of Oswego County. My cousin Jesse didn't understand what I was talking about. Once the fireworks started, I remember my cousins Jesse and Joey and I having a conversation about how unimpressive these fireworks were. There was a stationary firework on the ground that was an American flag, but that was the only cool one. Jesse said that he had seen flowers (as in the home firework--"ground blooms") do more amazing things. My aunt reproved us for our negativity. As we left, I remember a conversation about carnival workers. When we got back to "the Pond," my mom and the others there said that someone had been setting off illegal Pennsylvanian fireworks that they were able to watch. I remember then that I regretted going, because the fireworks were so unimpressive and I could have stayed at the house and watched the fireworks reflected on the water.

The next day, we were to have leftover chicken for lunch. The adults told us we could have lunch, and they would have more later. I had a very OCD/obese habit at that time where I would eat my first helping, then I would get seconds that were 2/3 the size of the first helping, then I would get thirds that were 1/3 the size of the first. Thus, I had three pieces of chicken, then two, then one. All of us boys ate a lot. Joey was eating with his mouth open, thus making annoying smacking noises, so I told him not to do that. Then I wanted to illustrate how annoying he was by doing the same thing. Then he said, "Marky's a hypocrite." I was so mad that I went and ate outside. When the adults went to eat, they were shocked that the chicken was all gone, and I felt bad for having eaten six pieces. (In my defense, they were small pieces, so only a couple of pieces was not sufficient for a meal, because I don't think they had offered us anything else.)

At one point, Joey found a non-electric lawnmower. He found it fascinating, so he began messing around with it. Sue was proud of him for mowing the lawn, so she took my mom's camcorder to record it, but my mom told her that she needed to tell him he couldn't make random lines in the lawn.

My mom's cousins and their families came up from Tennessee. Chancey was kind of flirtatious with some of the girls; Sue remarked that she noticed he had put on his best shirt, a button-up over a BYU t-shirt (the style of the day being to have a button-up shirt unbuttoned over another shirt). At one point, I took a wet fishing net and sprinkled it above my second cousin Ryan, saying I was getting payback from 1995. He said he didn't remember doing that, but someone else said he could see him doing that. My mom's cousins Rob and Sandy had recently adopted a little boy.

One night, we were all asleep when we heard a girl next door yelling quite loudly, "You're such a liar, I hope you die!" Sue said, "What's going on? Joey?"

We went to Niagara Falls one day. This might have been the morning Chancey came with us in our rental car; he was asked if he was OK with listening to Kenny Rogers and John Denver, and he said he was because his family didn't like listening to country music. I said that I had heard Conway Twitty on commercials and didn't like him. I was offered a granola bar, but I didn't want to eat it because I had brushed my teeth in the last half hour, but I might have eaten it anyway. At Niagara Falls, we went and saw the falls from the back. I remember Joey was singing "Yankee Doodle Dandee." We took a ride on the Maid of the Mist, which was pretty fun.

Another day--maybe that day--we went to the Hill Cumorah for the Palmyra Pageant. We met Grandma and Grandpa there; Grandpa had made his signature chicken and brought it for our dinner. I was kind of embarrassed to be eating it in front of all those strangers. I saw some people with programs, but we didn't have one, so I went up to a booth and said, "Is this where we get the programs?" and she kind of rudely said no. I remember watching all the different actors and identifying them; Joseph Smith was easy. There was a four-year-old girl sitting behind us, who said lots of funny things. When Joseph Smith was sitting on the ground getting the plates out, she said, "Who died?"

When we went to church, Jesse and Chancey were in our Sunday School class, and at the beginning we were supposed to say something about us. I said that Jesse and Chancey were my cousins, and the teacher said she wouldn't have known that. When we went home that day, we looked at the Sunday comics. The Thompsons thought that day's 9 Chickweed Lane was really dumb. I remember Peter saying he would like to have every comics page and every sports page from every newspaper. Other comic strips that I read on that trip referenced Gilligan's Island (before I had ever seen it) and The Beverly Hillbillies, and another had a dad telling his kids that fireworks were illegal, a concept that was foreign to me.    

Quin was six, and he became friends with a five-year-old kid visiting the Van Auken family. They did lots of things together, and he even ended up in the Thompson family picture taken in front of the K on the house. Here is our own very unflattering picture, with the visiting kid's head in front.

The little "King" decoration in front was burned, along with a lot of other stuff, in a bonfire. It was said--I can't remember if it was my mom or my grandparents--that they wanted it burned so that my then-uncle Wayne wouldn't keep it and turn it into a Thompson sign.

One time, I remember remarking that the smoke of the fire was like that of Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie, and Chancey said I was obsessed.

Sue liked to look for bullfrogs to catch. She also would row the rowboat while standing up, so my mom would call her a gondolier. I loved rowing the boat, but I did it sitting down.

There was a Dunkin' Donuts in the area, and I remember Jesse saying that if he were a police officer, he would turn on his siren to get there. Wayne told him that was illegal. I remember being fascinated by all the abandoned houses in the neighborhood. One of them had holiday lights on it; I was trying to tell whether they were red or orange.

I remember our last day there. Everyone had left except for my grandparents. We grabbed all the things we wanted from the house before leaving for the last time. I wanted a little cat statue, and my mom wanted an older Siamese cat statue. I took the little fruit magnets from the fridge. I liked the ones without leaves, but I ended up taking them all. Then we went and met my grandparents at the laundromat, where I was embarrassed to see they had folded my laundry. That night, we stayed with Mary Lou, who made us a really good chicken dinner. I was wearing my Niagara Falls socks, which were white with red heels and toes. Mary Lou said she loved my socks.

Our last day on the trip, we went to a Shaker museum in Albany. But I wasn't too interested; I mostly wanted to see the gift shop, where I got a little hurricane lamp and some candy made with rosemary. We had a late flight out. On one of the flights, my mom put one of our carry-ons up and told another passenger that it was treasures from Grandma's house. I was excited to finally beat level 9-5 on B-version Tetris. During our layover, we got some cookies from a vending machine. On another flight, a man was assigned to sit by us, but there were empty seats on the plane, so he moved. They were showing Spy Kids, but I fell asleep.

And thus ended our New York vacations.

New York, 2000

The summer before my brother left on his mission, our family took another trip to upstate New York to visit Great-Grandma King. This is what I remember about that trip.

We flew in to Columbus, OH, and rented a car at the airport. I remember noticing that "Avis" (the car rental place) was an anagram of Visa. The parking lot had those spike things that hurt your tires if you go the wrong way; I remember stepping on them with David and figuring out how they worked. 

The next day, we drove through Ohio and then through a little bit of Pennsylvania. We stopped at a gas station. At that time, I liked to proclaim the capital of the states I saw on license plates. It only applied to states that you weren't currently in, which meant that after we crossed the border into New York, I would no longer say "Albany" but then I could say "Harrisburg." 

One day, we traveled to Palmyra. We saw the Joseph Smith house. We saw the new Palmyra temple, and I liked the stained glass patterned after the Sacred Grove. Susanne and I stayed in our hotel while our parents and David went to the temple. We went to the Sacred Grove the next day, but I didn't like it because there were too many mosquitoes. In the parking lot, I saw a van from Utah that had the first Harry Potter on the dashboard.

One of our first nights at Grandma King's house, maybe the first, she had made spaghetti for dinner, and she knew that David and I didn't eat red meat, so she made special sauce without meat for us.

One day, we went to a local store to get some clothes. I got a blue t-shirt and some athletic-type shorts that had buttons on the side. It was annoying, because the dressing rooms were locked and you had to have an employee open them. My mom always made me show her the clothes after I tried them on, so I had to keep coming out, while the employee was waiting for us to be done.

One day, we went up to Niagara Falls. I think this was the time I was really thirsty, so it was hard whenever we walked through the mist from the falls because that emphasized my thirst. We went in a gift shop, where I got a four-color pen modeled after the Canadian flag.

On that same Niagara Falls trip, we went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. On our way there, we saw a man dressed all in gold. My mom expressed her disapproval of an exhibit of some canes, one of which was mildly inappropriate. At one point, they had a mirror to see if you could roll your tongue. My mom and brother told me that it was really one of those mirrors that is a window on the other side, so that people could laugh at you. But I didn't care and I rolled my tongue anyway. I even showed off a little, twisting my tongue upside down and folding it (some people call it a clover). But as I was walking away, I decided I didn't like the idea of people laughing at unsuspecting people, so I went back and scowled. Later in the museum, there was a hologram of a leprechaun. At the end of the museum was a walkway surrounded by a tunnel that moved. I liked standing there, but my dad said, "I've got to get out of here!"

One day, we went and saw some locks for ships. While we were there, a fellow tourist pointed out to me the nest where a mother bird was feeding her children. So then I pointed it out to my family. Every time the mother came, I would shout, "There she is," thus scaring her away. I was reproved for my yelling.

One evening at the pond, I was on the porch, trying to play my mix tape on the Walkman my brother handed down to me. But I couldn't figure out how to do something on it, so I went to David to ask him how to do it. He got mad at me for interrupting his study of Jesus the Christ, which I find ironic.

When we left Grandma King's, she and my mom were crying, and Grandma King made her trademark remark about her bladder being too close to her eyes. That was indeed the last time we saw her.

We went and saw some Church history sites in Ohio. There was another large Mormon family there that had a lot of kids. I think one family was from Virginia (or somewhere like it), and a single mom with a toddler was from Arizona. They were all riding in a big motor home, and they kept showing up at the same sites as we did. We went to the Kirtland Temple, where our guide was an RLDS missionary. They had a gift shop, and David bought a copy of the first hymnbook. We went to the N.K. Whitney store. Before our tour, we met in a room to learn about it. The toddler of the Arizona woman was fussing a little bit, and the volunteer who was talking said to her, "There's a toy in the lobby he can borrow," and then as an aside to explain herself, she said, "so that we can feel the Spirit." I found that inappropriate. We went to the room where the elders chewed tobacco, leading to the Word of Wisdom. Later we went to the Isaac Morley farm, and I really liked the feeling there. We saw the motor home family go to a fast-food restaurant, and my mom and Susanne were saying that they were surprised they would do that with such a big group; if they had such a big group, they would just make their own sandwiches.

We went to a cemetery where my mom's Ebbert grandparents were buried. My mom called her aunt Kaye to see if we could see her, but the aunt declined and suggested we eat at Hometown Buffet. We went to lunch at a fast food place, maybe Wendy's, and there was a little Snoopy in my kid's meal. Then we went to a commercial garden my mom had visited as a kid. We checked in at a hotel near the airport, and there was a swimming pool, but we had to get out because there was a thunderstorm. I had left something in the pool area, so a passing stranger/hotel guest opened the door to the pool, since we didn't have our key on us. That night, we caught the musical On the Town on TV and watched it. David said he thought the Simpsons spoof of "New York, New York" had a better flow, using a mild swear word instead of wonderful in the line "It's a wonderful town." (I just found at that's because the original used the swear word, but it was changed to wonderful for the movie version.) After taking a shower, Susanne was whistling in the bathroom, and Mom said she must have been happy.

The next day, we went to the airport and were informed that we couldn't get on our plane. We would have to wait twelve hours for another. So wait we did. We went to a Wendy's in the airport. I wanted a kid's meal to see if I would get another Snoopy toy, but that required waiting, since it wasn't lunch time, so I just got a breakfast item instead. My dad, however, waited so he could get a burger. David got a coffee straw for his orange juice and was fascinated that it had two tubes. We looked at the mini art gallery above our seating area, and I remember seeing two people making out. I read a book that my mom had brought, which was about a girl and a horse. The Columbus airport wasn't very interesting.

Finally we got on our plane. The benefit of having to wait was that we got to ride first class. As all the people in coach passed us to go to their seats, I wondered if they thought we were snobs. I think we had a layover in St. Paul/Minneapolis; at a gift shop there, they had gummy suckers with the Peanuts characters on them, and I wondered if it was because Charles Schulz was from Minnesota. Once we were on our flight again, the stewardesses came around to give us our drinks. In an immature manner, I said to Susanne, "Guess what I'm getting? Apple juice!" which was what I had gotten on all our flights. She also asked for apple juice, but there was some kind of problem, so we had to wait a minute, and I said, "Maybe I drank too much apple juice." We also got sandwiches. On the flight, I read from the first Harry Potter again. Then we got home.

I'm sure that I will remember more things after I post this. Like how on the last post, I forgot about the little fish I caught that swallowed the hook, so to get it off we had to rip its guts out.

New York, 1997

When I was eight years old, my family took a trip to visit my great-grandma in New York. In this post, I am going to remember what we did on that trip.

This was the first time I was old enough to remember going on a plane. Before we left, I had wanted to put some of my keychains on my backpack. My family told me not to, but I did anyway, and my Silly Putty keychain was one of them. When we were standing in line at the airport, a lady came up to us because she had found half of the Silly Putty egg and figured out it belonged to me. My family reprimanded me for putting keychains on my backpack even though they told me not to.

I think we had a layover in Atlanta, GA, and I remember standing on one of the subways in the airport. Back then, we still had meals on our flights, and they had a screen in front of all the seats on which they showed movies, instead of the screens on each individual seat. I know that one of the movies was Vegas Vacation and some other movie about a cat and a dog, but I can't remember if I watched them.

We flew into the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, which was abbreviated BWI. In my mind, I pronounced that as "Bwee," and for some reason I kept thinking "BWI Circus" instead of "BWI Airport."

We went to Washington, DC. We took an elevator to the top of the Washington Monument; the tour guide explained why people couldn't climb up to the top, and my mom said she thought it was because people had heart attacks. At the top, there was a little bookstore, and in it I saw a book about Washington's mother. The bookstore was closed, however. At one point, my mom and sister were saying they wanted a book about the presidents' wives, and I mentioned that I had seen one about Washington's mother.

We visited the Smithsonian. At one point, the boys in the family were going to go to a war exhibit while the girls were visiting an exhibit about the dresses of the first ladies. But since I had seen the war exhibit two years earlier, I wanted to go to the dress exhibit. But I felt really embarrassed in there, because it was all women visiting the exhibit. Afterward, David told me something cool they had seen in the war exhibit, and I regretted not going there.

We went to the museum with biological things, and when we saw a monkey skeleton, we recorded it with our video camera and said, "There's Jesse!" I wanted to visit an exhibit about amber, but it cost extra. I remember lots of homeless people, and someone was selling profane shirts outside the Smithsonian. One was a parody of the Budweiser frogs saying profanities.

Once we went to a little stand that sold ice cream novelties. I wanted one kind, but when my mom asked for it, the lady said they were out of them. That really annoyed my mom.

My souvenirs from DC were a little tiny dictionary, a little bag of shredded up money, and a keychain that was a word game. David got some posters about crazy laws and the Preamble in license plates, and an old newspaper. Susanne got a Rosie the Riveter poster.

We had rented a car in Baltimore. One evening, we went to a little grocery store called Save-A-Lot, which had a lot of off-brand groceries. We bought some little bags of chips.

The morning we left Baltimore, we stopped in a gas station. I wanted to get a Fruit Punch Gatorade, but my family made me get Lemon-Lime, because that wouldn't be as bad if it spilled in the rental car. I was annoyed that they thought I would spill it. My mom used the gas station's restroom, but it was not good at all, she said; it had a glass door. While drinking my Gatorade, I noticed little floaties, and that was the first time I heard the term backwash.

Then we went to New York to visit Grandma King, where my grandparents were also visiting. At that time, I was into going outside and playing by moving my body in weird fashions that my mom calls dancing, but I didn't consider it dancing. I was imagining how I would act in imaginary situations--usually fantasy, impossible situations.

I remember going to a restaurant called the Wigwam. David pointed out to me on the menu where it said "No Whining." On our way back from the restaurant, we were coming up Ebbert Drive, the lane to Grandma King's house, and my great aunt Mary Lou remarked that one of the bushes looked like a dog. I was glad that I wasn't the only one who thought that, because I had often been afraid there was a dog loose.

One night, Grandma King and Susanne were sitting watching Touched by an Angel. I remarked about a non-LDS person (Grandma King) watching an LDS show. That probably wasn't an appropriate thing to say. I thought Touched by an Angel was a Mormon show because we believe in angels; I'm not sure whether I knew it was filmed in Utah.

I think on our flight back, on one of our planes I had to sit by a man who just read his book the entire time with headphones in. The flight attendant had to tell him to put his table up.

When we got back, we stepped off the plane and could feel how hot it was in Utah. Walking down the tunnel from the plane, David met someone he knew from high school.

Strangely, I think I remember more about the trip I took when I was six than I remember this one.

Road trip, 1995

At around 5:00 one June morning in 1995, before the sun had come up, my family loaded into our blue Subaru Legacy to head on our vacation to the East, most notably to my great-grandma's house in small Pulaski, New York. I was six years old at the time, and this is the first major vacation that I can remember. My dad was driving and my mom was in the passenger seat; I sat in the middle in the back with my brother David on the left and my sister Susanne (Nan) on the right. I think I discovered that I had left my Etch-a-Sketch keychain in the car, so I was able to play with it during vacation. On our first day of driving, at one point Nan asked if she could crack the window, meaning open it a little. I had never heard crack used that way before. I think she put up my blue silky blanket in the window to block the sun. At one point I scraped some earwax out of my ear and asked if anyone wanted my earwax. My siblings were grossed out and my mom told me it was gross, but I didn't understand why.

We listened to our mix tapes that we had made. Mine consisted largely of The Secret Garden and Simon and Garfunkel. I was disappointed that the Peter Pan song my sister and mom had convinced me to add to my tape was not a Disney version and was in fact some lady (Mary Martin) who pretended to be Peter Pan even though she sounded nothing like a boy. I had told my mom my CD could be called "Mix" but she told me we would have to call it "Mark's Mix"; I was later surprised to see that Nan had had the same idea and called hers "Susanne's Mix."

We stopped at several rest stops for meals. At one place where we stopped there were several mishaps, including dropping the ketchup bottle and having it explode. I kept pointing out that I got mustard on my shirt as another contributing mishap. We all laughed when the sprinklers came on.

Our first major stop on the trip was in Nauvoo, IL. It was very rainy the whole time we were there, which kept the crowds small. I remember seeing the rainwater what seemed like an inch deep on the pavement. At one point we had to pull over near a gas station because it was raining so hard. I remember my brother fitting the pink fold-up umbrella in his pocket. We stayed at a motel in Nauvoo that had a small office. I was intrigued by the tiny office and thought it would be fun to have one in the front yard, kind of like a playhouse. I said to my dad, "Can you make me an office?" My parents shared one bed, my brother and I shared another, and my sister slept on a cot. We went to the vacant Nauvoo Temple lot, where they had some of the sun stones on display. I understood what sun stones and moon stones were, but I got a little confused with talk of sandstone and limestone. I remember one place where they gave us gingerbread cookies. We went to the blacksmith, where they made a little horseshoe and asked who there had the closest birthday. It was my mom, so she got to keep the horseshoe. They gave us rings made out of nails. We got a Nauvoo brick at another place. We stopped at a printer's shop, where my brother got to wear a printing hat and sit at the press, but I only remember this because of the picture in the scrapbook. We watched a play in the evening put on by the senior missionaries in a building with marble columns. I remember it being really funny, although I don't know if I laughed because I got it or if I laughed because everyone else was. We got some sugar crystal candy at a shop. The candy was on a wooden stick with a sphere at the bottom, which I later used in pretending because it looked like a cartoon thermometer. On our way out of Nauvoo early one morning, we drove by Liberty Jail and my mom told me Joseph Smith was in jail there, but I didn't know why it was significant (and in fact it took me a while to realize Liberty Jail and Carthage Jail were different things).

At some point during the trip I became familiar with the idea of a ghost town, so every time I saw an abandoned building, I figured it was a ghost town, or at least a ghost building. As we were driving down the road, I saw a Shell sign, but I didn't see any gas station, so I figured it must be a ghost gas station. Somewhere around there, we stopped at a park to eat lunch, and one of the tables had a butterfly chrysalis on it.

Our next major stop was in Washington, D.C. We stayed in a cabin-like motel that had a little playground. I remember being fascinated by the fireflies. My mom had some caffeinated ruby red grapefruit drink in our motel cabin.We saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and the Lincoln Memorial, where I was wearing my Looney Tunes shirt (I only remember what I was wearing because of the scrapbook). We went to the Smithsonian, where I remember wondering why the Star Spangled Banner had splotches on it (only the cover did, not the flag), and I was excited to see a Nauvoo Temple sun stone. My mom and sister went to an exhibit of First Ladies' dresses, while I went with my dad and my brother to a war exhibit. My souvenir from the Smithsonian was a kaleidoscope, only it wasn't a kaleidoscope where you turn the front and little plastic beads fall around; it was a kaleidoscope where you turned the whole thing and it would refract images that entered the front. I remember sitting on a bench in the museum or a mall and looking at people through it. Their walking made the kaleidoscope work; I didn't even need to turn it. Later in the trip I remember my grandpa was trying to make it work by twisting the front; we had to tell him he had to turn the whole thing.

I remember attending a service for the tomb of the unknown soldier. My dad had me on his shoulders so I could see, but I didn't know what was going on. I decided to be silly and put my hands over my dad's eyes and laughed deviously, but my mom and sister shushed me and I felt guilty. We also visited Arlington and Gettysburg on that trip, but I don't really remember those places.

Then we made it to Pulaski, NY, where Grandma King lived. As we got to the lane where she lived, we were surprised to see the street sign proclaim it as Ebbert Rd. It was called that because Grandma King had lived there longer than anyone else, but it was my grandparents, the Ebberts, who officially owned the place, so that Grandma King could have an apartment in town. I had been there as a baby and I had seen illustrations of the place, but this was the first time I remembered seeing it for myself--the red K on the outside of the chimney, the marshy places at the edge of the pond, the dock leading out into the water. I can't remember if my grandparents were already there, but I know we were the first of all other families to arrive (since we were having a family reunion). I was endeared by Grandma King's white facial hair. I liked the horseshoe on the shed.

That first night in Pulaski we went to visit my Great Aunt Mary Lou. Before we got out of the car, My mom and sister (now that I think about it, I think my sister tried to be a second mother to me on this trip) told me that I couldn't say anything when we went inside. When we went inside, I found out that it was because my mom's cousin married a dwarf, Sandy, and they didn't want me to say anything. Sandy was in the kitchen cooking.

Over the course of several days, other families arrived. My uncle Paul and his family arrived in their Pathfinder; I think his lady friend of the time also came with her kids. Paul told us of how a bear followed them, and they still had the bear's paw and/or claw prints on the spare tire case. My cousin Tammy had been the first to notice and she told the story of how she alerted everyone to the bear. Her eyes were really big and she just pointed to the back. I asked her why she didn't just say out loud that a bear was following them. She said it was because she was silly like that. (Or something like that.) The Thompsons and the Gildersleeves also arrived. I was able to meet distant relatives that I didn't know, such as the Morrows (my mom's cousin's families) and one Uncle Jack who smoked a pipe, which I thought was kind of cool.

Since the house at "The Pond" was quite small, lots of tents were put up to accommodate everyone. I actually only ended up sleeping in a tent one night. I remember having lots of fun experiences with my cousins and relatives. I remember a few incidents with my then-uncle Wayne: Once he went into the little grove-y area near the house and picked some wild strawberries; once he made me and my cousin Chancey go in the bathroom together; once I was mad at him for something and I told him, "I hope you know I'm a vampire, Uncle Wayne!" (The reason for this vampire identity was because when I had broken my arm the previous October, I got some Halloween stickers that I put on the blue blanket that I took on this particular trip. I liked to pretend the blanket was like a vampire cape. I can't remember if the Halloween stickers were still on the blanket at this point or not, but I still did like to pretend to be a vampire with it.) Once I was playing with a red-and-white-striped, fringed piece of cloth that was tied to a blue-and-white-striped piece of cloth; I was playing some "give me the password and I'll let you pass" game. Grandma King played along. This might have been connected to the Wayne-vampire incident. I liked holidays then as much as I do now, but then I didn't really care about them being in season; thus I was playing some game with my cousin Joey with the shamrocks in the yard. I only found three-leaf-shamrocks, but I talked a lot in the game about four-leaf ones. At one point I thought Joey had found a six-leaf one, but he pointed out that it was just three; I had mistaken the two bumps on the heart-shaped leaves as individual leaves. I remember riding on a boat with Nan, Tammy, and my mom; I was humming something and Tammy asked me what I was humming. I told her I was just making it up, which was true, but I think parts of it were from The Pagemaster. We were having a discussion about the depth of the pond. It was said that my cousins Shane and Todd would be able to stand on the bottom of it. Tammy jokingly said that where we currently were on the water, she would be able to stand (it was estimated the depth was ten feet). I remember sitting on the dock and my cousin April was fishing. I was humming and she told me to be quiet. I pointed out that the house down the way (a house that owned a slide on a dock in the pond) was loudly playing music; she told me that that was over there, not where we were. She said she didn't like fish. I asked her why she was fishing; she said she liked catching fish, just not eating them. Once Chancey was eating a fish but it still had the scales on, which didn't look at all appetizing to me. I met my second cousin Kyle, who was born on Christmas. I found him a bit mean. At one point he took a wet net and shook it over my head while singing "Jingle Bells." We bought some water wings ("floaties") for the water, but they were a darker shade of orange than I was used to. I remember a discussion about how my cousins Peter and Shane would both be "four" at the same time (since Shane was a Leap Day baby).

On the Fourth of July was our official family reunion. I took this paragraph from my Fourth of July memory post:
We were at a family reunion in upstate New York. (On this day we were at the house of one of my mom's cousins, the one married to Sandy. Their house wasn't finished and had a really cool ledge). My mom had bought these huge greenish-gray shirts for us all to wear so we would match. I was wearing shorts with vertical red, white and blue stripes with some hints of green. My cousin Joey and I were talking with our older cousin Tammy and pretending to be the Statue of Liberty, putting our hands up, holding imaginary torches. At one point I said, "I'm the Statue of Freedom," and just stood doing nothing (no hand in the air), and she corrected me with "Liberty." Then I was able to educate her about the Statue of Freedom I had seen elsewhere on my trip, which was a woman with an eagle on her head. I remember watching my brother and older cousins and second cousins playing a game of basketball.

One day we went up to Niagara Falls. We were able to go behind the Falls and wore yellow plastic jackets. There was a sign that said "Trip Hazard." I don't know if I knew the difference between tripping and slipping, so I thought it was referring to the wet ground. (I might have actually associated the word "trip" with vacation.) I also pronounced "hazard" as "huh-zard." We went to a gift shop where my mom bought a set of salt and pepper shakers that were a toaster and a piece of toast; my sister also got a set of salt and pepper shakers that were bottles of Clearly Canadian. I was excited to be in a different country, so I got a little Canadian flag. My parents and the Thompsons bought bottles of real maple syrup; Joey got his own little bottle, and I was a bit jealous. I wanted some Canadian money, so we went into a store called Christmas Magic that had Christmas decorations so we could exchange some money. The Santa decorations in the store were a little different from my traditional view of Santa, so I wondered if that was the Canadian version of Santa. I got a two-dollar bill, a one-dollar coin, a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and several pennies.

One day we went to Palmyra. We went to the Sacred Grove, and I remember my mom pointing to a patch of sunlight coming through the trees; she told me the First Vision might have been as bright as that. I was wearing my blue and green turtle outfit, but I only remember that because of pictures. After the Sacred Grove we ate sandwiches. Joey said he wanted mustard on his, and the rest of us thought mustard was gross, although I think David might have said mustard is good but mayo is gross. Then we went to the Hill Cumorah (which Joey called the Hill Cuhmormon, but I personally don't remember that). At the top of the hill, we Melville and Thompson kids arranged ourselves at the monument for a picture. David and Susanne sat in front, and all us littler kids gathered around. I wanted to be tallest in the picture, so I was standing on a ledge near the bottom of the monument. The adults kept telling us not to climb the monument, but I wasn't climbing it, I just wanted to be higher than everyone.

One day we went to a cemetery to see Grandpa King's grave. I remember being fascinated by a nearby tombstone for a little girl with the girl's picture on it. There was a Halloween decoration at that grave, and I asked my mom if we could take it. She of course said no, and I'm embarrassed now that I even asked. Several wasps (or other stinging insects) entered the car and got stuck in the rear window, where they died and their corpses paled for years.

Eventually the time came for us to leave Pulaski. Before we left, we were at a grocery store where we bought Alpha-Bits cereal and Goober peanut butter/jelly, which I had never seen before. Susanne didn't come back with us; she went to NYC with my grandparents and the Thompsons, where my grandpa bought sandwiches for everyone from a bar.

The four of us Melvilles made our way back west. Once we stayed in a hotel where we ate Spaghettios straight from the can; it was then that I discovered they taste better cold. I think the noodles were shaped like Garfield characters, although it might have been Where's Waldo. Somewhere we also stopped at McDonald's (or somewhere like that), where the toy in my kids meal was a male character from Pocahontas, I think her dad.

We went to a place called Reptile Gardens, where the first thing we did was look at 100-year-old tortoises, which I touched. There were lots of other reptiles, too. We went to Mt. Rushmore, where I think we stayed the night. We were looking at gift shops and one had little models of Mt. Rushmore. There were big gray ones, which my mom and I didn't like. They had white ones that we liked. There was one little one and several bigger ones. My mom wanted me to get a bigger one, but I wanted the little one. I remember my mom asking stores about Black Hills gold. The next morning we saw Mt. Rushmore and tried to see Crazy Horse, although I can't remember if we actually saw it or not. On the drive home, David asked me if he could have one Canadian penny. I didn't want to give him one, but my mom made me, since I had several pennies and lots of other coins, and he was just asking for one.

And then we came home!