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.

February 12-15, 2014

Last year was a rather eventful Valentine's Day. In addition to the day itself, I'm going to remember the two days before it and the day after.

Wednesday, February 12. My ward had rented out the BYU bowling alley for a dating activity. All the guys in the ward had donated ties, and the girls had randomly picked a tie, and that was how we were paired up. I had told my date, Deanna, that I was going to be late because I had a class that went late, but the class got out early. I met her at the bowling alley, and we teamed up with one of her roommates and her date. Deanna was a Latin major, so she gave me a Latin-esque name on the bowling screen. My roommate Scott had brought some cupcakes, but I didn't know if they were to share. Someone was going to have some, and I told them they should ask Scott, so I think they decided just not to have them. Since I hadn't been able to take Deanna to dinner (like we were supposed to do), I took her up to the Sugar and Spice (actually, I think it had changed its name) to get ice cream. While Deanna was picking her ice cream, another worker was wrapping the cakes, since it was almost closing time. I said, "Can I have a piece of that cake before you wrap it?" It was a festive red, pink, and white cake, which meant I could eat it. Deanna and I sat at a table and had a conversation. She told me she had worked in the Cougareat, so she knew that they were going to close Teriyaki Stix and bring back the Tomassito's which had been replaced by Chik-Fil-A. Deanna asked me if I was the one who only ate seasonal treats. She quibbled about me not eating pumpkin pie at Christmas because Christmas songs talk about it. I told her that "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays" talked about pumpkin pie, but it didn't mention Christmas, and Wikipedia listed it as a Thanksgiving song. But then she said, "But 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' talks about pumpkin pie." We talked about her plans for teaching history and Latin.

Thursday, February 13. It's possible that this was the day when I was watching A Charlie Brown Valentine, and Scott told me that he had watched part of the 1970s Charlie Brown special while making cupcakes with his date, and he was surprised to see "2002" when he looked at my Charlie Brown Valentine DVDs.

Friday, February 14. In the morning I had to take a French test. I was wearing my Valentine t-shirt and my Valentine socks and my red Vans. After the test, I went to work; and after work, I went to the French lab session; and then I went home. The One Stop office was giving out Valentine cookies near the Wilk, so of course I got one, but they said we had to post on Facebook saying we got one. Being a terrible person, I didn't, which was a little ungrateful. As I was walking home, I saw my roommate Jordan's girlfriend at the time, Laura, but I didn't say hi because she was going a different way. I needed to tie my shoe, so I put my foot up on a stair rail, and a guy told me he thought I was going to slide down the rail. I drove home, and when I got home, my mom told me my dad was home watching a movie. "It's been kind of a rough day," she said, and she told me that he had fainted at work. My sister had gone with him to the emergency room. I asked my mom if she had gotten candy that I could eat. She said I could have any of it, except there was a box of Palmer chocolates that she had given to Allie. I looked up at the candy, and I found a box of chocolates--I had one that was an orange creme, which was a little disappointing. Then I had another one, which was orange again! I later learned that that was the box my mom had given to Allie, but she was wrong about it being Palmer chocolate. Then we went to go get pizza from Papa Murphy's--we got a heart-shaped one and a stuffed one. While we were driving there, my mom asked if I wanted to go get Free Birds on DVD, but I said I wanted to wait until it got closer to Thanksgiving in case it was released in 3D. (It wasn't.) I think we had a conversation expressing our disdain at the legalization of marijuana in Colorado. I waited in the car while my mom got the pizzas, and I was disappointed when she came out with a bottle of soda. While one of the pizzas was cooking, I talked to my mom while she was cleaning the bathroom. Then we had the intention of going downstairs to eat pizza and watch Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown. When my mom was on the last step, she yelled and said "It's broken!" She sat down on the step and my dad came out of the room where he had been watching TV. "Call an ambulance!" she said. I didn't know what to do, so I said, "Should I call 911?" In all my haste, I wasn't thinking straight. I shouldn't have used my cell phone, and for some reason I stepped outside while I was making the call. The dispatcher first asked where the emergency was. When she asked how old my mom was, I said "56," even though she was 57. The dispatcher asked if she was talking, and I went back inside to make sure she was. The dispatcher asked if she was bleeding, and she was, which I hadn't realized. The dispatcher asked me to turn on lights outside, and then the call was ended. My mom asked for the phone so she could call someone in her Primary presidency, since she wouldn't be at church. I was a little surprised that with all the things going on, that's the first thing she felt she needed to do. She asked me to call Susanne and tell her what happened. I did so, and she said she would come. During all this, I tried really hard not to get near my mom's leg, and I could see that her foot was not at the correct angle. The paramedics arrived, and as they did, one Jay Ertmann came in and said, "Oh Ann, I'm so sorry." Susanne arrived soon thereafter. She wanted to take a picture of my mom's foot before the paramedics stabilized it and wrapped it all up. The medics hadn't noticed I was in the room, and Susanne said I could help when it was time to take my mom up the stairs. Once her leg was wrapped up, she could scoot around easily. The medics lifted her up and instructed me to put the seat under her. Then they were able to transfer her up the stairs. They wanted my dad and I to help with the gurney. I remember my mom apologizing to them for making them do that on Valentine's Day, and they said that it was the first day for one of them. Susanne asked me to watch over my dad and to clean up the blood, so I Googled how to do that. I picked up the pizza, but it wasn't too messy because it was stuffed and didn't really have toppings. Google told me to blot, not to rub, when cleaning the blood, and I realized I had done it wrong. I found the sock they had cut off my mom, which was full of curdling blood, so I took it outside and threw it away. It was a little hard to see all the blood, and just as I thought I had it all cleaned up, I noted another patch of blood. Just as I noticed it, my dad pointed it out. He said he felt really sad about that happening. He went to bed, and I announced the event on Facebook and wrote a blog post about it. While I was on the computer, my mom called and told me she was going into surgery and said, "I really am fine." I was a little confused at first because she sounded like Sue. I went down and watched Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, which I had intended to watch hours earlier.

Saturday, February 15. My dad didn't seem overly anxious to go to the hospital, so in the morning I lifted weights downstairs while listening to Cherie Call's inferior Taken album. I also put out some pot of gold decorations, and I put some leftover Valentine chocolates in gold wrappers in the biggest pot. I also had to send some emails to make sure other people would take over for me at church. We drove out to the hospital, and my dad said he felt bad because he didn't realize Susanne had been there all day. Mom was on oxygen and sounded like a smoker. Eventually, she was ready to go to sleep, so we went home. I had to deliver something to one of her Primary counselors, and then I went to Arby's because I wanted to get their mint shake. I got something for my dad as well. I was listening to Imagine Dragons in the car. I brought the food home, and we ate it while watching the Olympics.

Misused words

I think every kid has moments where they learn new words and want to put these new words into use, but they don't get the nuances of the word quite right. So, I'm going to remember some of the times I got words wrong. Undoubtedly, there were more times than are included here.

Once when I was in kindergarten, I was at my friend David Christensen's house. We were getting out of his van and he was talking to me, but for some reason I wasn't responding. His mom said to me, "Don't ignore him." Well, I had heard the word annoy, and here I heard ignore, so I might have thought that I had simply misheard annoy and it was actually ignore. Not long after that, my brother David was teasing me, as he usually did, and I said, "Quit ignoring me!" To which, of course, he said, "I'm not ignoring you!"

Another time, probably in first grade, I was on the playground, hanging on a bar. Another kid was also hanging and we were approaching each other. I said, "Caution," and he said, "My name's not Austin!"

One night at dinner, my dad asked me if I wanted more soup, and I said, "In fact I do!" That's not entirely misusing that expression, but it made David laugh.

For a time, I confused the words deaf and death. After I broke my arm, it was a rule that there were no more than two people on the trampoline at a time. One time, I remember reading the warning label on the tramp out loud as explanation to a younger cousin why he couldn't be on the tramp. (My gut tells me it was Peter, but he might have been too young.) In addition to things like "broken bones," the last item was "death." Jesse said, "That means you die." I said, "No, it means you can't hear." We had a little argument about what death meant.

On another occasion, when I was six or seven, we were at my paternal grandparents' house. My cousin Krishelle wanted us to draw pictures to give to Grandma Judy. She was drawing a picture of some fruit (one of her older siblings, I think Lacey, said that the bottom of her apple looked like the bottom of a 2-liter bottle). I was using my imagination and drawing some picture with a backstory to it. I was drawing a girl protagonist in her garden, and I also drew the dreary garden of a wicked person and labeled it "Garden of Death." I don't think I fully understood the negative connotations of the word. Well, we gave the pictures to Grandma Judy, and after that, my mom and my cousin Kadee asked me why I drew a garden of death. I began crying, because I hadn't meant anything bad by drawing it, but it seemed I was in trouble.

When I was seven, my dad said something was "gruesome." I asked him what gruesome meant, and he said, "It kind of means, just awful." Well, I don't think that's a very satisfactory definition. Then on Labor Day weekend in 1996, we were camping in Fillmore Canyon, and I was walking in the creek, and I slipped somewhere and landed on my shin, bruising it. It was very painful, and I think I had a bit of an overreaction to it, and I began hating the creek. (I created a jingle, "Chalk Creek, you're a geek," because geek was the only word I could think of that rhymed with creek.) I told my cousin Terrill that the creek was gruesome, remembering my dad's definition: "awful." However, it seems that I understood it better less than two months later. In my second grade class, for Halloween, we created paper candy corns, and we had to put a Halloween word on it, going down, and then each letter in that word would begin another word. My Halloween word was "Gruesome." I think I used ghost for g and I used eerie for one of the e's.

December 30

Today is December 30, so I'm going to remember the December 30s of the past.

2013. It was our last full day in California, and I was wearing my red-orange pants. While the other adults had gone someplace, Ya-ping wanted me to accompany the boys to the park at their apartment complex. They showed me how to get there, and I supervised them playing, particularly Nathaniel.

Suddenly, there was a hubbub around one of the park's garbage cans, as one of the janitors was freaking out. There was a rat in the trash can, and it was trying to jump out. My nephews wanted me to hold them so they could see it, and some of the other people worried about me doing so, since the rat was trying to jump out, and it got close on occasion. I took a picture on my phone, and then another janitor showed up, and I was able to show him the picture, because I don't know if he believed the story.

He made fun of the first janitor for being afraid. Eventually they put a stick in the garbage, and the rat was able to climb out, and it ran into the bushes. I think Preston was trying to coax it out of the bushes. Then we had to make a stop in the apartment again, and Preston was trying to come up with an excuse not to go back. He said he was scared of the rat running loose, but I knew that was an excuse, because he sure wasn't afraid of it when we were there. When we went back, Nathaniel brought his little bike. He left it on the playground while he went playing, and then Preston said, "Uh oh," because we noticed a woman pushing a little girl on it. Of course, Qi-en didn't like that--"I don't want her riding it." I said, "Then go tell her," and he said, "No, I want you to," and I thought it was more of the job of the adult, so I took him and I went up and said, "Can he ride on it?" She got off, but then Preston told me that he could tell the woman was mad because she was talking angrily with a friend (they weren't speaking English). It was weird enough to ride someone else's bike, but to be mad when you get kicked off--that's excessively odd. Although Franklin had been good for most of our visit, I think he had a screaming fit that afternoon. That evening we were going to go out to eat, and I think Franklin wanted to go to McDonald's, but we were going to a Chinese buffet. Franklin was upset about that and felt entitled to his way. I remember talking about some of the events of December 30, 2010, concerning Franklin, while we were at dinner. When we got back to the apartment, Preston wanted to sleep in the living room with my parents--and since he was given permission to do so, the other boys wanted to too. They then began to get every blanket and stuffed animal they could find and pile it on the couch.
David told them that there wasn't enough room for all of them to sleep on the couch with all their stuff. Preston was willing to sleep on the floor, but something triggered Franklin that he got possessed, all because his dad said there wasn't room for all of them on the couch. He had a screaming, crying fit. David told him to go to his room and that he had five minutes to calm down, or else he wouldn't be able to sleep in the living room. He screamed and cried on his bed for a long time. Eventually David went in to talk to him, and said, "You've been crying a long time." Franklin was coming up with some excuse: "When you were five years old..." David had to say, "If being five years old means that you're too young not to have a fit, then being five years old means that you're too young to sleep in the living room. Do you understand?" He did end up letting Franklin go back to the living room, and Ya-ping said to him, "You're too nice." In the meantime, I was trying to find my phone's charger, and David found every one in his house, but none of them were mine. It turned out that I hadn't brought mine, so I don't know I had been charging it while I was there.

2012. My parents and I were driving home from California with my grandparents. It was very early in the morning, so I spent a lot of the time sleeping. Donner Pass was snowy, but I slept through much of it. At one point, my mom asked if it would disrupt Grandpa's hearing if they listened to music; Grandma said it didn't matter. At one point they turned on the weird CD my dad had bought my mom, "The Best of the 80s." I didn't like that choice for a Sunday, so I listened to churchy music on my new MP3 player, including the Lower Lights and Jan Terri's "Follow Jesus." We made a stop at a Nevada gas station/casino, and we had to make a stop in Winnemucca to get gas. We also had to stop at the hotel we had stayed at on our way there; Grandpa said, "Why are we stopping here?" and it was because I had left my shoes at the hotel. When he saw that, he realized why I had worn "red tennis shoes" (they were actually Vans) at Preston's baptism they day before. I think our last stop was in Nevada not far from the Utah border, and I had snacked on enough snacks that I didn't need to get to get food. We dropped off my grandparents and then drove to our snowy, icy driveway. As we were bringing stuff in, we discovered that Grandpa had left his hearing aid stuff in our car. That really disappointed my mom, because it was late and she didn't want to have to drive out again. She called Grandma and asked if it was OK if she returned it the next day; it was OK. I stayed up late writing my year-in-review post.

2011. This time, the visit with my nephews took place in Utah. We all got in the Suburban and drove to the Utah Museum of Natural History. Ya-ping had some gummy bears she was sharing with the boys, and I had one too. I carried Nathaniel through much of the museum. He kept pointing to dinosaur skulls and saying, "Wehh, wehh." I thought he liked the skulls, but later he did the same thing with pictures of archaeological finds. Those surely could not have interested him, so I think he was "talking" just for the sake of talking. We picked up pizza on our way home for dinner. Once we got home, I went running; it seems like it was for 53 minutes. I was astonished to see a "Welcome Home" sign for a missionary (it was up a few days early); the dates of his mission were 2010 to 2012, and I was weirded out that someone who left after I came home was coming home. I got home and reported on my running; Peter was at our house, and he said that running 53 minutes sounded horrible. That night, Nathaniel had fun creating a bridge between the couch and the table.

2010. Once again visiting my nephews, this time in Nashville. We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner; it was kind of a buffet style. They had some spicy food; I remember my mom saying, "If you grew up eating this, can you imagine how bland American food would be?" Franklin was not quite three. They fed him some spicy stuff, and he would convulse because it was so hot, but then he would beg for more. My mom said, "Why does he do that?" Preston said, "Look at Nathaniel!" because he was staring at a baby girl.

2008. Elder Love was being transferred out of Ritzville and Davenport. We drove out of Davenport in the morning, and in Washington, they don't believe in clearing the roads. A car had turned into the middle turning lane and was coming in traffic but apparently didn't look in his blind spot and hit the car in front of us. They pulled off on the side and we kept driving. Elder Love went to his new area in Spokane's South Hill. We went into the apartment, and Elder Love said, "Who's our district leader?" The other elders told him it was him; he was stunned. I can't remember where I met Elder Wilson, but then we drove back to Davenport. We got gas at the Indian-run gas station in Airway Heights. Elder Wilson got a hot dog, so I thereby learned he wasn't a health nut, although he was fairly healthy. I drove slow because it was all snowpacked. When we got back to the Herrons' house, the couple we stayed with, I told Sister Herron about the wreck we had seen. This is my journal for the day:
"This morning almost to Airway Heights we saw a wreck. A car was turning on to the highway from the median. He didn't look and their sides hit. It looked like they were dancing with the way they moved across the snow-packed road.
"The roads in Spokane were crazy. Snow was piled up in the center of one way streets, and lanes were narrow with all the snow. I was nervous to have to drive. Elder Love asked who the district leader was in his new area, and he was shocked when they said, "You." President hadn't told him he would be district leader.
"We traveled safely to Davenport, with a nice long procession behind my slow driving. We went to the Stackhouses and the Adamses to introduce Elder Wilson."

2007. When we taught Sunday School, this may have been the time I brought up my reading of Job. When we taught the youth, Elder Chun said, "What is a missionary's favorite thing?" The youth all guessed things, including cookies, but the answer was "referrals." This is my journal for the day:
"Today Debbie and the kids came to church, and the bishop of the Northpointe ward committed everyone to bring one person into the Church in 2008.*
"Then Kristy Whalen came to the Greenbluff ward, which was exciting. We had to teach Gospel Essentials, and then we had to teach the youth. Those both went well.
"*That is, invite one person to hear a lesson."

2006. I was invited to a YSA activity, since I was 18. We met at the Jones home. I was wearing pink socks because I was very OCD about what clothes I wore around New Year's. We took off our shoes, so my socks were very obvious, but no one said anything. We went down to the Joneses' basement to play Scene It. Not having seen many movies, I wasn't very good at it. But there was one sequence that involved a picture that gradually faded in and you had to guess the movie. I knew it was It's a Wonderful Life immediately. In another part of the game, I knew Inherit the Wind when no one else did, because I had watched it in Mr. Glover's AP US History class; I told everyone that it was airing on channel 11 soon. We went to Clark Planetarium to see a laser music show. They played Christmas music while showing lasers and animated clips. They played overplayed songs like "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." I thought it was cheesy, and it was worse because Christmas was over.

December 31, 2013-January 1, 2014

Another year is coming to an end, so it's time to remember what happened at last New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

On December 31, we got ready to leave my brother's house after a weeklong visit there. For some reason, Nathaniel rode in the car with us to the airport while David drove. I did the old pretend-my-hand-is-a-spider with him, and he kept smacking my hand when I got close. When we got to the airport, I said, "Goodbye, Qi-en!" While we were waiting to board the plane, I checked my grades for the fall 2013 semester. I saw that I got an A- in Groundwater and a B+ in Field Studies, which was a little disappointing, but a little pleasantly surprising. The rest were A's. My mom told me we would be sitting in row 16. I said "hixteeng," since that was how Nathaniel said it, and that seemed to be his favorite number at that time. My mom caught on to my "hixteeng" reference, and said, "He's so cute." On the plane, I put my phone on airplane mode, but I listened to the songs that were saved on the phone, listening to songs that were popular in 2013, came out in 2013, or were New Year songs. When the flight attendant came by, my dad and I got ginger ale; my dad said he always got it on planes. When we arrived in Salt Lake, Susanne took us home; I entered the house through the garage door, and our cat had made a mess of the basement, so I had to clean it up later. I came up and saw our leftover candy canes, and I was glad that I could still eat them. We looked on my mom's new computer at the pictures from California, and I used an unflattering one for my profile picture.

I turned on my New Year music while we did that. That evening, I turned on all my 2013 music on shuffle. My dad told me he liked the mix, but that may have been because there was a fair amount of religious music. My mom kept laughing at the Jan Terri songs. Then I was surprised when Kelly Clarkson's cover of "Run Run Rudolph" came on, and my dad said, "Is this the singer you and your mother make fun of?" Later I told that to my mom and he said maybe he couldn't tell when people were off pitch. In the evening, my mom and I went to Temple Square because Cherie Call was singing in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We went in and sat down, and lots of people were talking to a man behind us. It was apparent he was a pretty well-known person, and I remember one person criticizing another musician who was Mormon for singing Bruno Mars. I predicted some of the songs Cherie would sing, and I think I got all of them right. I was especially glad she sang her New Year song, "Starting Again, Again." She had live accompaniment, but she just used a minus track on "Marry Me." After we left, my mom wondered who had been sitting behind us. I told her I wondered if it was Jon Schmidt (I don't remember how I came to that conclusion), and my mom said she had heard him say that, so she knew I was right. Rather than  go home and be bored (since my dad probably went to bed), we called my sister to see if we should go visit them and ring in the New Year with them. She agreed to have us come, so we went down to their basement. We might have put on silly party hats. After 2014 arrived, we went upstairs and had sparkling cider, and Nan, Matt, and I cheesily clinked our glasses together "to 2014." (We didn't know that it would be 2014 when Matt would leave them.) Allie showed off her karaoke machine, but I think she was too shy to sing. Susanne gave me some cinnamon rolls that I took home. On our way home, I wanted to see if 99.5 was playing the top 2013 songs yet, but that wouldn't start until the next day. I think they played "Sweater Weather." I liked the golden-lit trees near Susanne's house.

The next morning, January 1 (which technically began the night before), I got up and my dad had eaten a cinnamon roll, which was fine by me. I remember getting on my computer and listening to my New Year and 2013 music again. I journalized as follows:

"New Year's Day, just sitting in my room, waiting for us to leave for our traditional New Year dinner. This is going to be a big year. I'm nervous. I will graduate, and therefore I have to find a job. I thought I would be able to stay at BYU Studies until August, but it turns out I can't. I hope the semester won't be too difficult so that I can spend time looking for jobs."

We drove out to 7200 South to go to Golden Corral, my grandparents' favorite. I think my dad was sick, so he didn't come with us. The radio station 99.5 was playing the top songs from 2013, so I turned that on. I was surprised when Owl City's "Good Time" came on, since that was more of a 2012 song. I wasn't social at dinner and didn't want to talk to many other people. My grandparents wanted to take pictures of everyone there, which got a little awkward. I remember Sue saying she wanted Jesse and Lisa to have kids because she didn't want Chancey to have any more. On our way home, we stopped at Toys 'R' Us to look at their Christmas clearance stuff (in California, we had seen some Rudolph toys, but they didn't have them in Utah). Allie had been promised a bicycle for Christmas, but she didn't want one, so she picked out Legos instead. I was disappointed she didn't want a bike. On our way back to Susanne's house, we got into a conversation about P!nk. Susanne said she loved the song "Just Give Me a Reason," and I said I hated it. And then it came on a minute later. They dropped Matt off and did some things in the house, while I waited in the car and listened to the radio. We went to Maverik to get gas when they announced the "number one song"--Kelly Clarkson's "Catch My Breath," which surprised me. Then we went to Target. I remember looking at the clearance candy, thinking I could have it for just a few more hours (before candy became forbidden again), but I wasn't really hungry for it since I had eaten lots of desserts at Golden Corral.

Early Christmastime memories

In this blog, I will try to remember some of my earliest Christmas-associated memories. I'm going to try to stick to memories that happened before I entered elementary school--meaning I was five or younger.

(I was going to post this last week, but I forgot. It was the first week I missed posting on this blog. But that's OK, because this isn't my priority blog.)

I remember a visit to Temple Square with my cousins and grandparents. Some of the lights had little flowery coverings surrounding the lights--I think that was a 90s thing. I remember walking up the ramp to see the Christus statue and being fascinated with the planets on the mural. I think it was this same trip when I remember driving home in my grandparents' van, and there was a plate of Christmas sugar cookies.

I can remember looking out the window in our living room overlooking our driveway and watching my family bring in our Christmas tree.

I can remember making a homemade garland with cranberries, and I think my cousin Tammy was there; the next year I wondered where it was when we got out our decorations.

Once in preschool, we went to an old folks home and danced, I think the Mexican Hat Dance. Afterwards, they gave us those red suckers with white powder on them. Then I went to the Festival of Trees (I can't remember whether it was with them or with my family) and they had giant plastic suckers like the ones we had gotten. (I'm not sure whether the decorations were meant to look like those suckers, but I thought they did.)

Perhaps that same year, I also went to the Festival of Trees with my family and got an anthropomorphic Christmas tree filled with candy. My brother got a snake with 24 pieces of candy so you could eat one a day until Christmas. We came home and caught the tail end of a cartoon about the Twelve Days of Christmas, and then my cousins had to go home. I think that the adults said, "It's over" when it was at a commercial break, but we kids didn't believe them. But when the commercial break was over, it was only the credits, so they had been right.

I liked to watch my Christmas Sing-Along, and I remember asking my dad when Christmas was, in part because I wanted to watch it.

One time I went to my friend David Christensen's house, and his dad had drawn a picture of a stick of holly, a present, and a candle. We were impressed with how he had drawn the holly leaves. So I decided that I wanted to draw one myself. So I lay down on the kitchen floor with my crayons and drew the picture. I couldn't draw the points on the holly leaves, so they were just regular leaves. I figured it didn't matter what color the present was, so it had pink ribbon. My mom was very impressed.

One time I was playing with our neighbor, Taryn Pay, on the day we were bringing out our Christmas decorations. She found two wreaths, one made out of cloth and one made out of twigs. She suggested we put the wreaths around our faces and walk around like that. I was annoyed that she kept the cloth wreath and made me use the scratchy one.

I remember getting in our car one December and driving down the hill. The stars were literally twinkling in the sky in a flashy cartoony manner. I'm pretty sure this was a dream.

My sister was tutored by Coach Wangsguard from South Davis Junior High when I was just a little kid. One time during tutoring, my mom and I went outside and played in the snow. One of us threw a snowball at the window. When we went inside, Wangs said she had said, "Who threw that snowball?" We had a puzzle-piece reindeer on our fireplace, and Wangs asked me what its name was. I said it was Rudolph, and she said, "It can't be Rudolph if it doesn't have a red nose!"

I remember hearing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" on the radio a few days after Christmas, and I wondered why they were playing a Christmas song after Christmas, but I think I deduced it was because Christmas was over and the song was only relevant after Christmas (because it was past tense).

I loved playing with our plastic nativity, and one angel for a long time was separated from the rest of the nativity.

My mom made little Christmas mice that held candy canes in them as the tail. I remember being at my grandparents' office in their old house with my cousin April and there were leftover candy cane mice.

My grandparents had a garland with musical bells in it. I loved hearing it, and I fell in love with "The Little Drummer Boy." I thought the "rum pum pum pum" was hilarious.

We had a little paper with flaps that described Santa Claus traditions in other countries. That paper made me think of Santa Claus differently than most people. When I heard people say that Santa Claus went around the world in one night, I thought they were wrong. Our Santa Claus only had to travel across America. Other countries had their own Santa (Father Christmas, Père Noël, etc.). If you ask me, that makes a little more sense than there being only one Santa for the whole world.

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.